Network builder Netomnia – supported by UK broadband ISP YouFibre – has today announced their first deployment across a major city, which will see them invest £39m to cover homes and businesses across Liverpool (Merseyside) with a new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network.
The operator, which has so far secured £418m in funding and already covers over 130,000 UK premises across various towns, ultimately aims to reach 1 million UK homes and businesses by the end of 2023. By comparison the deployment across Liverpool alone will, all by itself, add another 130,000 premises, once completed.
Netomnia often knowingly faces competition from gigabit-capable broadband rivals in some of the areas they target and Liverpool, as a major city, will be no exception. Both Virgin Media and Openreach have already covered most of the city with their respective Hybrid Fibre Coax and Full Fibre networks, while Hyperoptic has also secured a significant number of large residential blocks (MDUs).
On top of that, there are also smaller deployments by ITS Technology and OFNL, while Grain only recently announced their own plan to enter the city. As a dense urban area, Liverpool should be big enough to support all of these players to some degree. Netomnia added that they would be partnering with MJ Quinn to roll out their broadband infrastructure in the city, but no timescale has been set for completion.
Alan O’Prey, MD of Netomnia, said:
“I’m delighted to be bringing our network to Liverpool in our first move into a major UK city. This is a particularly special project for me as Liverpool is my home and it’s a true pleasure for us to be able to bring ultrafast, reliable broadband access to thousands of homes and businesses in the area. At Netomnia we’re incredibly passionate about helping people realise their potential by giving them the seamless, ultrafast connection to all the resources the internet has to offer.”
The service itself is typically supplied to consumers via UK ISP partner YouFibre, which offers unlimited usage, symmetrical speeds, a Wi-Fi router, free installation and 24/7 UK based support. Customers pay from just £17 per month on an 18-month term for their unlimited 50Mbps package, which rises to £34 if you want their top 900Mbps plan.
Such aggressively competitive pricing is likely intended to help undercut their fibre rivals and rapidly grow some scale.
Also City fibre have a substantial presence in the area
CityFibre are not yet present inside Liverpool the city itself, only outside it.
Does anyone know what area the will cover in Liverpool I’m in the south sefton council just north of city council but I am completely Liverpool (L21 area (litherland) we do have access to both virgin and openreach Gig speeds but I like to idea of symmetrical Dload and Upload, also side note virgin media have installed new street cabinets and from what I can see have been laying new fibre between them hopefully ready for customers in next year or so.
OMG.. what’s wrong with these alt net providers?
Our area has no fttp providers with loads of MDU’s and they concentrate on areas with lots of competition.
What’s the area?
It’s so annoying isn’t it. I’m stuck on 39meg and Openreach aren’t doing my road till 2025 when I contacted them.
Surely it makes sense to go to an area where people actually need and want the upgrade and will actually pay.
@Mark Weybridge KT13
Worth saying that MDUs does not make it for an easy rollout, if anything it adds an extra layer of complexity due to the required permission from the landlord
At a wild guess, and it is wild, the people making these decisions know more about their jobs than Oli from KT13 posting on ISPR.
There’s nothing wrong with them. None of us are qualified to question what’s wrong with them. I imagine it’s a tad more complicated than throwing a dart into a map.
Last time I saw this decision making progress there were a lot of variables involved. It was pretty rigorous.
@An Engineer
And the complications are?
3 of the possible alt net’s I spoke to mentioned that they plan the rollout depending on the interest.
But then if the locals aren’t unaware that there are options other than BT/VM, then how can they register their interest?
Interests can be generated by awarness and they seem to be lacking in case of all the 3 ISP’s.
There are loads of potential complications from availability of backhaul to ability to dig to condition of Openreach plant.
If the local authority are historically a PITA that’s a big negative mark. If most of the place was built at the wrong time and has a lot of direct in ground Openreach cabling that’s a big problem. Pole arrangement may be problematic. Demand for higher speeds may be low in similar areas in terms of demographics, incomes, etc.
They don’t mail the entire country and see where they get the most responses. I’m not sure exactly how they measure potential demand. I’m not an expert or planner, but am aware there are various criteria they use to produce data-based rollout plans most of the time. Sometimes politics is used instead.
Weybridge currently forms part of Openreach’s FTTP rollout plan for the next 2-3 years.
@Mark
Yes I noticed it’s 2-3 years and BT’s speeds are not symmetric.
I am happy with the current 350mb download but have been looking for faster upload speeds.
They’ve had it showing as in build in their website for a few months now, it is likely it will have first batch of homes live perhaps next month
Don’t get too excited lol… they made a start in frome,Somerset yet they are telling me connection is a further 6-7months away at best…
Sounds pretty average from any company, especially given Frome was only announced in December.
Sadly they don’t prioritise connections for people on ISPR / TBB / Kitz / whatever, and it takes a while to get the first homes online let alone the last few thousand.
Only so many contractors available in each area, lots of working in parallel on a nationwide basis.
Frome, like everywhere else, gets the resources available and viable.
Maybe Oli should move to Liverpoo
Liverpool not Liverpoo
Poop of liver