LONDON, May 8 (Reuters) - British fibre broadband

company CityFibre said on Wednesday it recorded positive core

earnings in its first quarter, ahead of its target of reaching

the milestone in the first half, after it grew its customer

connections by 77% to more than 400,000.

The company, which serves more than 40 internet service

providers and mobile phone companies including TalkTalk, three

and Vodafone ( VOD ), said it was regularly installing over

1,000 new customers a day.

Chief Executive Greg Mesch said the company, which last year

reported 100 million pounds of revenue, was ahead of track in

the three months to end-March.

"We were better on our cost control because we did all the

work last year, but also our growth has been greater than we

thought," he said.

"A steady 1,000 installs a day and that's 25,000 net

additions per month."

CityFibre, whose backers include Antin Infrastructure

Partners and Goldman Sachs ( GS ), agreed to buy Lit Fibre from

Newlight Partners last month, accelerating its roll-out by up to

300,000 premises towards its eventual target of 8 million.

Mesch said more deals were in the pipeline, helping increase

its footprint to challenge BT's Openreach and Virgin Media O2's

networks. He is aiming to do one deal or so a quarter for the

next eight quarters.

"That would be somewhere in the neighbourhood of six to

eights deals," he said. "We have conversations going with almost

all the alt-nets."

"All being small islands is not going to work, but us all

coming together to make a large continent, that can make us

survive," he added.