8 Gbps symmetric.60 UK towns.
The biggest UK altnet. Pure XGS-PON. Built independent of BT.
CityFibre runs an open-access XGS-PON network across roughly 60 UK towns and cities — Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Stirling, Sunderland, and a long list besides. We deliver it as business broadband with symmetric speeds up to 8 Gbps, static IPs, and one SLA on top. Need a dedicated single-tenant circuit with a 99.99% SLA? Leased lines run over the same network with a tighter fix time.
- Symmetric up to 8 Gbps
- XGS-PON throughout
- Static IP / /29 IPv4
- Dual-stack v4 + v6
- 10–20 day install
- 4hr business SLA
Symmetric. Up the line and down it. CityFibre top tier.
Pure XGS-PON means upload matches download at every tier. The fastest retail business connection in many of the towns CityFibre serves.
Four reasons it's the altnet to know.
CityFibre is the largest independent fibre network in the UK and the only altnet with a footprint big enough to seriously rival Openreach in the towns it covers. New ducting, new fibre, modern PON — no legacy DSL inheritance underneath.
Symmetric XGS-PON
CityFibre is a pure XGS-PON network — full symmetric speeds up and down. A 1 Gbps service gives you 1 Gbps upload as well as download, not the 115 Mbps you'd get on Openreach FTTP.
Up to 8 Gbps line rate
Top retail tier is 8 Gbps symmetric where the kit at your end can keep up. Lower tiers (1G, 2G, 5G) cover the realistic majority of office workloads with headroom to spare.
Open-access wholesale
CityFibre is a Layer-2 wholesale network — Giant sells the service, CityFibre provides the physical fibre. One SLA from us, the modern PON underneath, no Openreach in the middle.
Independent of BT
Built as a deliberate alternative to Openreach in the towns it covers. New ducting, new fibre, modern OLTs in the local exchange — none of the legacy copper or contention layered on the older network.
60 towns, growing —
check your postcode.
CityFibre's footprint spans roughly 60 UK towns and cities — Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Stirling, Sunderland and many more. The build extends regularly, so we don't publish a static town list — drop in a postcode and we'll tell you straight away whether your site is in stock, in build, or out of CityFibre coverage.
Not in the CityFibre footprint? We'll quote the best alternative — Openreach FTTP, another altnet partner, or a leased line.
Side-by-side, honest comparison.
Openreach FTTP is solid kit and it's available almost everywhere. CityFibre's advantages, in the towns where the two overlap:
| CityFibre | Openreach FTTP | |
|---|---|---|
| Symmetric speeds | Yes — full symmetric to 8G | No — always asymmetric (fast down, slower up) |
| Max retail speed | 8 Gbps | Up to 1.8 Gbps (asymmetric) |
| PON technology | XGS-PON throughout | GPON with XGS-PON in newer deployments |
| Coverage | Around 60 UK towns and cities | Universal (28M FTTC, 14M FTTP) |
| Static IP | Available, /29 on higher tiers | Available, varies by reseller |
| Install lead time | 10–20 working days | 10–25 working days FTTP |
| Network operator | Independent of BT Group | BT-owned wholesale |
Who actually picks CityFibre over Openreach.
Office HQ
30–100 staff, hybrid working. Symmetric upload matters when half the team is video-conferencing or shipping builds to the cloud. 1 Gbps CityFibre handles dozens of concurrent calls without breaking sweat.
Multi-tenant building
Co-working space, serviced offices, business centre. A single 2 Gbps+ symmetric feed shared across tenants, with /29 statics to host VPN endpoints on-site for each tenant subnet.
Studios + creative shops
Production, post-production, photography, design. Heavy daily upload to Frame.io, S3, Wasabi, Dropbox. Openreach's 115 Mbps upload chokes; CityFibre symmetric doesn't.
Working days to install — stock-area postcodes.
If your site is 'in-build' (CityFibre laying fibre but not yet past your premises), expect 4–12 weeks. We quote realistic dates at order, never marketing ones.
Real questions, honest answers.
The biggest UK altnet. Sold by us.
Run a postcode check — we'll confirm CityFibre availability, quote the right tier, and schedule install. If you're not in the footprint, we'll quote the best alternative.