Nexfibre List FTTP Broadband Upgrades for Another 7 UK Locations
Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of its parentage with broadband ISP Virgin Media (they harness the same build teams), has today confirmed another batch of seven locations and regions across the UK that will benefit from an upgrade to their latest full fibre (FTTP, XGS-PON) broadband technology. Technically it should be 8 locations, but we already wrote about one.
Just to recap. Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia recently reached a deal to acquire rival Netomnia (here). As part of that nexfibre also announced a plan to finance the FTTP upgrade of 2.1 million homes covered by Virgin Media’s old Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network (i.e. those that are “adjacent” to the Netomnia footprint), with VMO2 paying wholesale fibre access fees on its customers in those homes as the fibre becomes available.
Since then we’ve seen nexfibre announce a growing number of related HFC to FTTP upgrade areas under the aforementioned 2.1m homes commitment (here, here, here and here) and today’s update adds another 7 locations to the ones we’ve already covered.
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Just to be clear, these are places that can often already access gigabit-capable broadband via Virgin Media’s old HFC network, but which will now also be getting access to FTTP via the more open wholesale platform established under nexfibre. All of this will help to connect their coverage to Netomnia’s nearby areas.
Rajiv Datta, Chief Executive Officer of nexfibre, said:
“We are committed to delivering high quality connectivity to everyone across the country. Full-fibre broadband is a crucial driver of economic growth, and our investment will help deliver better access to education, jobs, and opportunities that can transform lives and uplift entire communities.”
The Latest (20th April) Nexfibre HFC to FTTP Upgrade Areas
➤ Up to 19,000 homes and businesses in Derry City and Strabane, investing nearly £2 million on digital infrastructure in the area.
➤ Up to 20,000 homes and businesses in Dudley, investing more than £2.7 million on digital infrastructure in the area.
➤ Up to 19,000 homes and businesses in Leeds, investing more than £2 million on digital infrastructure in the area.
➤ Up to 19,000 homes and businesses in Maidstone, investing more than £3 million on digital infrastructure in the area.
➤ Up to 19,000 homes and businesses in Mid Sussex, investing more than £3 million on digital infrastructure in the area.
➤ Up to 18,000 homes and businesses in Solihull, investing more than £2.6 million on digital infrastructure in the area.
➤ Up to 18,000 homes and businesses in Vale of White Horse, investing more than £2.9 million on digital infrastructure in the area.
The goal of nexfibre is to make this new network “available to all internet service providers“, which will hopefully result in them enticing more ISPs to join their platform at wholesale, although so far it’s only been accessible via ISPs owned by the same group of companies like, giffgaff and Virgin Media. In an ideal world nexfibre will also be able to sign-up some other independent ISPs like Vodafone, Sky Broadband and Zen Internet etc.
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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I’d love Zen over Netomnia, once it’s under Nexfibre. I wonder which will come first – Openreach XGS-PON or a choice of ISPs over the Netomnia network?
The network itself is great, but it’s let down by YouFibre’s awful support and middling routing – and VM won’t be much better. Being able to access better customer service and have a choice of ISPs on the network would be a major improvement.
Time they came back and finished off Banbury.
If Netomnia is already here does that mean no nexfibre upgrade?
Well, if the acquisition goes though, netomnia will become nexfibre. Prob not overnight, but further down the road the networks will merge so you will get nexfibre over the glass netomnia deployed.
If the acquisition doesn’t goes though then eventually nexfibre or VM will upgrade the HFC network to fibre.
The CEO of Liberty Global (who owns 50% of VM, O2 own the other 50%, and own 25% of nexfibre (o2 own 25% and a private equity fund own the other 50% of nexfibre)) has said about the netomnia acquisition as a method to speed up/save on its own build out. So need to “struggle” with the last mile if that last mile is already laid and is avaliable for purchase.
I was a little confused about them announcing the rollout in Dudley, knowing people from there I know that Brsk (now kinda YouFibre) recently rolled out in the area, and with ther plan to acquire netomnia it seemed a little silly.
But then I doubled checked the numbers, there are ~140k homes in Dudley, so 20k homes/businesses is only ~14% of the Dudley area, So I can only presume they are targeting the areas Brsk/Netomnia didn’t build out.
Across the Dudley borough there were some residential areas that we missed by brsk, such as Hayley green (squirrels estate), parts of withymore village (Ambelcote) and pedmore in the south, due to residents complaining about poles, these are areas where virgin media has a presence. Makes sense if they upgrade this tranche of areas first.
But do wonder if the provider will upgrade the various MDUs they service, as part of the rollout at this stage.
So if you live next to Netomnia coverage on a main road but your side street doesn’t have it or Virgin, nothing will change?
No, that is what they are supposed to be addressing – if you already had VM HFC/RFoG and Netomonia was in next street for example, but they hadn’t done your road.
Tom asked about streets without any VM service.
We have OR FTTP. VM Mustang and Netmonia already in derry. I wonder if it’s filling in Netmonia’s blanks