Virgin Media and Nexfibre Add 11,000 Homes to FTTP in Huddersfield
Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of their parentage with UK broadband ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), have announced that they’ve added 11,000 more homes in the large West Yorkshire (England) town of Huddersfield to the coverage of their new 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network.
As indicated above, Huddersfield was already well covered by Virgin Media’s existing gigabit-capable broadband network, although this previously excluded a big chunk on the far wester side of the town that has now been tackled via nexfibre. The town is also home to significant full fibre coverage from Openreach and CityFibre, as well as some small deployments by Hyperoptic and the odd other alternative network.
Nexfibre itself 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).
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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.
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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Mark, has there been any further news on their integration with their UPP network? From what I’ve seen, they’ve all but completely stopped further rollout in UPP’s original footprint
They have been releasing new Upp areas as Nexfibre for a while
Cromer
Sherringham
Skegness
Mablethorpe
And more
Dave,
When you say “releasing them as NexFibre” what do you mean and will Virgin Media be the only ISP available to us. I live in the North Norfolk area where they have been building and I’ve been told that go-live is September, so in the next few weeks.
Thanks
What I mean is the build was planned areas for Upp and using the Upp teams
But obviously won’t now sell Upp services, the network is owned by Nexfibre and will sell Virgin Media services.
Yes at launch all you will be able to get is Virgin Media.
@Dave, Mablethorpe er?
VMO2 have now gone live in parts of Banbury (mostly on the south and west side of the town) although they show no signs of coming up our end (Openreach, F&W and Allpoints are up here already so that may have something to do with it). I have seen at least one installation but not a lot of publicity.
How are there so many areas with massive overbuild and multiple FTTP networks to choose from, while others remain fibre deserts? The lack of coordination is just madness. How do they do this in other countries? Is it the same wild free-for-all?
Overbuild or taxpayer involvement. Not sure why businesses competing with each other would actively coordinate: that’s illegal.
It’s absolute madness, there are still parts of Banbury that still don’t have it, yet there’s other parts have 3 networks.
@witcher
Would Tesco build a new supermarket if there was already a large Sainsburys and Asda next door? Coordinating is illegal but looking to find what you’re up against first? maybe not so much.
it’s certainly not uncommon for the likes of Aldi and Lidl – the “alt nets” of supermarkets – to set up shop near the incumbents. My nearest Lidl is across the road from a Waitrose, of all places.
At least you don’t have the insanity of having Aldi and Lidl setting up shop next to each other (I have personally never seen it, though I’m sure someone will give an example), which is what the altnets are doing.
Most of the time bits of towns and cities cost more to cover than others so are left until last, Dave. I mean cost a lot more. Networks have run out of budget part way through their construction just as cable companies did, too.
Broken record but I’m lost why people think they know better than the people who are building these networks where they should build. Unless you have access to all the same information you can’t know.
The smaller networks are building to make money not to cover everyone and they all know Openreach and VMO2/Nexfibre will overbuild them even if they get first mover.
Ivor, there is a Lidl, Aldi and Iceland side-by-side on Yarm Road in Darlington.
I live in a Fibre Desert in Edgware,
North West London
Other places have more than one Provider
It is madness
They are building to make money not to cover everyone.
Some of London is very expensive to cover and two of the four networks that built at scale have no funding for more build right now. The other two are going as quickly as they can but someone is always last.
Sometimes you just have to wait. A friend of mine lives in East Acton and has neither Openreach’s FTTP nor even VM’s HFC, but Community Fibre is now there and offers 1Gbps download.
Currently going live over tutbury, Hatton and Hilton area. Might make the switch when my contract is up, these altnets aren’t very reliable unfortunately which is a shame as I would prefer to support them over virgin media but my wife just complains that it’s the worst internet we have had to date
That’s always been one of my concerns about going with an altnet. They might be cheaper, they might have synchronous uplinks but you don’t find out how reliable they are and how good the backhaul is until it’s too late.
@Big Dave, you don’t know how reliable any ISP is before it is too late.
even large providers are not already reliable, look at the problems Talk Talk used to have in the past.
I must admit, i thought the same as you, how reliable is it, who are they, are they going to keep going, the CEO that started the Alt net I used, started up one before and then flogged it off. If this one fails, will I get a company like Talk Talk taking it over. I don;lt need super-duper speeds, lots of different questions and reason for not going to FTTP and going for an unknown provider.
Last year, I took the leap, granted it was because Plusnet wanted to push me to FTTP on the Openrerach network and would not give me a good offer on FTTC, and wanted me to sign up for 24 months.
I was thinking of going to Zzoomm because I thought if I am being pushed to FTTP and have to go through the hassle of having FTTP installed, then I may as well go for a network that is better. Then I had a card though the door offering me 500Mb/s for £24 a month on a 12-month contract. So I went for it and apart from a couple of problems at the start, mainly someone cutting a main fibre, it has been great. Their hardware could be better, they use an Icotera router and it is not the best. But some people have no problems with it. I use my TP-link.
I am glad I made the jump, i have not regretted it. Now, would I have made the jump if it was Nexfibre here? Not sure, Nexfibre is part owned by Virgin and that lot, they are as bad as openreach/Bt in my view. I expect I would have stayed on FTTC, I certainly would have not gone for FTTP if Zzoomm was not here.
Just a general comment on the overbuild scenario (and apologies to Mark for raising this again) – see https://shorturl.at/bxMOP
History does have an uncanny knack of repeating itself.
WDM-PON costs too much: tunable optics are expensive. Their cost is why no-one besides Verizon uses NGPON-2 they are using 25GPON or 50GPON with coexistence elements. Would be cheaper to move to multiple dark fibres to each premises per Switzerland than use WDM both from capital and operational expense.