Nexfibre UK Target FTTP Broadband for 12,000 Rochford Premises
Network builder nexfibre, which shares some of the same parentage as Virgin Media (VMO2), has today announced that they expect to cover 12,000 premises across the Rochford District of Essex (England) via their new wholesale accessible 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband ISP network.
The company has already covered over 1 million premises across the UK with their new full fibre network, and they’re currently in the process of investing another £1bn during 2024, which should enable them to cover an additional 1 million UK premises (on top of their existing footprint).
Just for some context. Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners originally setup the new £4.5bn nexfibre joint venture in 2022 (here), which aims to deploy an open access fibre network to reach “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT currently served by Virgin Media’s network of 16m+ premises. The funding reflects £3.3bn of fully underwritten financing and up to £1.4bn in equity commitments.
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Rajiv Datta, CEO of nexfibre, said:
“We are committed to delivering high quality full-fibre connectivity to communities and business across the UK, including here in Rochford. By boosting access to broadband, we are enabling access to the tools needed to participate and thrive in a modern, digital society and stoking growth in the local economy.”
The move makes sense as Virgin Media doesn’t currently have much of any gigabit broadband coverage in Rochford, although nexfibre’s network will face strong competition from both Cityfibre and Openreach’s rival FTTP networks, which are already widely present.
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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Has anyone seen anything on Nexfibre’s wholesale potential agreements? I am assuming a lot out there have been burnt by VM over the years and will want another ISP.
Or is this just for VM? with the appearance of wholesale with a few small Alt-ISPs.
It still supposed to be happening. I haven’t heard anything about it yet though either. I personally need it to happen in the next 15 months. Been on nexfibre/VM for 3 months and even 250Mb was a fantastic jump from 20Mb FTTC I was previously stuck with, but I cannot wait to move to a better ISP (without all the jumping through hoops looking for a good deal I suspect I’ll have in 15 months otherwise). I’d hope for another FTTP provider but Openreach are in no rush and giganet have gone quiet after laying the ducting – still got pull ropes 3 months later – guess they didn’t like the competition with nexfibre)
It does seem to be taking an age for wholesale to happen on Nexfibre. Given that many altnets have sorted this, it’s clearly achievable with modest resources, and Nexfibre/VMO2 have lots of resources. I’m wondering if VMO2’s heart really isn’t in wholesale access? Ultimately it could cannibalise and destroy the VM offer, which will struggle to compete if its increasingly localised speed advantage is de-monopolised. Perhaps it’s got a credible wholesale offer, but the price or terms are unattractive to wholesalers who are already used to the pricing and terms of OR, Cityfibre, and some of the altnets.
A more dynamic reason would be that VMO2 intend to go the whole kaboodle, and are treading water until Project Mustang completes, and at that point wholesale access is available across Nexfibre/VM footprints as a single offer covering more than half the population. Whilst that sounds logical, the word “dynamic” is something I don’t associate with VM, so I’m not compelled by my own argument.
More interested in Project Mustang. Apart from a few people mentioning on VM Forums, can’t see much evidence of this going at scale seeing as it was early 2022 they announced work that would be complete by 2028 UK wide.
London, Birmingham, Manchester, Leeds, Liverpool, Southampton, Brighton, Reading, Bristol, Coventry, Chichester, Oxford, Cambridge, St Albans, Wellingborough, Sheffield, Glasgow come to mind as some areas either having had overbuild or in progress. Referring to the towns/cities and surrounds served by the hubsites and headends there. Definitely other places that’ve been built too.
Nothing for sale yet but that’s down to the internal IT and billing not that the network isn’t ready.
Is this the Rochford District or Rochford itself?
Anyone know?
It’s Rochford itself
Virgin o2 contractors have been laying fibre cables in Hockley the past few weeks, so I imagine it’s the Rochford District.
Also connect fibre are present in the Rochford District too, the main providers in the area are City Fibre, Connect Fibre, next fibre (currently installing) then BT who provide fibre to a small number of areas to satisfy a small number of customers with speeds of less than 10mbps in most cases.