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Ground breaking deal brings dark fibre connectivity to mobile masts
In the first deal of its kind in the UK, EE and Three, through their Mobile Broadband Network Limited joint venture, have signed a long-term agreement with CityFibre to have dark fibre deployed at their mobile masts.
Dark fibre is simply fibre cabling which is already in the ground but has not yet been connected to carry traffic and by using it for their backhaul connections EE and Three’s network performance capabilities will be increased in a cost efficient way.
Specifically it gives them a fibre infrastructure for massively increased bandwidth and backhaul capacity, both of which are vital as data demands grow.
Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer, CityFibre said of the deal: “CityFibre is dedicated to overhauling the UK’s digital connectivity. Mobile operators are amongst the largest providers of connectivity services for data hungry UK consumers. 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.”
Fotis Karonis, Chief Technology Officer at EE, added: “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.”
CityFibre is already hooking up dark fibre for both networks in Kingston-Upon-Hull and the company has confirmed that it, EE and Three are also looking at how it could be rolled out to further towns and cities across the UK.
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