Rochdale-based Zen Internet and CityFibre celebrate ‘once in a generation’ broadband coming to the borough

Photo: Sam Kutereba-Wall

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre and Richard Tang, founder and chairman of Zen

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CityFibre and Zen Internet met in Rochdale to celebrate a major milestone in bringing highly anticipated full-fibre connectivity to the borough in early 2023.

A ‘once in a generation’ moment, the infrastructure will be in place for the next 100 years.

CityFibre broke ground in Rochdale in August 2022 and has been making rapid developments since with the first services set to go live in the first half of 2023. The completion is anticipated in 2024, when almost every home and business across the borough will have access to a fast and reliable internet provided by Rochdale-based Zen, the UK’s only Which? Recommended Provider for Broadband.

Greg Mesch, CEO of CityFibre: “We are thrilled to be making a £30m investment that will see the residents and businesses of Rochdale enjoy world-class connectivity for generations to come. Towns like Rochdale are proof that investing in their future can help establish and grow successful businesses like Zen. We are delighted to be working in partnership with Zen to help people across the country enjoy their market-leading services, and we look forward to the first premises going live in Rochdale early next year.”

Richard Tang, founder and chairman of Zen, added: “This is an incredibly exciting milestone for us at Zen. Since I founded the company in 1995, our business has seen the industry switch from dial up, to ADSL, fibre to the cabinet and is now playing an integral role in the full fibre rollout across the UK and here in our hometown of Rochdale. We’re extremely proud to be working with CityFibre, one of the major players in the full fibre arena, to bring fast and reliable broadband to the customers closest to us.”

CityFibre and Zen’s strategic partnership will see Zen deliver broadband services to customers over CityFibre’s nationwide rollout. CityFibre, the UK’s largest independent full fibre platform, started the fibre to the home charge over a decade ago and plans to reach up to eight million homes in the UK by 2025. The company has just surpassed two million homes live, marking the 25% completion point.

Full fibre broadband swaps out the old-fashioned copper wires that delivered traditional broadband, to supply a faster, more modern and reliable connection via fibre optic cables. Full fibre is currently available to around a third of the UK with speeds of up to 900Mbps.