Independent UK-based CityFibre has signed a deal with network builder and broadband provider toob, enabling the latter to expand its retail broadband business into CityFibre's national footprint.
toob is building its own fibre network in the south of England and has successfully sold a symmetrical 900Mb/s product at £25 per metre. The agreement will enable toob to expand its market reach and roll out its services through CityFibre's network. Its service went live in Portsmouth, with more services to be rolled out in areas adjacent to its own deployments.
The companies have also agreed terms for a wholesale aggregation partnership that will integrate toob's current and future network build-out into CityFibre's "service ready" footprint, expanding the addressable market for all of CityFibre's Internet Service Provider (ISP) partners.
The technical integration of toob's footprint is expected to be completed by summer 2023 and will provide CityFibre's ISP partners with access to over 100,000 homes in Southampton and Camberley. toob is committed to building a network for over 1 million premises in the South of England over the next five years, all of which will be available to CityFibre's ISP partners at the same level of service as CityFibre's own network.
Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said: "We are delighted to welcome toob as a service provider partner to our network. They have had great success in driving service penetration and we look forward to helping them extend their exciting services to millions of new homes through our network. The deal also represents the first major partnership between infrastructure builders in the UK, establishing a new wholesale aggregation model that significantly accelerates and expands the addressable footprint available to our wholesale ISP partners. For smaller fibre network builders who currently only offer their own retail broadband services within their footprint, this also creates an opportunity to expand their retail business, open up lucrative wholesale revenue streams and maximise their network footprint."
Nick Parbutt, CEO and founder of toob, added: "toob is delighted to be working with CityFibre. Opening up our own network to other ISPs has been part of our strategy from the start, and working with CityFibre allows ISPs to access toob's full-fibre network. Again, extending our highly successful brand and proposition in the region by using CityFibre's network provides a great opportunity to leverage our investment in the region, offer our proposition to more customers and ultimately grow the company."
