Netomnia and YouFibre Secure £230m for UK Full Fibre Rollout
Network operator Netomnia – supported by UK ISP YouFibre – have today announced that their rollout of 10Gbps capable FTTP broadband has been boosted after they completed their latest fundraise of £230m in committed debt financing from a group of six bank lenders (HSBC UK, ING, NIBC, RBC, Standard Chartered, and UKIB).
The operator, which has now covered 410,000 UK premises (up from 300k in November 2022) and is present in parts of 35 towns and cities (with many more in-planning), currently aims to reach 1 million premises across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland by the end of 2023 (coverage plan). In addition, their network is now home to 28,000 customers.
“The company, known for its fast network rollout and efficient use of capital, has become the fourth largest altnet in the UK in two and half years,” said Netomnia’s announcement today. Overall, they’re the sixth largest for full fibre coverage if we also include Virgin Media (VMO2) and Openreach into the mix. Only CityFibre, Hyperoptic and CommunityFibre are bigger on the alternative network side.
Netomnia and YouFibre were advised by Rothschild & Co and Allen & Overy on the latest debt deal. At the current pace of build, they’re set to reach around 750,000 premises passed by the end of this year, but we’d expect them to ramp-up a bit more in order to hit the next milestone of 1 million premises in time.
Wil Wadsworth, CFO at Netomnia and YouFibre, said:
“We are very pleased to welcome this new group of lenders to Netomnia and are thrilled they have chosen to support the continued acceleration of our business. The enthusiasm from these institutions to support our business is a testament to our successes at Netomnia and YouFibre, and our unique approach to building our full fibre network and providing best-in-class Internet speeds and services to customers across the UK.
Everyone in the UK is impacted by the rising cost of living, and interest rates are hitting businesses and families alike. Now more than ever it’s vital that we continue to build our network at pace to provide better and more affordable broadband to as many homes and businesses as we can.”
The service, once live, is typically supplied to consumers via YouFibre, which offers unlimited usage, symmetrical speeds, a Wi-Fi router, free installation and 24/7 UK based support. Customers pay from just £21 per month on a 24-month term for their unlimited 150Mbps package (£25 thereafter), which rises to just £29.99 if you want their top 920Mbps plan (£40 thereafter). The latter is also on an offer of £1 a month for the first 3 months.
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 and Linkedin.
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“The company, known for its fast network rollout”
What?! What fast network rollout? They told me they’d be ready at my address in September 2022. Then it was December, then January, then April, then by February that had already moved back to July. It’s probably September 2023 now but I can’t be bothered to keep chasing them (and they certainly can’t be bothered to provide real updates to the people who are waiting for them!).
What Netomnia are actually known for is an incredible, unrivalled inability to actually deliver anything in accordance with their own schedule!
True, for your case, but it doesn’t change the fact that they do currently have one of the most rapid deployment paces in the AltNet space. I think this is partly down to heavy reliance upon PIA and smaller cables etc.
haha they told me that my postcode is included however they will not start until OR build infrastructure in my area (new estate). OR so far built infrastructure that ends where the estate starts and probably will not continue until all properties will be completed. I don’t know what is generating costs in Netomnia if they only pull cables in existing OR ducts.
Don’t worry. For me they promised in December ’21. In February ’22 they installed cables in poles. promised August, then October, then mid February ’23.
Still waiting in Wisbech (PE13)… .
Not much different here… we were told shortly…. turned into 13 months later before it was actually available to order!
I’m surprised by comments like this – Netomnia/YouFibre have only just done works in the area, but I’ve been able to get it installed.
It took about 8 weeks from the roadworks happening in the street to being able to install.
I’ve not seen any promotion of the service in the area yet.
I’m having the exact same problem. Openreach didn’t FTTP our street. Then netomnia came to the rescue. Or so I thought. Was due to be Jan, then March, now May. I’m not holding my breath that it will be here by May either. They wired up the street 8 months ago now. When I contact them they just say they’re “building out the network in your area”.
getting mine next week. £1 for 9 months 29.99 thereafter – 920 each way MUCH BETTER than the OR network that wont go above 100Mbps upload.
They came around last october (2022) saying might be 9-12 months, go live 20th April 🙂
300,000 premises passed last November but only 28,000 customers? That’s less than a 1 in 10 take-up rate.
Doesn’t look good does it? The £418m is supposed to cover them to the end of 2023, 1m premises passed. Assuming they manage a much better 1 in 6 conversion rate on the incremental build that’s another 117k customers, total of 145k, and capital per customer connected is £3k. Hope my pension isn’t going into this one.
As always with these things, you have to consider that their rate of build has increased significantly over the past 6-12 months, which tends to suppress the balance wih take-up. You can only really start to judge when you separate out the areas where an operator has been live for a couple of years and look at what it’s doing in those.
Remember most customers are locked in a 12-24 month contract with their current provider.
Also Netomnia’s diversified locations means that they have to get resources for all of those locations, so it is natural that they will run into resource issues and takeup will generate slower in those areas, while also being a lot harder to shift existing resource.
It is not like Community Fibre where they can just hire and advertise exclusively in London and easily shift resources according to underperforming areas like for example if Hackney is underperforming while Southwark is doing well, they can just shift some sales guys over in just 20min
Mark you run the site and are on here twice defending Netomnia. Surely you should leave that to their PR team?
In this climate when domino scams known as banks are starting to crack, first SVB, then Suisse and whoever is next to crack by giving out dumb woke loans or getting underwater because of gambling customer money during interest hikes, it’s impressive that Netomnia manages to pullout some nice numbers into their rollout. Also when some alts are doing pointless leadership shuffles and slowing down their builds
If Netomnia don’t manage to get 1 million homes then at least they will pass Hyperoptic for sure
what on earth is a “woke loan”?
SVB is notorious for not managing risk and instead just giving out loans to companies with diversity statements and the like rather than if they can pay off the loan. It looks like they collapsed due to gambling away customer money in bonds which sunk after rates went up
Also credit suisse male boss winning female in business award https://www.thesun.co.uk/news/7322136/outrage-as-gender-fluid-credit-suisse-boss-who-sometimes-wears-a-wig-to-work-is-named-among-top-100-women-in-business/
I think Netomnia have some sharp increases in figures yet to come. They have been building like mad in quite a few areas, and where BT is only FTTC and VM is oversubscribed for example.
It will all be down to marketing as a lot of people don’t know unless they see billboards or get letters or adverts in papers, tv, radio or online.
The guy in charge at Netomnia, Jeremy has a wealth of telecomms experience so I am not going to write them off as they are getting great reviews for the service and customer service. It’s true some areas have a slower roll-out but this can be a number of issues like collapsed ducts, local issues etc.
They also intend to do wholesale access later on too with their XGS-PON 10gbps symmetric network. They also follow BT in design and use their own pavement chambers, and ONT’s installed are 10gbs capable now.
They are in my area and around my street but my particular road isn’t “planned”. I got in touch and they said my postcode area is currently in a “pole hold” area and they are working on how to make the connections. Hopefully that means they are coming eventually!
don’t hold your breath, i have had an order in place since around August 2020, I live in an area where everywhere is complete, except my estate as I live in an area that has a bi-law in place that prevents any poles from going up. Netomnia / YouFibre keep saying we’re coming and just trying to get permission to put up pole some poles, that will never happen, and they are too cheap to dig there own ducting in. I have since give up on it happing.
I received a letter from YouFibre last year saying they were coming to my area soon. I contacted them the other day and they told me the build had been paused and they have no further update.
They also said that it was likely due to them thinking there was infrastructure there that they could use that they now can’t?
Looking on Netomnia’s rollout map, my area is within a pink highlighted zone that woud suggest it’s live?
Wish they would hurry up though as we can only get 1gbps with Virgin or 30Mb/s via Openreach and I’d rather get away from Virgin!
It’s great that they can get funding to increase their growth and maximising on their profits but do not treat their staff in the same way.Look after your staff and the staff will look after the business. You need to decide to either contract out your installs for all areas or grow your internal install engineers as you have many areas that have many internal engineers either doing installs and allowing other internal engineers to audit the network or complete service fault visits only. This causes friction as 50% of the workforce do far more than the others and do not get the credit for it. The install engineers should all do the same work and you will have a happy workforce. You are neglecting your workforce and this in the future is going to hit you hard
What do you mean by this NUFC 9? (aka Alan Shearer)
Internal engineers have to take on more jobs than needed versus contractors? If so, how many jobs?
As the debts get bigger, the takeup gets smaller.
Hi Jj. I meant to have put they either sub or the work out or bring in their own engineers. Up and down the country they have certain areas where they have contractors completing install whilst their internal engineers are doing not much at all and other parts of the country where they have internal engineers doing everything. This creates friction in the workforce that 1 person is getting paid to look at contractors post work only and others installing, auditing etc. there is a big disparacy between both which needs looking at. They’re other things that needs looking at but I’m not going to list them on here that needs changing soon. #upthetoon
Maybe now they can come back and fill in the rest of my town…
I’m not going to get too optimistic on your behalf. 🙁
‘The company, known for its…efficient use of capital’.
Oh I know.
I was told I’d have to wait for OR to duct my street then NO will come round afterwards.
That’s already too late, whoever gets FTTP here first will get my money.
Any news of the rollout actually happening in the areas mentioned?
The Hengoed exchage – I have seen a netomnia van near a cabinet. I have also seen Avon Networks spooling out fibre (but the could be working for OGI) – doesn’t seem to be moving very quickly.
I am out of contract with BT. Youfibre – there is a customer ready to take up your services here!