Netomnia’s UK FTTP Broadband Rollout Boosted by £25m from NWF
Network builder Netomnia (inc. retail ISP YouFibre), which is currently merging with Brsk (here) and rolling out a new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network across the UK, has today announced that they’ve secured an additional investment (loan) of £25m from the National Wealth Fund (NWF) to help accelerate their deployment.
The investment bolsters a £75m debt commitment made in March 2023, which occurred before the recent transformation of UK Infrastructure Bank (UKIB) into the NWF – bringing the total NWF backing to £100 million. To date, this specific part of their funding has been credited with helping to facilitate the connection of more than 100,000 premises to their network, with around 10,000 customers live and growing.
The combined networks of Netomnia and Brsk currently reach over 1.82 million UK premises as ‘Ready for Service‘, which is home to a total customer base of 190,000 (30th Sept 2024). But the merged group also has a short-term target of growing this FTTP coverage to reach 3 million premises (coverage) by the end of 2025, as well as 1 million customers by 2028 – cementing their position as one of the largest national fibre networks.
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Jeremy Chelot, CEO at Netomnia and Group, said:
“This additional £25 million investment from NWF is a powerful vote of confidence in Netomnia’s vision and execution. It will significantly accelerate our ability to deliver fast, reliable broadband to more homes and businesses across the UK, particularly in underserved communities. We’re not just building infrastructure; we’re laying the foundation for the UK’s digital future, and Netomnia is committed to ensuring no one is left behind.”
Stuart Nivison, NWF Head of Portfolio Management, said:
“This investment will directly support improvements in areas that would otherwise miss out on the opportunities fast, reliable broadband affords, and so we’re pleased to extend our support to Netomnia as an existing client of the National Wealth Fund.”
Take note that the UKIB officially became the NWF on 14th October 2024. The new NWF will expand UKIB’s remit beyond infrastructure in support of the Government’s new industrial strategy. With additional financial capacity and an enhanced risk budget, the NWF will be capitalised with £27.8bn to catalyse private investment in the market.
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.
Probably explains their decision to begin expanding their network from Musselburgh over to Dalkeith, Bonnyrigg, Newtongrange and Gorebridge in the new year. Hopefully they cover all the major towns of Midlothian in 2025
Do you know if they are expanding further east to longniddry area?
Saw them pulling cables in Dalkeith and Mayfield last week.
Dalkeith area was announced nearly 2 years ago. Capacity issues at Eskbank exchange meant they were working from Musselburgh exchange out to Dalkeith.
They seemed to have removed it from their checkers but now show the whole area as planning phase but the spines are going in already.
BIDB shows lots of activity.
100m out of 27b is peanuts especially with all the good work Netomnia is doing. Stingy fund
Maybe they will finally finish Wisbech (PE13 3TL) build?
Forgot how many years waiting now…. . Since 2021 in stage 6, just excuses.
Need only splicing work and can connect customers, but no…
If after all that time you’re still desperate to sign up with them despite having Openreach FTTP and Virgin Media they must be doing something right!
Symmetric dear. And cheaper. And more forward looking.
Yes. I have You8000. I’m aware how good it is.
I would prefer to use a different company than useless Virgin and the awful company called Openreach, belonging to BT if I can
One day they’ll finish Didcot. Probably not my lifetime, but one day it’ll be done.
@Witcher
I need symmetric broadband.
I signed already in summer 2021. Now I have IdNet 1200/120 (OpenReach FTTP), but they don’t have symmetric broadband yet.
Cityfibre still not available here and Virgin I don’t need even for free. How can offer Virgin to people?
You have very heavy needs and I’m sure they won’t disappoint once they arrive. 2G or 8?
@Witcher
Signed for 2 Gig at beginning but doesn’t matter as they just left and seem never will get it done as nearly 3 years they doing nothing and they don’t care. Now they not giving even date anymore. It all started summer 2021…
This raises question how fast they will fix line when something will go wrong… .
I already lost hope to get Netomnia/Youfibre. Noticed that Cityfibre started build in town. Also hope for OR symmetric speeds next year.
Were they selling 2G in 2021, Norman?
Witcher, Netomnia/Youfibre saga started in 2021… .
Started with 1 Gb/s
Upgraded to 2Gb/s as soon it became available.
But, who cares, they promised to go live in December ’21. i was for a year even out of contract with EE as they kept changing go live dates by 2-3 months… .
£1000 per premises is a hefty number for 2024. That’s going to take some time to see a return.
That isn’t their cost per premises it’s how many that money has contributed so far. Their cost to pass each premises is a lot less – you can get an idea from their announcements.
https://www.netomnia.com/news/broadband-boost-for-51k-properties-in-musselburgh
51,000 / £15.3 million = £300 / premises passed
An odd company. Earlier in the year, they spent a fair amount of time running fibre along the main roads in the part of Oxford where I live, then disappeared. Not a single customer connected, so they seemingly wasted that investment.
Brilliant, they can spend another 25m ignoring my town with no alt net of OR FTTP.
Yep. Some of us will never get to experience the services of any of these alt-nets in our lifetime. I’ve given up on every single one of them.
They’re in trouble.
This debt is crazy and not sustainable.
??? They are prob the most efficient altnet
You must be thinking about cityfibre or gigaclear, they have tons of debt per home connected/rfs
John you’re missing the point. It’s not about comparing levels of debt against other altnets. It’s about levels of debt in general.
Yes City Fibre and Gigaclear also horrendous
No you missed the point. Their debt is sustainable because it takes them a lot less time to payback per home