CITYFIBRE has insisted Reading will reap the rewards of a ‘once in a generation’ infrastructural rehaul despite coming under fire for recent disruption caused by roadworks.
The telecommunications company is midway through rolling out its full fibre network in the town, which will have widespread benefits on the town’s economy and productivity.
The £58 million project is scheduled to be completed late next year or early 2024.
Stacey King, regional partnership director, said: “We want to build the best possible network, the UK is behind the curve with our digital infrastructure. There’s been a lot of underinvestment in this area.
“From a CityFibre perspective, we wanted to spark a bit of a change, really pushing us forward as an economy and underpinning that with the best digital infrastructure we possibly can.”
Alongside Hatch Regeneris Consulting, CityFibre was able to establish the quantitative benefits the national roll-out would have over the next 15 years, contributing £625 million to Reading’s economy.
This figure includes £85 million added to the value of homes, £67 million from Smart City initiatives, £85 million in business productivity and innovation, and £33 million in growth through start-ups.
The company’s UK plan involves building in 60 towns and cities, with 280 locations announced in total.
Once completed, CityFibre will make up a third of the national roll-out, as per the government’s mandate for communications in 2025.
Ms King explained: “When people think about broadband, they think about sending an email, watching a film and streaming, things we don’t expect to go wrong, and that’s as it should be.
“But there’s much more important, really fundamental things that this is going to enable. Things like 5G, having a good fibre backbone is really important for the next generation of technology in moving forward.”
The company’s ‘build once’ strategy means that what is being built now will be so comprehensive CityFibre will not have to come back again.
The benefits residents will experience on a day-to-day basis range from enhanced healthcare provision to live updates of free spaces at car parks.
A full fibre network has become even more essential since the Covid-19 pandemic, with a societal shift to remote working and pressure on public services encouraging people to self-serve.
In September, Reading experienced significant disruption to travel because of roadworks conducted by CityFibre.
Ms King said: “We met with Cllr (Tony) Page beforehand, we all knew it would be difficult. Caversham is quite traffic-sensitive at the best of times. Any work you do there is always going to cause additional disruption to people.
“We talked about [scheduling] for a long time and it didn’t feel like there was any better time to do it.”
With the benefit of hindsight, Ms King speculated that taking advantage of reduced traffic during the pandemic could have minimised disruption. However, the unpredictability at the time made it difficult for any works to be planned with certainty.
When working on traffic-sensitive areas, she stated the team’s desire to engage in dialogue with the local authorities, putting forward their ideal working conditions and listening to feedback.
Of the Caversham Bridge works, Ms King explained: “[The council] said you’ve got to stay either side of the rush hour, you can’t work during rush hour, which is what we tried to do in that particular instance, but it’s a bottleneck.
“That’s when you then take the decision of, do you take it slower and cause disruption for longer, or try and condense it and try and get through that as fast as possible, and that’s what we ended up doing.”
Reading Today covered the disruption caused by works on Whitley Street and Christchurch Road at the end of September.
After communication with Cllr Liam Challenger, the building was completed faster than scheduled, something CityFibre are keen to do wherever possible.
Ms King said: “For us, it’s about quality, safety and speed. We want to finish the work in a quality way so we don’t have to come back, we want to make sure we do it safely so members of the public and Instalcom (CityFibre’s construction partner) staff go home safe to their families, and speed, the idea is that we get through as quickly as we possibly can.
“That’s why sometimes you expect us to be in a certain place when we’re not, because we may have finished somewhere else earlier and so we’ve been able to move people onto a different bit to work somewhere else.
“There’s always lessons to be learned. I feel like we do try to communicate with people beforehand, particularly where there are sensitive areas. We do try and talk to the councillors to let them know that we’re coming into this area, particularly when it’s going to become a bit of a pinch point.”
The city manager said the team were happy to attend parish meetings to speak to residents who wanted to understand the work CityFibre is conducting and why it’s happening.
Ms King added the company conducts leaflet drops prior to works, broadcast appearances, social media posts and interviews in print press, but said it is reviewing communications as part of a recent rebrand.
She said the company had received feedback that notices put through residents’ letterboxes were often discarded unintentionally as a result of looking ‘salesy’.
Although the project is comprehensive, the company is looking to be efficient with its time and resources without digging up every street in Reading.
Where possible, they will use physical infrastructure access to use BT ducts or poles which have already been established.
CityFibre’s approach sees Reading divided into 250 primary node areas, each servicing 400-500 homes and powered by a central fibre exchange.
One of the most significant aspects of the plan is its resilience compared to traditional builds. Instead of using a ‘tree and branch’ design, Cityfibre builds in rings, meaning if there is a break in the network, connection is not totally lost and can be maintained in the opposite direction.
Residents will not have to wait for the whole plan to be finished to use the superfast broadband, only waiting a matter of weeks for checks to be completed.
The ‘Reading build’ covers Reading, but also parts of Wokingham and West Berkshire.
Although the southernmost boundary for the Reading build is set in-line with the M4, Ms King said providing the whole of Wokingham with its own full fibre network as a ‘natural progression’.
She explained: “We are looking at Wokingham. It is a ‘candidate city’, which means we’re currently doing our investigations, looking at the business case for expanding further. So we’ll be announcing those things as and when they come.”
“We’re always looking to expand the network wherever we can.”
Ms King stated the scope of this expansion was determined by the budget available to the privately-funded company and the local authority’s willingness to work with CityFibre.
The team currently meets with representatives from Reading and Wokingham Borough Councils fortnightly to discuss where building will take place to identify any sensitive areas.
CityFibre is also committed to leaving a long-lasting legacy in Reading in addition to he superfast broadband it is installing.
Although the wholesaler works with major service providers like Vodafone and TalkTalk, it also deals with local outlets, ensuring residents have the choice to ‘buy local’. Where possible, it recruits within the town.
Part of CityFibre’s community engagement in Reading is already being actioned through The Curious Lounge on Tudor Road.
Located on the first floor of the Pinnacle Building, it hosts a digital skills club for those who don’t have access to online learning equipment, supported by CityFibre.
The space is run by Louize Clarke, chief mischief maker, and Matt Bovey, curator, and is targeted at people who are unsure about their next steps in life and are looking for guidance or training.
The Curious Lounge opened in November 2019, meaning the pandemic had a major impact on its initial running.
Ms Clarke said: “It was awful. We didn’t get government help for about 12 months, so we’re really pleased to still be here.
“I’ve spent my life training people. We tend to get people who have fallen through the cracks because the education system doesn’t work for them.
“We have people aged from 16 to 72, the 72-year-old is my oldest student. She turned up with a laptop, called it a monster and said she hated to use it. She’s now a Google search demon, she’s brilliant.”
The not-for-profit organisation is funded by people renting the space for work or events, with any money made going back into reskilling its service users.
She said: “We’ve created £650,000 already in jobs for unemployed and economically inactive people. When we get to £1,000,000 we’re going to have a party with them all, so we’re on a massive push to make that happen.
“Because we get a lot of young people here, we wanted to have somewhere that felt inspirational but also really comfortable and welcoming. All the plants have got names. We’re just trying to create a story. This Curious Lounge is a place to listen, learn and meet.”
Sustainability sits at the core of the space’s identity, with all furniture being pre-loved and many items being donated.
Ms Clarke described the central meeting space, which can accommodate up to 100 people, as ‘eclectic’ with pieces of furniture intentionally distinct from each other.
The space also boasts state of the art training rooms where the organisation conducts the vast majority of its work.
