Virgin Media UK and Nexfibre Add 17,000 Rotherham Homes to FTTP Cover
Broadband ISP Virgin Media UK (VMO2) has today announced that more than 17,000 additional homes and businesses in the South Yorkshire (England) town of Rotherham can now access their 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which was made possible by nexfibre’s network expansion.
Rotherham is the latest in a long list of VMO2 areas that have, over the past year, reported the completion of sizeable broadband expansion projects – including York, Alfreton, Blyth, Heysham and Lancaster, Brentwood, Sheffield, Scarborough, Coleraine, Wakefield and Doncaster etc. All of this reflects work conducted via wholesale operator nexfibre (see current rollout plan).
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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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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Nexfibre have now gone live in part of Hythe Hampshire – I’ve already got the fibre + junction box on the outside of my house (actual connection date is in just over a week). Suspect an announcement about the whole area going live in just over a month.
They have been building in parts of Banbury though they have not gone live yet. Doesn’t look they’re coming up our way though. We will have 4 operators in Banbury plus OFNL have got an exclusive on a new estate near us – poor sods.
And yet some of us who are so near but so far to the VM network will miss out again. Literally pains me every day I walk over the VM network to get to my car – which is about 50M away yet they won’t even entertain doing our bit of the world and we are all stuck on FTTC
Starlink exists, and is faster than FTTC – so you’re not exactly stuck.
They just put subduct into the Openreach plant in this estate, 96 premises total of which 16 are in an MDU, as well as digging some other roads in the area surrounded by HFC so smaller infill is apparently a thing.
No XGSPON close by so unsure what they’re up to but presumably getting duct in the ground ready for the Mustang FTTP overbuild. Expecting some streetworks to go in shortly for cabinets and OLT.
What FTTC speeds do you get? anything ~50 is perfect imo, I was stuck on 20/5 untill virgin come,
What makes you think they won’t serve you? you serviced by a pole or anything? for me A V Online did all the networking for Nexfibre. You could reach out to them? I have done before real nice guy called Andy, very helpful.
HFC area with no duct in that street, Martyn. Nothing a third party contractor can do: needs XGSPON to be enabled for that area before any infill can be lit up.
There’s XGSPON near to me even though I’m surrounded by HFC right now so presumably I’m in an area that’ll be served by an existing or soon to be installed OLT: just outside my estate, next to the entrance, is a great place for one to go to serve the surrounding area if it came to it. Lots of room on a very wide pavement, existing high fibre count cable in the ground and existing FTTC and Openreach PCP cabinets there so keeping the cluttered area compact if they built there. Takes in a couple of hundred premises of infill alongside 5 existing HFC nodal areas but not a typical situation so not applicable to everywhere near HFC.
Just gone live on my estate in Shrewsbury, exactly the same time as openreach. They dug up our paths though only doing half a street in some cases.
Most of Shrewsbury is via existing telegraph poles. I noticed you can have synchronous speed for an extra 6 pounds a month. Also like most open reach suppliers 500 GB is the best value