South Yorkshire joins the digital revolution as Sheffield, Rotherham and Doncaster become Gigabit Cities

11^th October 2016 – CityFibre is set to open up a next-generation pure fibre network across Sheffield, Doncaster and Rotherham enabling them to join the growing ranks of Gigabit Cities as the company continues to introduce fibre infrastructure competition nationwide.

The network, which spans 110km, will provide local businesses with some of the fastest download and upload speeds in the world, up to and exceeding 1000mbps. This new breed of pure fibre connectivity will improve their productivity and provide them with a significant competitive advantage. This is welcome news to Sheffield’s business community who currently struggle with slow speeds of only 18.36mbps on average* hampering their ability to grow.

The city-wide pure fibre network will transform the digital infrastructure of Sheffield City Region, enabling gigabit speed, world class connectivity for the entire community and dramatically accelerating its digital capabilities. It will future-proof the area as the thirst for greater bandwidth continues to grow exponentially over the coming decades.

The Sheffield, Doncaster and Rotherham Gigabit City projects are being delivered in partnership with Exa Networks, an established telecoms provider based in Yorkshire who have been delivering high quality internet services to schools and businesses for over a decade. Exa Networks is already delivering ultra-fast connectivity across CityFibre’s networks in Bradford and Leeds. Exa Networks’s DarkLight service has been designed as the last internet connection a business or school will ever need to install, providing truly future proofed internet connectivity.

Rob Hamlin, Commercial Director at CityFibre commented:

“We’re delighted to be expanding our partnership with Exa Networks to offer world-class digital infrastructure to Sheffield, Doncaster and Rotherham. Organisations large and small now require reliable, fast, low latency internet services to compete and succeed in an ever changing digital world. We are opening up a new world class digital infrastructure in the region, which will provide internet services like never seen before. We look forward to our market launch and to connecting the first customers soon.”

Mark Cowgill, Co-Founder of Exa Networks commented:

“By using CityFibre’s pure fibre infrastructure we are able to offer customers in the Sheffield City Region a world class connectivity service. Having worked with CityFibre across the Leeds and Bradford network, we’re really looking forward to expanding our service offering across Yorkshire. As a UK leader in providing internet services to the education sector, we understand the crucial importance of ultra-fast connectivity in our schools as well as our businesses and anticipate a huge demand for increased bandwidth in both the education and business communities of Sheffield.”

CityFibre and Exa will be hosting Gigabit City launch events in Sheffield and Doncaster on 15 November, where local business representatives will hear more about how the Gigabit City project can benefit them and revolutionise the way they operate.