Netomnia Get GBP123m Funding for UK FTTP Broadband Rollout

Netomnia has today announced that they’ve successfully secured £123 million of funding to support the ongoing UK rollout of their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network (XGS-PON), which only started fairly recently and aims to cover 1 million homes and businesses by the end of 2023.

The overall total funds raised so far include £20m from ESO Capital Partners UK LLP, £25m from AdvenCap, £73m in debt provided by Avenue Capital Group and the remaining £5m has come from the provider’s founders, including Jeremy Chelot, the former CEO of CommunityFibre. The service itself is being supplied to consumers via broadband ISP partner YouFibre.

Back in September, Netomnia announced that they’d already covered 50,000 premises and today’s announcement puts that figure at over 75,000 premises, which is expected to reach more than 100,000 premises by the end of 2021 (with 5,000 customers). Admittedly, the customers figure might seem low, but that’s a reflection of the rapid rollout (you need to allow 2-3 years for take-up to grow organically in schemes that aren’t demand led).

So far the operator, which is being supported by civil engineering firms such as Light Source and MAP Group (UK), is known to have committed an initial investment of £150m to cover 14 towns (c.500,000 premises), with work having already begun in many of those (e.g. Peterlee, Spennymoor, Cheltenham and Durham etc.).

Jeremy Chelot, Founder and CEO at Netomnia, said:

“We are very excited to welcome our new investors on board. This funding will support our strategy to roll our network out faster and across more areas, marking another step towards becoming the third national full fibre network operator in the UK. We are scaling rapidly, as we rise to the challenge of providing the future-proof multi-gigabit connectivity which will aid the economic and social development of towns and cities across the country for generations to come.”

However, we should point out that the operator, despite “aiming to prioritise cities and towns, previously left behind by other operators,” will still face competition from several gigabit-capable broadband rivals in a number of the towns they’re targeting. One of the best responses to rival deployments is often to build faster, and they certainly seem to be achieving an impressive ramp-up on that front.

Admittedly, it hasn’t all been plain sailing. People in some areas have been quite vocal about the operator’s use of telegraph poles in many of their FTTP deployments (here). But such issues are by no means unique to Netomnia and many people would be just as happy to see such poles if it meant they could finally get full fibre.

As above, the service itself is supplied to consumers via ISP partner YouFibre, which offers unlimited usage, symmetrical speeds, a Wi-Fi router and 24/7 UK based support. And there is no install fee, ‘activation’ fee or additional line rental to pay. Customers typically pay from £22 per month on an 18-month term for their unlimited 50Mbps package, which rises to £50 if you want their top 900Mbps plan.

As a side note, Netomnia previously mentioned 2024 alongside their 1 million premises target, thus the decision to adopt an end of 2023 date suggests confidence in their build plans.