Netomnia Covers 500,000 UK Premises with FTTP Broadband
Fibre optic network builder Netomnia, which is supported by UK ISP YouFibre, has today announced a significant milestone after their rollout of a new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network passed the 500,000 premises mark (up from 410k in March) and topped 40,000 customers.
The operator, which is currently present in parts of 35 towns and cities (with many more in-planning), had previously aimed to reach 1 million premises across England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland by the end of 2023 (coverage plan – plus additions here, here and here). But today’s update appears to have delayed that target a little by saying they have “ambitions of reaching 1 million premises by early 2024“.
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.
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We should point out that the provider also offers a “no contract” (monthly rolling) option, but you don’t benefit from any of the initial discounts on those plans. In addition, those on certain state benefits can take their Social Tariff, which gives speeds of 50Mbps for just £15 a month on a 24-month term.
Jeremy Chelot, CEO at Netomnia and YouFibre, said:
“Reaching half a million premises and already providing service to 40,000 of them is a significant achievement and is a testament to the hard work and dedication of the entire team. Especially when you consider we only started out two and a half years ago, and we are now the sixth largest network in the UK, have the third fastest build rate, and are building in all four UK countries. This is just the first step in our ambitious growth strategy to hit one million homes and businesses within the next 12 months.
I am particularly pleased about the speed at which we are now building. As well as a rapid build engine, we also pride ourselves on our level of service, with YouFibre currently boasting 4.9 stars on Trustpilot. We truly understand the need for a future-proofed network like ours, so we are working as hard as we can to bring it to as many people as possible.”
Generally speaking, Netomnia seems to have been making very good progress over the past year, and it’s worth remembering that they only really started building at any kind of pace in 2021. Getting FTTP to 500,000 premises in that space of time is a good achievement and reflects their lower cost (PIA heavy) approach to build.
We should point out that YouFibre also sells packages over CityFibre’s network, but only in places like Middlesbrough (North Yorkshire), thus we suspect a tiny proportion of that 40,000 figure may not be on Netomnia’s side of the network (we’re checking this with them now).
Finally, it’s worth remembering how take-up is something that takes a couple of years post-deployment – in each location – to grow and Netomnia’s pace of build ramped-up massively during 2022/23, which will be suppressing the adoption figure (currently c.8%). The network operator is now building at a rate of 500,000 homes and businesses passed per year.
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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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They have just rolled out in my area and their pricing is aggressive, just a shame I have over a year remaining on my contract with TalkTalk.
Call them, they offer very good deals. i.e. only £1/month while still in contract.
You could get the last 12 months at £1, while choosing from three current broadband packages:
150 – £21.99
500 – £27.99
1000 – £29.99
I’d like them to actually do what they promised by news release, letter and on here to finish Dover, Temple Ewell. Hit and miss despite letter through door and youfibre.com saying my address would get it. Their own Netomnia site changed to wre building but not in their plans. Green Lane was promised but so far only a few houses on opposite road got a CBT on the BT pole. All BT PIA by existing poles is possible. Really fragmented around here with what ghey have done so far for months. Not at all what I was expecting as no BT plans for FTTP from exchange despite 7k users. There was press release fanfare and the investment looked like pretty much nearly all addresses. Most of Dover or Whitfield not even done, only central part. Really hoping Netomnias address checker is wrong and YouFibres is correct. That’s all we can hope.
Are you saying YouFibre will provide me a service for £1 per month for 12 months?
Nice to hear, as they have covered my town and street, with all the other less joyous news of other firms.
But as I live in a MDU, a push on them would be nice.
MDUs are a different beast to tackle because most landlords do not want to play ball. I would suggest you contacting customer service
Got excited about this lot coming but they randomly did the entrance to a street along with three random others and then disappeared.
Same here.
Were they random or next to existing Openreach cabinets and chambers? They don’t dig all their own stuff they use existing ducts for the most part. In our case they built their own chamber on the main road and that was it for digging, everything else to reach us used existing ducts. Can be a while between chamber being built and services going live.
How else do you think they reached 500,000 so fast. I’m quite sure a large amount of what they claimed as ‘passed’ is not RFS with the majority tied up in scenarios like what you have described here.
Everything passed should be a home or business that may be connected to a CBT with light on it all the back to the exchange.
These are Netomnia’s numbers so not dependent on the YouFibre network that connects to the Netomnia network in the exchange.
Thinkbroadband checks Youfibre website, if it’s not possible to get an engineer to service the address then it rejects the address. It is a much better metric than whatever number companies lie about on their press releases. It shows more than 500k according to their data.
The number is truthful and an indicator that they will surpass Hyperoptic before they even get to the 1 million milestone
My area has been on the Openreach FTTP list for over 3 years and no work has started. Whereas Netomnia haven’t even announced our area, yet my address is in the plans and they are out building chambers on the main road.
Hopefully it won’t take too long to go live, I really want an upgrade over 29 down and 5 up.
I have just become a customer. Vey happy with the service – speeds are excellent, getting over 900Mbps up and down.
Moving from a BT service (approx 40 Mbps) to FTTP is quite an eye opener – my son was able to download a 117 GB game in under 20 minutes. It would have taken hours previously, and hogged the bandwith.
And this is why FTTC is no longer fit for purpose 🙂
Yeah it’s so frustrating being stuck on 40Mb or less. I think the bigger issue is the upload though. My upload tops out at 5Mb so when there is two of us working from home the slow down is noticeable. Streaming something in UHD pretty much brings the download to a halt too though.
Recent customer to netomnia/you fibre. Initially it was very good but recently their latency has increased far beyond my previous OR fttp connection, no where near as low … Shame really and it seems nothing will be done to improve it.
Please drop me an email jeremy@…
Chesham and Berkhamsted were in their network rollout maps but seem to have been quietly dropped. Guess there’s other areas too.
FW is building there, I’d imagine they want to avoid the overbuild
These guys are always on promo, and the website doesn’t seem to have an end date to the current promo…what would the advertising standards authority make of this? hmmm
It’s a shame that they don’t dig. My parents are in a town where Netomnia is building, but they live in a cul-de-sac which is partially direct in ground so there are no ducts for Netomnia.
I had mine installed just over a week ago, ive never seen upload speeds like these before. Well over 940meg on the speedtest, up and down.
The sales agent came around with some info and booked us in for an appointment, within 5 days we had the instalation, first 7 months £1 and im terminating my contract with my ISP at a discounted rate saving me a fair deal!
07377305521 is the agents number, tell him DrPepper sent you so i get 2 months free!! He will know who you mean 😉
Hurry up and finish Didcot! (please xxx)
Just got these guys and I would like to say that it was plain sailing but it wasn’t, there router was a dud and the Amazon track ware router was not going in my house, good job I’m using my trusty PFSense router, word of warning Youfibres network is CGNAT so if you are running a server plex then you would need a static IP at a cost to o you of £5 which isn’t too bad, but it did take them two days to do it.
Other than that speed is 940 up and down, great customer service and technical team very friendly and knowledgeable and best of all still cheaper than what I paid BT for the FTTC 70Mbps well that’s what i initially got but now it’s 56Mbps so I think I’ll stick with YouFibre. Just love it that Cyberpunk updates aren’t a couple of hours affair anymore!