Virgin Media O2 UK via nexfibre Bring FTTP Broadband to Crewe
Broadband ISP Virgin Media (VMO2) has confirmed that their 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network, via wholesale network partner nexfibre, is being expanded to cover the town of Crewe in Cheshire (England).
Just to recap. Last year saw Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners create a new joint venture firm called nexfibre (here), which aims to deploy a separate open access full fibre network to reach “up to” 7 million UK homes in areas NOT currently served by Virgin Media – starting with 5 million by 2026. But Virgin Media is currently the only ISP for this network, and they’re already selling services over it (here).
So far nexfibre has already covered over 300,000 premises (adding 175,500 in the last quarter alone), although they’ve yet to reveal a solid rollout plan and thus consumers often remain uncertain about whether they’ll be reached by the network’s future expansion plans. The good news for Crewe‘s population of around 77,000 is that they’ll be one of the first areas to benefit.
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A Virgin Media spokesperson told Nub News: “Work is underway to bring our gigabit broadband services to homes and businesses in Crewe. We will announce more about our plans in due course.” The catch is that they’re not the first gigabit-capable broadband operator to show an interest in Crewe.
Both Openreach and Zzoomm have already deployed a significant amount of FTTP coverage across the town, while LilaConnect (VXFIBER) and Digital Infrastructure (BeFibre) also have the town on their plans (although Lila/VX’s build is currently in limbo). Suffice to say that locals look likely to have quite a bit of choice coming their way, although they might not appreciate all the extra disruption from repeated street works.
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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Talk about spoilt for choice, can’t help but feel jealous being stuck on ADSL
Nexfibre will soon become big news when they complete the purchase of Cityfibre, their network footprint will take a large step forward.
Cityfibre have many premises passed but are struggling to achieve decent take-up percentages whilst also struggling with increasing interest rates against their large debt. Nexfibre will be able to put the infrastructure to good use.
I’m looking forward to see what happens.
I’m still not sure if the sale will go ahead. Cityfibre and Virgin have a significant overlap and VM are hitting £100 per premises for their overbuild. Completely new nexfibre build isn’t that much more than Cityfibre’s cost.
I thought the overlap was part of the argument for the purchase of CityFibre as it would save them upgrading these areas to FTTP which Mustang is in place for?
Virgin didn’t come to my street for some reason during their FTTP deployment here in 2020, but CityFibre are doing my area currently and didn’t miss me. It would be nice to have the option of Virgin.
@Jack Mustang overbuild is at £100 per premises, Cityfibre is very unlikely to come out cheaper.
VMO2/Nexfibre are just waiting until Cityfibre really start struggling and coming under pressure from their investors, then they’ll snap up Cityfibre’s infrastructure for a bargain price.
It’s going to be before the end of the year or first thing after Christmas in the New Year.
I can’t believe how close to the surface this fibres being buried… It’s going to become a minefield in future doing anything underground or in residential areas at least, only Openreach that I can see doing it properly and City Fibre depending on who they use to do their civils.
The duct will be a bit under the tape. VM (and other altnets) are meant to bury only about 250mm under the ground. Fibre doesn’t show up on ground scanners.
The University of Cambridge decided to bury its network decades ago at a non standard lower depth, as it didn’t show up on ground scanners other contractors would dig to the 250mm-300mm depth, find no duct and get the JCB out. As such digger strikes are a much more common issue for them.
I understand the premis, I’m in civils lol
However some of these installations I’ve witnessed are only 100mm below ground below groundlevel.
I’m sure they’ve done their homework regarding this. I’m on Openreach FTTP and we had a cable break affecting multiple splitter nodes that knocked out several hundred premises, they replaced the damaged section and re-spliced overnight so service was restored the next morning.
I would imagine the economics of shallow burial vs deep make it well worth doing, and I suspect the risk of damage between the two methods is more nuanced that you might think. For example I wouldn’t be surprised if shallow below paving slabs is less likely to get damaged than deep, conversely in a grass verge you would expect deep to be less risky.
Fibre may not be detected by ground scanners, but purpose made detection mesh tape is, and would cost about 30 pence a metre in the volumes a telco would buy. As a rough guide, shallow trenching in made up ground plus reinstatement is going to be around £75-125 a metre. So adding detection tape adds, at most, 0.4% to the build costs. And that’s 0.4% of just trenching civils, not network equipment and all the other stuff you need to create a functioning network.
Any telcos too miserly to buy it, or too unprofessional to do the job properly deserve to have a JCB through their cables on a regular basis.
Did anyone see what Virgin FTTP looks like? Is the fibre going all the way to the Hub, no coax in-between?
XGS PON is fibre into the hub, no sfp or seperate ONT.
If you search around for Hub 5X you should be able to find some photos of how it’s installed
Going to be hard to do wholesale if it is the case 🙂
Why? I see it just like the early VDSL times, at first you needed an external modem, then eventually the routers learned to decode VDSL themselves. Eventually, there will be routers with a fibre input. The need to have a separate ONT with its own socket is a major downturn for me right now.
I’m sure they’ve done their homework regarding this. I’m on Openreach FTTP and we had a cable break affecting multiple splitter nodes that knocked out several hundred premises, they replaced the damaged section and re-spliced overnight so service was restored the next morning.
I would imagine the economics of shallow burial vs deep make it well worth doing, and I suspect the risk of damage between the two methods is more nuanced that you might think. For example I wouldn’t be surprised if shallow below paving slabs is less likely to get damaged than deep, conversely in a grass verge you would expect deep to be less risky.
Wrong thread!
fibre direct into the router perhaps works better on single ISP networks (which is why it is common in the US) but I can see the likes of Openreach being reluctant to adopt it.
There is of course the advantage of avoiding customer contact with the fibre – I’m sure they’ve seen all sorts of copper horror stories – but there are other reasons to have a separate box screwed to the wall, which can’t get lost or be taken by the former customer, and is separately powered/managed.
Right now Openreach can test right up to the ethernet port on their ONT. When its an SFP or even if the PON hardware is integrated, there is a lot more reliance on the ISP and their hardware vendor.
@Alex A – For VM maybe. How would this work for wholesale?
@Phil Marshall For VM definetley, there a photos of the hub 5x in the wild (https://ispreview.co.uk/talk/attachments/1684356676103-jpeg.6455/) courtesy of Martyn over on the ISPr forums (https://ispreview.co.uk/talk/threads/how-long-does-it-take-for-virgin-pia-installs.39218/page-4).
From that we have a screenshot confirming that Virgin are using IPoE (https://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/attachments/1684336828233-png.6445/) which doesn’t have authentication. The rest of this is speculation but I’d expect Virgin to be using MAC address authentication of the ONT inside, for 3rd parties they can provide an API to supply the MAC address of their ONT.
If it come to Telford – don’t bother come here! I don’t want VM in Telford.
It’s been there for years
Phil, you don’t like Openreach….you do not like VM. Do you like any company? If you could get FTTP, who would you like/prefer to be providing your FTTP infrastructure?
Nokia kit with 4x100G back to their network. Adequate.
Shared between how many subscribers?
No more than 3-ish thousand under normal operation. That capacity is per OLT. Way more than necessary with loads of room to spare even if they lost 3 of the 4.
It’s 4 OLTs on a 100G ring, not 4x 100G per OLT/cabinet.
Good to know. Still loads and easy to upgrade as they need to.
I was misinformed that there were all kinds of backhaul layouts depending if a CIN or not and local conditions. Thank you!
I live in a suburb of Crewe. Virgin have been digging up roads on the route from Alsager. Possibly it’s connected to its infrastructure inStoke-on-Trent. Crewe has two postcode divisions CW1 and CW2. CW2 I think is south Crewe and Shavington. This is less than half of Crewe. Crewe has a patchwork of Fibre. Openreach covering some of Crewe, Lila another and Zzoom. There’s little overbuilding yet. We are lucky in some respects but since Openreach is what the majority of the broadband infrastructure many have not opted in. Personally I went with Zzoom as they are the only fibre down my street.
I’ve just checked the One Network map and Virgin Media are shown as due to start works in the Bessacarr and Cantley areas of Doncaster in August/Sep. This is one of the few areas of the city which currently does not have VM, although CityFibre went live in this area last year.
Can someone confirm what VM’s plans are? Are they actually going to lay the fibre this time? I think this is all under Nexfibre. Will it be FTTP?
Would appreciate any more info guys. Thx!
So if Next Fibre is going to be opened up to wholesale does that mean that VM are likely to open their whole fibe network to wholesale?
Apparently the network built as Nexfibre will be (may be already) availavle to wholesale, but the bits built by VM themselves, presumably most of their existing footprint, will not be available.
VM is the anchor tenant of the NextFibre network and the intention is to sign up other ISPs. As for VM’s existing network: the whole of it (HFC and RFoG) is being migrated to XGS-PON and it looks likely that it will be opened up to other ISPs after completion of the installation of the cabinets and fibre by December 2028. Mind you, the coaxial drop cables still have to be removed and fibre installed for each migrated customer, and some coaxial will most likely remain until about 2040.
If you read the blurb about Nexfibre it also mentions VM’s existing infrastructure being upgraded to fibre and hints that both full fibre networks would be available for wholesale once complete.