Metro fibre network provider Cityfibre has delisted from the AIM market today and was acquired by Bidco for £537.8 million.
Bidco is jointly-owned by Antin Infrastructure Partners and West Street Infrastructure Partners, which aim to boost funding to accelerate Cityfibre’s network buildout.
Cityfibre currently covers 40 UK towns and cities, targeting public sector and business clients in particular. It currently connect 280,000 business customers, 28,000 public sector sites, and 4 million homes.
It reaches an agreement with Vodafone at the end of 2017 to extend its network (FTTP) to 1 million homes in 12 locations by the end of 2021, starting with Milton Keynes. The agreement, which is worth £500 million, has an option to further extend this to 5 million homes by 2025.
Key rivals include Gigaclear, Hyperoptic, Openreach, TalkTalk and Virgin. And the company partners with SSE, Easynet, Exa Networks, Vodafone and Sky (amongst others).
The tie-up with Vodafone is an interesting one. Vodafone certainly needs to extend its fixed network capabilities, and Omnisperience fully expects it to acquire more fixed line (fibre) capacity in due course.
Cityfibre’s Gigabit Cities include:
- Aberdeen
- Bracknell
- Bradford
- Bristol
- Cheltenham
- Coventry
- Doncaster
- Edinburgh
- Glasgow
- Gloucester
- Huddersfield
- Hull
- Leeds
- Leicester
- Maidenhead
- Milton Keynes
- Northampton
- Nottingham
- Peterborough
- Reading
- Rotherham
- Sheffield
- Slough
- Southend
- Stirling
- Wakefield
- York
- Yorkshire