Netomnia Adds UK City of Oxford to FTTP Broadband Rollout

Full Fibre network builder Netomnia – supported by broadband ISP partner YouFibre – has today added a second “major city” (after Liverpool) to their UK rollout of a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) network, which will see them invest £36m to cover 120,000 premises in Oxford (England).

The move represents another significant development for an operator that, until fairly recently, was not a familiar name to most people. Nevertheless, they’ve since secured £418m in funding and already cover over 130,000 UK premises, with builds now extending across 40 UK towns and cities (estimated build rate of 15,000 premises per month). Netomnia’s immediate aim is to reach 1 million premises by the end of 2023.

The operator’s strategy is typically to build fast – often by harnessing Openreach’s existing ducts and poles to run their own fibre – and to go live quickly, while also being aggressive on price in order to pull customers away from more establish rivals. The company also has no qualms about targeting areas that are aggressively competitive either, although in that respect, Oxford perhaps isn’t as competitive as some of their other build locations.

The city is currently well covered by Virgin Media’s (VMO2) gigabit-capable network, but rival FTTP networks are few and far between. Openreach does have a full fibre rollout plan for the city, but this is primarily only focused on the central-ish areas. But outside of that, no other operator has any significant FTTP coverage or deployment plans for the city, at least not so far as we’re aware.

By the looks of it, Netomnia is starting their build along the B480 road, which leads up from the South East and goes into the city centre. This is a wise move as it seems to focus their efforts on some of the parts that Openreach have yet to target with their own plans.

Jeremy Chelot, CEO at Netomnia, said:

“Oxford is a flourishing city with a long and deep heritage of intellectual discovery and invention. We are delighted to be contributing to its thriving economy and academic community, helping to drive innovation through access to our ultrafast full fibre network.”

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 £22 per month on an 18-month term for their unlimited 50Mbps package, which rises to £45 if you want their top 900Mbps plan (£50 thereafter).