Virgin Media and Nexfibre’s FTTP Covers 12,000 Premises in Blyth
Broadband ISP Virgin Media UK (VMO2), supported by UK network operator nexfibre, have today announced that more than 12,000 extra homes and businesses in the Northumberland (England) town and civil parish of Blyth can now access their new 2Gbps Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband services.
Blyth is the latest in a long list of VMO2 areas that have, over the past few months, reported the completion of sizeable broadband expansion projects – including Heysham and Lancaster, Brentwood, Sheffield, Scarborough, Coleraine, Wakefield and Doncaster etc. All of this reflects work conducted via wholesale operator nexfibre.
Just to recap. Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners created a new joint venture called nexfibre in 2022 (here) – backed by £4.5bn – that aims to deploy an open access full fibre network to reach “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5 million by 2026) in areas NOT currently served by Virgin Media’s own network of 16m+ premises. But Virgin Media, which shares the same parentage, is currently the only ISP on this network (here).
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However, it’s worth noting that Openreach also has significant FTTP coverage in Blyth, while Hyperoptic is similarly present, albeit only in a small section of the town.
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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A few years ago there was no VM coverage in Blyth. Now it has a mix of RFoG and FTTP (Nexfibre) showing how the expansion projects swapped technology mid rollout.
Yeah it’s mental, it’s literally a postcode lottery whether you can order the new 2Gig / symmetrical speeds in Blyth..
VM have also started deploying in Porthcawl this year, after Ogi completed their build. I am assuming this is Nexfibre as Porthcawl was listed as location in one of their potential build locations.
It’ll be interesting to see if Ogi make any further adjustments to their pricing or product line up as a result of this competition.
Whilst it’s inconvenient to have roads dug up for a second time, we’re very fortunate to have gone from mediocre FTTC to two choices for FTTP when there are still folks in areas of the country unable to get FTTC.
Pretty sure that VMO2 haven’t had anything in Wales. The ThinkBroadband stats usually show that Wales’ gigabit capable figure is equal to the coverage for FTTP.
VMO2 are definitely deploying a new network here with partner Avonline Networks. But besides seeing the town referenced in Nexfibre’s 2024 locations report, I’ve not seen any public announcement of this new deployment?
We received a letter back in January and they’ve already passed a decent number of properties in the area, with VM branded toby boxes appearing next to the recently installed Ogi boxes.
@RightSaidFred
Avonline dug my street for VMO2 and Nexfibre and I am in South Wales too – it’s definitely being done.
Would be great if they only turned it on so I could order, but there is still a lot of build activity going on in the area, so I think it’s just a case of when they turn it all on for the respective streets.
Where does thinkbroadband show that full-fibre and Gigabit coverage in wales is the same
https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/wales 61.8% versus 69.4%
As I regularly comment – Hythe hampshire is so close to going online too. Only started work in October last year and just last few roads in town to complete (And nothing past two weeks on bidb). Suspect there will be a lot of similar stories given their rollout speed (At least 10x quicker than giganet/trooli)
They seem to be working in Banbury as well. Toby boxes with the VMO2 logo have started appearing but there hasn’t been any big announcement. Alongside Openreach and 2 altnets it’s becoming a very crowded space.
VM / Nexfibre overbuilding on Grain?