Disrupting the UK Broadband Market

CityFibre, an alternative network (altnet) brand, set out to disrupt the status quo by building a new full fibre network across the UK. Their B2B and B2C growth strategy faced significant challenges—category comprehension was low, and established UK providers were falsely claiming to offer full fibre. In a sector dominated by inertia, our task was clear: help CityFibre become the UK’s third largest broadband provider.

Building from the ground up takes time and strategic investment, and we had to reflect this in our data approach. To capture meaningful insights, we tied our data collection to area connectivity, enabling our analysis to scale as CityFibre’s network expanded. The bigger challenge was educating consumers. How could we talk about full fibre when many didn’t even know if they had it, or what it was? We crafted a series of questions to cut through the jargon, helping us determine whether consumers truly had full fibre or had been misled by confusing industry language.

Staying ahead of the curve meant understanding the variety of connection types and how they were presented to consumers. We made sure to identify and clarify these differences, even when consumers couldn’t. This allowed us to define specific audiences for each project and provide CityFibre with the certainty they needed to drive their messaging.

As a nascent brand, CityFibre growth in brand awareness was crucial, and our research highlighted the key challenges consumers faced in understanding their offering. Through our analysis, we showed that brand performance was significantly stronger in areas where CityFibre had been active longer, versus new or untouched regions. This insight helped the team secure additional brand investment and continue their path to success.