Work begins to bring 'full-fibre' internet speeds of up to 1k Mbps to Luton as part of £45m investment

The rollout is part of CityFibre’s £45m digital infrastructure investment in Luton and Dunstable.

Works have now begun in the Stopsley area – and CityFibre says the construction team will work closely with the borough council and community to manage potential disruption.

The rollout is expected to move into Dunstable early next year, with each area taking a few weeks to complete.

However, CityFibre says construction teams will typically only be outside each home for two to three days residents and businesses will be contacted ahead of any works 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 Luton, services will be available from an increasing range of broadband providers. Across the UK, CityFibre is already working with launch partner Vodafone to supply full fibre infrastructure for customers on selected Vodafone Pro Broadband plans as well as TalkTalk and Zen with other partners expected to join the network soon.

Jean Gowin, CityFibre’s Area Manager for Luton and Dunstable, said: “I’m excited and proud to see work getting underway in Luton today. This is the start of an exciting new chapter for the town as it gets ready to embrace and thrive in the digital age. We appreciate this is a huge build project and there will be some short-term disruption. However, once the network is built, our full fibre will serve the community’s connectivity needs for decades to come.”

Full fibre networks, unlike copper-based ‘fibre broadband’ services, use 100% 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.

Paul Alderton, Communications Director, at Instalcom, which is carrying out the construction work, said: “Our civils teams, fibre installation teams and fibre termination and testing engineers will be working collaboratively with the CityFibre build team to ensure that the works are undertaken with minimal disruption.”