Fibrus Aim to Cover 1 Million UK Premises with FTTP Broadband
Infracapital-backed broadband ISP Fibrus, which is currently rolling out a new gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) networks across both Northern Ireland and the North of England (Scotland will follow), has revealed that it now aims to reach a total of 1 million premises over the next 3 years (by Q1 2026).
At present the provider has already deployed their full fibre network – using a mix of commercial build and public investment – to around 200,000 premises across parts of Northern Ireland and the North of England. Prior to today, Fibrus was known to hold a near-term target of raising this to 500,000 UK premises by March 2024 (around 350,000 of which would be in Northern Ireland).
However, Dominic Kearns, CEO of Fibrus, has just revealed to the Belfast Telegraph that they’re now aiming to grow their workforce to around 1,000 staff (they currently employ 350 directly, plus 400 more if you include their delivery partner, Viberoptix) and to target full fibre network coverage of 1 million premises over the next three years.
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Kearns noted that this will include around 400,000 premises in Northern Ireland, once all of their deployments have completed (more than the 350k previously envisaged for the region). The remaining 600,000 will thus come from their work across England and Scotland etc. This roughly chimes with Fibrus’ previously stated desire to create a build engine that will deliver 250,000 premises per year for several years.
Dominic Kearns, CEO of Fibrus, said:
“We like to operate in rural and regional areas, where there has been a lack of investment. We can see a pathway to a million homes in the next three years. This is infrastructure for the next half century and we intend to play our part in delivering it.”
Much like Cityfibre, Fibrus added that they’re also in the process of upgrading their older Gigabit Passive Optical Network (G-PON) technology to 10Gbps (symmetric) capable XGS-PON, which should deliver various efficiency, speed, power consumption and cost improvements to their rollout.
Interestingly, Dominic also noted that Fibrus, which both builds its own full fibre network and operates as a retail ISP on that same platform (vertically integrated), “may in the future” operate as an ISP on other networks too. Various other alternative networks are building wholesale accessible FTTP infrastructure across the UK (e.g. Cityfibre, Openreach, FullFibre Ltd. etc.) and this could be used to complement their own coverage.
Customers of Fibrus typically pay from £39.99 (discounted to £19.99) per month for an unlimited 150Mbps (30Mbps upload) package with an included router and free installation, which rises to £59.99 (discounted to £44.99) per month for their top 1000Mbps (300Mbps upload) tier on a 24-month contract term. The service discounts may vary between different parts of their build.
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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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It’s worth noting none of their discounts apply to customers in an area covered by project stratum. Despite the fact they got a massive gov grant to pay for the infrastructure in these areas they say it costs more to deliver the service there. Sadly they have not really been taken to task much on this, but stratum customers are paying double what others are in a lot of cases.
This is not correct. Some of the postcodes I tried when checking packages were deployed under Stratum and got the full discount, although I did note that the discount level varied (e.g. on the 100Mbps package some areas were £19.99 and others £29.99 for 100Mbps) and not every Stratum area seemed to benefit. So the picture is a bit more complex.
In addition, I do feel Fibrus need to be questioned about their ‘push’, and subsequent intention, to wholesale their build out to 3rd party ISP’s/RSP’s, I believe this was a mandatory requirement of the Stratum project and the monies being awarded.
At this moment in time, Fibrus are being subsidised for the build and are also the sole ISP for the product, in NI anyway. This makes their pricing ‘uncompetitive’ regardless of the current tiered pricing on offer, regardless of whether you come under a Stratum postcode or not.