There was a noteworthy UK contract announcement this week from Fujitsu.Its deal with CityFibre Holdings to plan, build and operate fibre network is a good chunk of business for the Japan-based firm's UK arm, with £50m in initial value and the potential to grow significantly beyond that. It’s also a reminder of the exciting work under way to bring significantly faster - and potentially cheaper - networking to parts of the UK.
Originally founded as a JV with BT back in the early 90s, Fujitsu Telecommunications Europe has a track record on this sort of infrastructure build. Meanwhile, CityFibre is a private equity backed player with major plans to put fibre network in the ground (and to the premises/home) across “second tier” cities in the UK. You may have heard about its FTTH (fibre to the home) project in Bournemouth, where it’s suggesting ISPs will be able to get speeds up to 1Gbps. Even if you don’t need quite that eye-popping amount of bandwidth, the benefits for homes and businesses - not to mention the wider local economy - fortunate enough to be near this type of development should be great. Unfortunately, for the millions of us living and doing business in smaller towns across the UK, the wait for such advantages may of course be somewhat longer. Perhaps we should follow the example of the intrepid villages in Lancashire that are taking the DIY approach.