U.K. broadband provider CityFibre is targeting 14 more cities for its all-fiber gigabit service. Goldman Sachs-backed CityFibre plans to spend a total of $3.1 billion across 26 "Gigabit Cities" in order to compete with incumbent BT in the U.K. Across the 14 cities just announced, CityFibre said its gigabit service would pass more than one million homes and businesses.
CityFibre previously announced it was bringing its fiber-based gigabit service into 12 cities. The company said construction was underway in 10 of the 12 cities, while five of them have gigabit services live, and for sale to customers.
RELATED: U.K. ISP Zzoomm teams up with Adtran for 10G FTTH rollout
The company has a goal of passing at least five million homes with its service, which it said accounts for more than 20% of the UK market.
With the latest additions, CityFibre said it now passes two million homes across all 26 cities. CityFibre estimates that more than 3,250 construction jobs will be created in its deployment to the two million homes. All told, the broadband provider said it would create 115,000 indirect jobs across the 26 cities.
While CityFibre anticipates that that its fiber deployments will provide enough capacity to serve all of the market verticals well into the future, it's designing its network to be ready for 5G small cell densification.
The 14 new cities are Batley, Bradford, Derby, Dewsbury, Doncaster, Inverness, Ipswich, Leicester, Lowestoft, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, Rotherham, Slough, Swindon and Worthing.