THE company which took over Bournemouth’s superfast fibre optic broadband network has sealed a deal which it says will make it the first national challenger to BT Openreach.

CityFibre has announced the £90million acquisition of KCOM’s fibre and duct assets, enabling it to target 50 towns by 2020.

The company took over the infrastructure of Bournemouth’s Fibre City superfast broadband project in 2011 after work stopped and parent firm H20 went into administration.

The Fibre City scheme had been aimed at delivering then unprecedented broadband speeds to homes in Bournemouth.

CityFibre says its takeover of KCOM’s infrastructure will enable it to reach 20 per cent of the UK market by 2020, making it the UK’s largest wholesale infrastructure provider after BT and the first challenger to BT Openreach.

It already owns and operates 618km of local access networks serving 1,017 customers in 61 towns and cities, including Aberdeen, Coventry, Doncaster, Edinburgh, Kingston-upon-Hull, Newcastle, Newport, Sheffield and York as well as Bournemouth.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre, said: “This is the most significant event to take place in the UK’s digital infrastructure market in a decade. The UK now has a secure independent infrastructure alternative. Cities, service providers, mobile operators and investors have boldly embraced a new model of future-proof infrastructure provision and paved the way for its acceleration across the country.

“With our enlarged footprint and strong pipeline of cities demanding better infrastructure, we will continue to grow, offering existing and new partners an ever increasing opportunity to capitalise on a pure fibre future.”

CityFibre said it would “accelerate commercialisation” of its wholesale fibre networks.

The company is already behind six ‘Gigabit City’ projects where city-wide pure fibre networks bring access to the fastest internet speeds to the entire community.

It has also delivered the UK’s first Fibre-to-the-Tower network, employing dark fibre-based technology, in Kingston-upon-Hull. In 2014, it launched Fibre-to-the-Premises, which aims to prove the viavbility of gigabit speed networks and services in York, in a joint venture with TalkTalk and Sky.