Government subsidies of £782 million are supporting the rollout of Project Gigabit, which seeks to expand connectivity across the UK.
Kent sees the most recent of CityFibre’s Project Gigabit work, adding to CityFibre’s expansions across Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk.
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Sir Chris Bryant, the UK’s telecoms minister, said: “Project Gigabit is providing the tools for people up and down the country to prosper in the digital world, allowing communities to stream, work and learn online with buffer-free broadband.
“With this latest rollout of gigabit connectivity in hard-to-reach parts of Kent, Cambridgeshire, Norfolk and Suffolk, we are breaking down even more barriers to opportunity in Britain.”
Project Gigabit is the UK government’s programme expand high-speed broadband across the country, targeting mostly rural and remote communities.
CityFibre was awarded the £112 million Project Gigabit Kent contract in January 2024. The operator has since expanded its existing commercial network footprint in the region, with the overall project taking around five years to complete.
CityFibre’s Kent efforts extend the infrastructure it has been building in the unitary authority of Medway since 2020, which includes towns like Chatham and Gillingham.
Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said: “Project Gigabit made the rollout of full-fibre broadband to rural and hard-to-reach areas possible and we’ve already seen the difference that full fibre connectivity makes: supercharging small businesses, connecting communities and powering your local pub.
“Our teams have worked incredibly hard to map routes, lay cables, climb telegraph poles, and engage with local communities, as we continue to expand the reach of [the] network and bring the benefits of full fibre broadband to over 1.3 million premises in hard-to-reach areas and more than eight million premises across the UK.”
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