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01732 759725 28 DCMS and the Government see a better connected Britain as vital to our recovery. All of our staff had key worker vests and we engaged thoroughly with local communities in each of our towns and cities. TR: You mention there not being vehicles and people on the street. Did your productivity go up during that period? AW: There was a small delay in building in a few towns and cities in Scotland at the time, where Scotland’s temporary restrictions differed from those in England, but we otherwise maintained or increased productivity. Our productivity is rising month on month anyway, as part of our game plan. Our whole raison d’etre is to build quickly and thoroughly; we want to be quick at what we do so we can give the public and businesses what they need. TR: Do you think we will hit the 2025 target for full fibre? AW: 2025 is very do-able, yes. At the moment, we are financed to 66 cities. But there is a lot more work we are already doing, and we are currently working on a number of other initiatives so you will see that number increase. TR: I think you have already announced that you plan to increase your investment to £4 billion and roll out a full fibre infrastructure to 100 towns and cities, in the process helping to create an additional 10,000 jobs within your pool of network construction partners. AW: That’s right. We don’t own the spades in the ground and are reliant on contractor Technology Reseller (TR) : We hear a lot about full fibre roll-out. What exactly does that entail? Andy Wilson, CityFibre (AW): Our roll-out programme is literally about laying in fresh fibre. We are the UK’s third digital infrastructure platform. If you go into any city where we are putting in infrastructure, you will see CityFibre’s appointed contractors effectively building the network, digging new narrow trenches and putting new ducting and new fibre in the ground. We have our own fibre exchanges in each of these cities to serve consumers and businesses, and which our big carriers or local partners can interconnect into. TR: What are the challenges you face on that side of your business and are there things other parties like the Government could be doing to make things easier for you? AW: There are two sets of challenges. In a construction project, you are always going to have physical challenges because you are building among existing infrastructure. And you’ve got civils challenges and wayleave challenges, especially when you go to main highways and main throughways. Then there are PR challenges. During lockdown, when it made sense for us to continue to lay fibre because people weren’t on the roads or moving around towns, there were some concerns from a small number of local residents. However, we reacted really quickly to reassure them that we had full Government backing and were essentially key workers because the relationships for the full fibre network roll- out. We couldn’t scale fast enough without using third parties and civils companies that can go in and put more spades in the ground simultaneously. Between ourselves and other infrastructure builders, we are creating more demand in the jobs market and will continue to create more opportunities for people. TR: How do you decide which towns and cities to include in your roll-out? AW: It’s all part of a business plan, as you’d imagine. We are funded by two significant infrastructure investment firms (Antin Infrastructure Partners and West Street Infrastructure Partners, a fund managed by Goldman Sachs) and that private investment hinges on a business plan with pre-defined cities based on the density of homes/businesses and other factors. For example, we decided not to go into London because it is already well covered, choosing instead to go into the likes of Leeds, Bristol, Nottingham and Derby – larger towns and cities that don’t jump off the page as a first choice like Manchester or London but which have an absolute need for this infrastructure. It is worth adding that when we go into a new city or into a city in which we had an established business-focused network that we are now expanding, we take a whole city approach, which means building a network once for everyone in that city Technology Reseller meets Andy Wilson, Head of Wholesale at CityFibre, to find out more about the company, its operations, its culture, its ambitions and why it is currently in the running for 11 separate industry awards for its network, marketing activities and channel support. As the title of our Business Basics series suggests – and our first question proves – no question is too basic to ask as we seek to discover more about the UK’s third digital infrastructure platform Spend, spend, spend Business Basics: CITYFIBRE Andrew Wilson