Fibrus Likely to Win Full Fibre Contract for 10 N.Ireland Councils

Belfast-based UK broadband ISP Fibrus appears as if it could be set to secure a key £15m Full Fibre Northern Ireland Consortium (FFNI) contract, which will construct a new gigabit-capable Dark Fibre or FTTP network to connect around 880 public sector sites across 10 council areas by March 2021.

The project, which was first announced a little over one year ago (here), is part of the UK Government’s Local Full Fibre Networks (LFFN) programme – Wave 3 (here) – and is being led by the Newry, Mourne and Down District Councils.

Like most LFFN schemes the proposal reflects a Public-Sector Anchor Tenancy model, which is primarily focused upon connecting public sector sites to fibre. However, such networks are often later opened-up so that commercial broadband ISPs can invest in them and thus harness the infrastructure to help reach local premises too (homes and businesses).

A number of suppliers were known to have expressed an interest in this contract, such as Fibrus, BT and Virgin Media (Business), among others. Several sources have recently contacted ISPreview to highlight that Fibrus now appears to be the last operator standing (preferred bidder) and are thus almost certain to secure the contract, although this hasn’t been confirmed yet because the project has yet to go through some final checks before it can be approved.

Naturally Fibrus declined to comment when we queried this, but it seems plausible that the final outcome will be known by the end of July or early August 2020. Fibrus are separately bidding on the £165m Project Stratum contract for N.Ireland (here), which is targeting “approximately” 78,500 premises that still lack “superfast broadband” (30Mbps+) in the country.

List of the 10 FFNI Councils

Antrim and Newtownabbey

Fermanagh and Omagh

Ards and North Down

Lisburn and Castlereagh

Armagh City, Banbridge and Craigavon

Mid and East Antrim

Causeway Coast and Glens

Mid Ulster

Newry, Mourne and Down

Derry City and Strabane