Dark Fibre Deal Inked Between CityFibre And EE And Three

CityFibre has announced a deal whereby it will provide dark fibre backhaul connections to mobile masts owned by operators EE and Three.

The long-term national framework agreement was inked with both networks and their joint infrastructure venture, Mobile Broadband Network Limited.

This will be the first UK deployment of dark fibre (cabling which has already been laid, but lies currently unused) to mobile masts, and CityFibre claims that it will improve network performance, and save money over the longer-term.

Project number one for the venture has already started, and it’s happening in Kingston-upon-Hull, where EE and Three will also trial cutting edge tech and utilise advanced network technology.

Fotis Karonis, CTO at EE, commented: “With our customers’ data usage rising all the time, driven on by the rapidly growing adoption of 4G, a more flexible and cost effective backhaul capacity solution is hugely important so that we can keep giving a world-leading mobile experience. This is a completely new model for the industry, set to provide a much-needed change to the economics of capacity management.”

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, added: “Between them, EE and Three carry about 75 per cent of the data used by UK mobile users, so we are thrilled to announce this market-leading partnership. This framework illustrates a valuable new segment in CityFibre’s Gigabit City model for ubiquitous fibre connectivity.”