Virgin Media and Nexfibre Near Completion of Upp’s UK FTTP Integration
UK ISP Virgin Media (O2) has today confirmed to ISPreview that they and network operator nexfibre have nearly completed the integration of Upp’s full fibre (FTTP) broadband network. Most of the operator’s premises have already been transferred to nexfibre, but we’re told that the remaining properties should be completed next month (December).
Just to recap. Upp was originally established as a £1bn project to deploy a new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband ISP network across 1 million premises in the East of England (here). But they only ended up reaching 175,000 premises (inc. 4,000 customers) before the UK Government ordered their main backer, LetterOne, to sell the operator over national security concerns that related to their former links with sanctioned Russian oligarchs (here).
LetterOne thus ended up selling Upp, at a loss (i.e. “less than the £143.7m that (LetterOne) had by then invested“), to rival operator nexfibre in September 2023 (here), while partner ISP Virgin Media took on their retail customers. Virgin Media and nexfibre have since been gradually working to integrate Upp’s network and service into their own infrastructure and platforms, which has taken a little longer than some expected.
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At the end of last week one of our readers (credits to Marcus of the ‘Better Internet Dashboard‘) noticed that a sizeable number of Upp’s premises, specifically those in locations where Virgin Media’s service had not previously been present (e.g. Swaffham), suddenly became available for new customers to order (speeds of up to 2Gbps, just like via nexfibre).
The change was big enough to make us think that the integration might have finally completed, although VMO2 has since confirmed to ISPreview that “most” of the premises have now been transferred, albeit “not all of them“. The remaining premises are expected to be fully integrated during December 2024. As a result, the next quarterly progress update from VMO2 and nexfibre in early 2025 should finally include Upp’s premises into their totals.
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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It was the usual story. VM dealt with UPP staff members so shabbily that anyone who could assist with any sort of meaningful migration at scale (and pace) left shortly after the announcement.
We had upp’s engineers laying fibre to our street in Melton Mowbray earlier this year then all went silent. They did not finish the final connections to the houses.i would like to know if and when VM will connect us as we have no fibre and a max DL speed of sub 50Mb on openreach and no details from openreach as to when they will upgrade us (Le131nb).Would love to be able to have the info.
You should be able to order VM via nexfibre in the next few weeks.
Upp had live customers in Melton Mowbray, that moved to VM.
So assuming there was nothing special about your road, you don’t have long to wait .
Melton is currently being cabled by openreach. Chunks of Nottingham road and surrounding estates are already done and I believe asfordby road has a load and the cable gang have been up scalford road.
Sounds like Upp got a lot closer to you than they did me. I watch BIDB every si gle day, since they got bought out BIDB activity for Upp has been maybe 1 or 2 tiny sections of road a month. Virgin media don’t really seem to have taken over, and don’t seem to have done anything other than upgrade their DOCSIS network. Having seen how fast Upp deployed in Stamford and Oakham I have 0 confidence in in VM getting to me up Scalford road any time before the heat death of the universe. Openreach are certainly more active, and I saw them on scalford road today but I want symmetric Internet not their gimped uploads. Cityfibre have supposedly started in Melton too as of the 28th I think they were doing Nottingham Road to Kettleby, and soon to start Leicester Road to kirby bellars. I think CityFibre areare my last hope of symmetric gigabit+. Acording to their website “they have found challenges connecting our property” I’m not sure if that’s their standard thing or if I’m about to be left out of another rollout.
Excellent news. Upp had started rolling out in Newark-on-trent shortly before the VMo2 acquisition – hopefully that will be included.
Yeah it’s an odd one though. There have been a lot of street works in Newark attributed to Upp throughout this year. However, Newark is almost entirely served by Virgin Media HFC and in theory Nexfibre/Upp are not supposed to overlap with Virgin’s existing footprint. Not sure what’s going on there maybe Virgin are also using Upp to upgrade the HFC to full fibre.