Construction underway on next phase of full fibre broadband rollout in Glasgow 

Construction is underway for the next phase of a full fibre broadband rollout in the north east of Glasgow.

Digital infrastructure firm CityFibre is starting work in the Bishopbriggs area of the city under the £270m programme to bring high-speed connectivity to homes and businesses.

GCU UK, on behalf of CityFibre, is carrying out the work which has been going on south of the river for more than a year, with work in the north west of the city beginning last summer.

The project is CityFibre’s largest city-wide investment for full fibre deployment in the UK, and the first services have already gone live in several locations across the region including in Paisley and Renfrew, which was the first part of west central Scotland to benefit from the network.

In the north east, the build team will use a range of construction methods, while working in close partnership with East Dunbartonshire Council and local communities, to deliver a fast rollout while managing potential disruption.

Each area will usually take a few weeks to complete, however, construction teams will typically only be outside each home for two to three days and CityFibre will be in touch by post ahead of any work starting.

As the network is completed in each neighbourhood, CityFibre will designate the homes ‘ready for service’, which means residents can choose to connect to full fibre-enabled broadband services when they go live in their area. In Glasgow services are already available from launch partner Vodafone, TalkTalk and BrawBand, with other providers expected to join soon. 

David Cannon, CityFibre’s city manager for Glasgow, said: “Our full fibre rollout across much of the Glasgow city region is a massively ambitious project and we are excited to get to work on the next stage of construction of our state-of-the-art network. With services live in a number of areas of the city, residents across Glasgow are already feeling the benefits of having access to the fastest, most reliable broadband available, and I am keen to be able to bring these benefits to more communities.

“We have worked with GCU in other cities across Scotland and I am confident they will deliver the build with as little disruption as possible. I want to thank the local community for their patience as we work to future-proof Glasgow’s digital infrastructure.” 

Full fibre networks, unlike many of the copper-based ‘fibre broadband’ services available today, use 100 per cent fibre optic cables to carry data at light speed all the way from the home to the point of connection. This gives users speeds of up to 1,000 Mbps for upload and download, near limitless bandwidth and connectivity users can depend on. 

A full fibre connection also goes far beyond simply enabling access to the latest entertainment at lightning speed. As an essential digital utility, full fibre boosts households and businesses alike, with experts saying it will drive a range of economic benefits, such as making us more productive and innovative.

CityFibre is bringing full fibre connectivity within reach of up to eight million homes in towns and cities across the UK as part of its up to £4 billion Gigabit City Investment Programme.