Netomnia Rapidly Expands UK FTTP Broadband as Take-up and Revenues Rise
One of the country’s largest alternative broadband networks, Netomnia (Substantial Group), will today publish their Q3 2025 results. The figures reveal that revenues on their multi-gigabit speed full fibre (FTTP) network increased to £27.7m (up from £23.6m in Q2 and 125% YoY) and take-up reached 14% (up from 13.4%). Some 2.8 million premises are now covered (up 241k in Q3 vs 243k in Q2).
The results confirm that Netomnia is continuing to build at a rapid pace and thus remains on-track for their current coverage goals – expanding their network coverage by almost 1 million premises per year. The provider also ended the quarter with a total of 396,000 customers (up by 54k in Q3 – the same growth as they had in Q2).
The brief results also reveal that the operator delivered their first positive adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortisation) of £0.3m – excluding exceptional items, which is an impressive result given how Q2 delivered a loss of -£4.9m.
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However, the ongoing network builds inevitably mean that the company’s Net Debt has also grown by 13% in the quarter to total £801m (debt drawn to date including accrued interest less cash), which is up from £709m in Q2.
Jeremy Chelot, Group CEO of Netomnia (YouFibre, brsk), said:
“For the second consecutive quarter, we’ve maintained the fastest network build and customer acquisition rate among Alt-Nets. With our continued momentum and by combining scale, speed, and capital efficiency, we remain confident in our plan to reach 5 million premises by 2027. Our focus continues to be on building a fibre network ready for whatever comes next, well-positioned and leading the industry’s consolidation.”
The operator has of course also recently been the subject of intense speculation over a possible grand £2bn consolidation deal with either CityFibre or Virgin Media (O2 / Nexfibre) – here, which could see Netomnia being one of the market’s kingmakers. Meanwhile, we’re now expecting YouFibre to launch their new VodafoneThree powered mobile service (YouMobile) in Q1 2026; it was previously expected to launch by the end of 2025 (here).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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What have they been trying to achieve? Why are they putting so much effort into expanding a network if they can not make a profit from their effort with no prospects of making a profit for perhaps 10 years or more?
Giving people are choice of Gigabit speeds that aren’t VM?
I have no OR FTTP here so I’ll use Netomnia.
I don’t understand why people are so negative about Alt Nets. Even if they go bust or get acquired, they have given people faster connections before the monopoly/duopoly. That’s only ever a good thing.
Netomnia are targeting a lot of smaller market towns that CF won’t build to. If OR build to my road after Netomnia, good, that’s competitive.
Their debt ratio of less than £300 per premise passed is some the lowest in the altnet world – some altnets are carrying 4 figures of debt per premise so I would say they are probably in the strongest position of any altnet & makes them a desirable target for any acquisition.
It took Spotify 19 years to turn their first profit. There are plenty of investors looking beyond the medium term.
Spotify had the advantage of being the first serious streaming service that wasn’t US exclusive and didn’t have restrictions (eg Pandora let you select genres but not individual tracks). That built up a critical mass of users.
Netomnia has none of that. Aside from their niche 7Gbit speed tier, they aren’t doing anything that the others aren’t doing, and they’re all getting clobbered by Openreach, CityFibre and VMO2-Nexfibre.
@No name , I tell you why, they are so negative, but most or BT fanboys and no doubt have shares in the company and are worried that Alt nest will lower their shares down even more than they are. Either that or they work for BT.
I don’t get it, in a perfect world, we would have one network, that is not profit making and any profit it does make goes back into the network, not shareholders pockets or big pay rises to CEO and other money grabbers. But it is not a perfect, and we have what we have. Altnets are giving people the choice of networks, most are more advanced than what Openreach offers and for us the public, we can access at a better price.
It is great we have that choice, or some people have that choice, sadly some don’t.
I have no link with any altnet, I am a user, a user that was not even interested in FTTP, had no need for it and still don’t, but was being pushed into FTTP. So here I am, I had a choice of networks, so choose the one that seemed to be the better option and also got me off Openreach.
I know people will be thinking, if I hate Openreach so much, then why the hesitation to move. The reason was because, FTTC did what I needed, it worked and had been reliable for the most part from the 9 years I had been using it. I also did not want the hassle of having holes drilled though the wall, other things that could go wrong.
I was pushed hard by Plusnet to make a choice and if I had to go for FTTP anyway, then i may as well jump ship and get something better for less money, even if I did not need the speed.
The only thing I have to lose if Zzoomm goes belly up, which I must admit, was one of the other things I as worried about, is having to muck about with having another network installed. Unless I go for a mobile one instead.
No shares, no working for the company, just a consumer. are they perfect? no, customer service could be better, they have had a few issues, to be honest more than I had with FTTC, but they have been minimal issues and sorted quickly. Now, by all accounts they are putting people on CG-NAT and not telling them, which is not great,
I can understand why they are using CG-NAT, but tell people.
I presume this is because they have joined with Full fibre.
‘I know people will be thinking, if I hate Openreach so much, then why the hesitation to move.’
I can’t speak for anyone else but I’m more wondering why you wrote a 440 word essay to repeat the same things for the 300th time.
You should consider copying that post into your phone or whatever and pasting on demand to save time. Could even have an AI write a few variations to keep endless repetition as fresh as possible.
Fascinating as Netomnia and their turnover, coverage, debt and takeup is, it’s always nice to hear about zzoomm, BT and Plusnet.
@No name:
… none of which is relevant to the investors.
So again, what are they hoping to achieve?
@Big Dave:
… yet they can not return a profit for their investors with no prospects for achieving a profit in perhaps the next ten years. Further, it is not relative to other players in the market sector, I asked what they are aiming to achieve.
@john_r:
… except that the business is being offered for sale.
There are no prospects of the business making a profit, at its current rate of take-up, within ten years. Further, as the market saturates, employment costs increase, competition increases, and the market goes into retreat, those dates for achieving profitability will get pushed further beyond the horizon.
@Ad47uk:
There is no anti-AltNet rhetoric in the comment. I would also make the point that you frequently revert to infantile rhetoric, so it sounds to me like a case “Pot, Kettle, Black”.
Can be too late for me in PE133TL as Cityfibre building around town as well.
They started my street in spring 2022, still not live. Anyway, if they will sell business to Virgin, that company is lost.
Debt growth of £92m *per quarter*. Network expansion of 241K properties per quarter. That’s £380 per property passed; at 14% takeup that’s £2,720 per customer. Ouch.
Netomnia built my street almost 3 years ago and it’s still not RFS. In the meantime OR have completed the area and people are moving over rapidly judging by the number of vans here everyday. As far as I can see that’s the end of Netomnia around here as they will not get the customers.
I wish they’d come back and do my road that they promised by letter delivery in 2023. The next road has it a stone’s throw away.
I’ve moved friends and family over in other areas, but still without it. Nothing complicated about direct buried cables etc. Aggregation/distribution Netomnia point chamber nearby for example.
Netomnia’s checker says “No plans” from being confirmed for ages, and house next door is confirmed, and Youfibre checker says building right now. LOL.
Want it before Vermin get their grubby hands on it, as at least it’s ONT based not a stupid dumb Hub5x Vermin Router. Agreed, VM could change that to being a HUB5x later, but unlikely due to cost. Praying CityFibre take over, but then they may not want to do my road at that stage. So annoying.
BT dragging their feet, confirmed house on roll out 2 years ago, looked at telegraph pole, 6 months later said they replaced, then contractor said they would be doing the CBT and fibre install that month. Two days later, network team turns up, puts a CBT up and then takes it down, never to be seen again. Apparently though, still on the BT plan by next year….
Hey had Scarborough marketed everywhere, then one day it disappeared, proper deviated and later on found out they stopped because Grain have said they were going to go there, it’s been 4 or 5 years now and Grain have done no more than 20 roads and I doubt they will do more, they must be losing customers every renewal. I wouldn’t get your hopes up too much >.<
“fastest network build and customer acquisition rate among Alt-Nets”
No, Cityfibre added 108k customer connections in q3 so exactly double!
Cityfibre has no end customers.
They are still customers. Doesn’t matter if it’s via wholesale or not.
Fact: Netmonia are a wholesaler too. Youfibre hold the majority of their “end customers”
The product it great but support is very difficult to get these days…
Allegedly should have been live in my area around October but still incomplete and Openretch is FTTC. I’d really like to have FTTP, my wallet awaits but at this rate it’s going to Openretch as they are to start building in the next 12 months.
“Openretch” — That’s a new one, for @Ad47uk to use! 🙂
Netomnia is in a good position with crucial EBITDA positivity, strong financial backing and fast fibre buildout which helps to secure market share. However the buildout is coming at the cost of high and rising debt of £801m and take-up of 14% will need to increase by at least 50%. As the second largest altnet Netomnia is interestingly positioned to be a either consolidator of other altnets or the target of a takeover by a bigger player such as Virgin Media O2 or CityFibre.
VM’s network largely overlaps with the areas Netomnia serves, so any buyout by VM would be a largely anticompetitive move, intended to perpetuate the Openreach/VM duopoly. I hope it would be blocked on competition grounds.
The networks of Netomnia and Cityfibre complement each other quite nicely with little overlap, so a merger between the two would make much more sense for the UK consumer, creating an altnet with sufficient size to actually challenge OR and VM in many areas.
@ Ezra:
ThinkBroadband’s numbers indicate otherwise. They have also recently published an analysis of the possible takeover, which is more nuanced.