Last updated – 24 February 2026

Link to Cabinet Map

29 July 2025 – First two Chatteris Primary Nodes (PN515 & PN524) and downstream nodes online to FEx.

Note – I have no affiliation with Cityfibre and this blog is an historical record of new infrastructure coming to the town, also I’m not a network infrastructure engineer, so please let me know if I’ve made errors.

Benefits

Cityfibre do not sell broadband services directly, instead they have partnered with ~30 providers, including TalkTalk, Vodafone, Giganet, Sky and Zen to give you more choice, also as Cityfibre have installed there own fibre tubes throughout the town, other companies can rent these for their dedicated fibres.

Background

CityFibre is expanding its full fibre broadband network to Chatteris, Cambridgeshire. This initiative is part of a broader £122 million plan to upgrade hard-to-reach areas across the county, benefiting approximately 45,000 rural homes and businesses .(newswire.telecomramblings.com)

In Chatteris Netomnia primarily utilized existing Openreach physical infrastructure, CityFibre, however, has expanded on this by installing its own equipment, such as ‘Toby’ boxes, to extend connectivity to areas with direct-buried phone lines that Netomnia cannot serve .(chatteris.biz)

The first document relating to Cityfibre coming to Chatteris was in July 2023, (incidentally this was 7 months after Netomnia went live).

Infrastructure deployment is moving at pace since March 2025 with construction activities observed in various parts of Chatteris, the first cabinet was installed in Whitemill Road, January 2025.

For the most current information on availability in your specific area, it’s advisable to check the CityFibre postcode checker or contact local Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offering CityFibre services.

Above is a Chat GPT answer to a query.

I must admit to being surprised that CityFibre are installing their own infrastructure in Chatteris as they will be competing with established overbuilt providers, such as:

• BT Openreach
• Virgin Media
• Netomnia / Youfibre

The infrastructure installation method seems nearly identical to the Netomnia roll out, i.e. making extensive use of BT ducts, however, Netomnia did not install street cabinets or pavement ‘toby’ boxes in Chatteris, whereas, Cityfibre have.

Street cabinets manufactured by:

It too early to see the exact scope of CityFibre’s installation works, civils are being undertaken by Granemore Group .

The above picture shows the evolution of communications from PO/GPO bare copper wire suspended between insulators then British Telecom multicore drop wires and now three fibre optic cable company connection points (BT, Netomnia & Cityfibre).

Spine fibre large single bore ducting being installed by sub contractors.

432 Core fibre optic cable being blown into a spine duct using a Fremco Miniflow.

Quite a few poles around the town have the fibre duct in position ready to take the fibre optic cable to the top of the pole to enable Cityfibre customer connections.

4 core fibre blown in from the local Primary Node ready for the next team to splice this to an Aerial Secondary Node at the top of the pole.

48 core fibre blown in from the local Primary Node ready for the next team to splice this to Aerial Secondary Nodes at the top of this pole and also to aerial span over to adjacent poles for their pole top connection points.

Areas in Chatteris, such as parts of the The Elms, Windsor Close and Green Park, BT use the ‘direct buried’ BT cable method cable, (this method can be identified by the images below), however, as CityFibre are installing ‘Toby’ boxes like Virgin Media did, this means that more choice will be available hopefully.

(14 August 2025 – Openreach planning application F/YE25/0602/PANR to install 2 x 10m fixed line broadband poles in The Elms, (Installed on the 30th August 2025))

The Cityfibre Network- The journey from Exchange to your Premises

Information obtained from Cloudconnex and added expanded by myself

Fibre Exchanges (FEx)

Planning Ref – F/YR23/0656/F

Large scale FEx constructed by Tyrone Fabrications.

The CityFibre network is built upon a network of fibre exchanges, sometimes referred to as FEx’s. Each CityFibre Exchange is around the size of a shipping container and each facility powers around 60,000 connections with room for expansion. Each FEX is aligned to Data Centre Tier 2/3 specifications and houses 12 equipment racks doubling as a micro-edge data centre, each FEx not only powers broadband services, it provides a point of interconnect for Cityfibre partners and can help them realise their edge computing ambitions by storing and processing data closer to their customers .

Each FEx can support up to 7KW AC per rack, with DC rectification available for more traditional telecommunications carriers. In the event of a power outage, supply is automatically switched to A+B uninterruptible power supplies, with standby generators capable of running the entire site even at full load.

Resilience is at the heart of the CityFibre network and as a result each exchange is served by 2 physically diverse fibres, complementing the ring-based topology used for the core infrastructure build.

Fibres are ‘blown’ through tubes originating at the FEx, in Chatteris 6 x 432 core fibres form the main spines to areas of this and other local towns.

Each spine cable passes through Secondary Joints as pictures above, these are the breakout points to Primary Nodes or Aerial Secondary Nodes if remote from Primary Nodes.

12 microtubes within cable sheath used for node interconnects.

The 432 fibre Spine cable is blown through a larger bore duct.

Fibre Cabinet (FAC) fed from the FEx and supplies a further 3500 properties. (Image is an example and not in Chatteris)

Primary Nodes

The FEx connects Full Fibre optical cables to the Primary Nodes via Secondary Joints. These are arranged in groups of 480 properties and are either hidden away underground or above ground in street cabinets.

The Primary Nodes are connected in a ring configuration to improve system resilience.

Fibre side contractor is:

Secondary Nodes

Secondary nodes are found in the form of street cabinets with 64 connection capacity, or equipment mounted on the top of an existing aerial pole, (Aerial Secondary Node – (ASN)). Secondary nodes bring the connection from the Primary Node to the street on which your premises is located.

Within the ASN a single fibre is spliced to an internal optical splitter giving 8 outputs, therefore, three fibres have been spliced in the above ASN to give 24 customer connections.

The above ASN example connects to the Primary Node directly, other pole mounted ASN’s have two connections, one In and the other Out to the next pole mounted ASN, in London Road for example 5 pole ASN’s are fed from the Primary Node using this method.

Depending of the ‘Cherry Picker’ crew fitting the ASN determines if the pole displays a warning sign, as I understand it, the sign is not mandated.

Connection from the pole to your property is via an overhead Dropwire, Cityfibre fibre dropwire is a round profile and uses a fibre drop clamp as below:

Netomnia use a flat profile fibre dropwire and therfore use a clamp reffered to as a ‘slippery fish’ :

The significance of the ‘Toby’ is that Netomnia only provide a service using either or overhead cables from poles or using existing BT ducts to your house, this means houses which have no local poles or that have telephone cables which are ‘directly buried’ in the ground, can’t get a Netomina provided service from Youfibre.

Fibre cable used from Primary Note to Aerial Secondary Node – Data Sheet

Fibre blowing equipment, the one on the left is blowing 432 core fibre whilst the one on the right is for smaller fibres.

Toby Box

Toby boxes are found in the pavement near your premises, or on a nearby pole as a drop wire. Toby boxes bring the connection from the Secondary Node to outside of your premises. When a network is built, this is where the connection stops until the customer signs up to connect their premises into the network.

Wall Box

Connection is taken from the Toby Box on the pavement to a Wall Box (Termination Point) TP)) on the outside of your premises. This is installed when you sign up to a CityFibre network provider. The Wall Box then connects via a Lead In Kit to an Optical Network Termination (ONT) box inside of your premises, which in turn connects into the router. This process brings fibre optic connectivity all the way into your premises. You will need 2 power sockets, 1 to power the ONT and 1 to power your router. 

Topography

Overview of connectivity, please feel free to contact me if I have made errors or need to add further information.

17 June 2025 Update

Example of works approvals used to track progress:

New duct and Cityfibre manholes have been installed along the A141 taking extending service to Warboys, Old Hurst, Woodhurst, Pidley, Somersham, Colne, Earith and Willingham to name a few.

I noted a number of new poles have been installed by Cityfibre to take service connections to remote farms.

15 December 2025

Engineer ‘end to end’ testing a 288 fibre cable which belongs directly to a customer.

30 Jan 26 – Engineering testing works completed, cabinet identifier does not follow the normal Cityfibre broadband provision for cabinets, (possibly) confirming that it is a service for a customer who needs dedicated fibres, (5G mast or maybe another broadband provider like Hyperoptic ?).

Cabinets Map

The speed of installation and quality of restoration is an absolute testament to the hard working lads doing the job, especially considering the heat we are having.

Above are fibre providers in Chatteris as of 2025, (CATV & IFNL are Vigin Media).

Availability Rollout Map

Postcode availability checker – HERE

• Phase 1 – 28 July 2025 Fibre lit
• Phase 2 – 29 July 2025 Fibre lit
• Phase 3 – 16 October 2025 Fibre lit

Watch this space for further updates!

Installation Engineers System

Kelly Communications Cityfibre Installation Platform is an engineers tool to ensure a smooth installation and customer experience, (the version is October 2023 so may not be the latest).