Virgin Media UK and Nexfibre Expand Full Fibre to 13,000 Homes in Stoke

Broadband operator nexfibre, which shares some of their UK parentage with retail ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), has today announced that they’ve made their 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network available to more than 13,000 additional homes in the city of Stoke-on-Trent (Staffordshire, England).

The city already had a significant level of coverage from Virgin Media’s own gigabit broadband network, although the nexfibre build – most of which has taken place around the edges of the city – means they’re now able to reach the vast majority of local premises. Both Openreach and Freedom Fibre (Lila Connect) also have a significant level of FTTP coverage in the city, as well as the usual smattering of smaller builds from Hyperoptic and others.

Nexfibre itself has already covered around 1.6 million premises across the UK with their new full fibre network, and they’re currently in the process of investing another £1bn this year, which should enable them to cover an additional 1 million UK premises by the end of 2024 (reaching a total footprint of c.2m).

Just for some context. Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners originally set up 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.