Nexfibre Publish Reduced Q1 2025 UK Full Fibre Broadband Build Update
Nexfibre, which shares some of their parentage with ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), recently published their latest quarterly (Q1 2025) build update and confirmed that their new 10Gbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network now covers 2.2 million UK premises. But a big chunk of their future build plan for 2025-26 has now vanished.
Just to recap. Back in 2022 Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners setup nexfibre as a new £4.5bn joint venture (here), which aimed to deploy an open access (wholesale) full fibre network to reach “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT served by Virgin Media’s own network of 16m+ premises. The funding reflects £3.3bn of fully underwritten financing and up to £1.4bn in equity commitments.
However, it’s worth noting that nexfibre’s latest Q1 2025 build update was recently published, which now reflects the impact from wider events that we covered last week (here). In short, nexfibre now only expects to reach 2.5 million premises in 2025 (they had previously been adding c.1m premises per year), which compares with 2.2 million premises ready for service today (up from 2m in Q4 2024).
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The CEO of Liberty Global, Mike Fries, attributed part of this slowdown to JV partner Telefonica and their recently announced strategic review, including the related uncertainty flowing from the Spanish operator’s new leadership (inc. political influence from the government of Spain).
In addition, Fries talked about Liberty Global’s desire toward “retaining capital discipline in an increasingly irrational altnet environment“, although he also spoke of pursuing more growth through M&A (consolidation) with other alternative network operators. So less new build, but possibly more consolidation, seems to be the plan.
Suffice to say that the above changes within the JV have already had an impact on the latest nexfibre build update. For example, a lot of areas across South West and South East England, as well as Wales, seem to have completely vanished from the Q1 map of planned build locations in 2025-26. But on a more positive note, much of nexfibre’s planned deployment across Scotland remains intact.
You can get a better idea by looking at the visualisation of nexfibre’s earlier Q3 2024 and Q1 2025 build maps below.
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Nexfibre Build Maps – Q3 2024 (Left) vs Q1 2025 (Right)
The above comparison may also provide some clues as to where nexfibre may be looking when they contemplate future mergers and acquisitions. Speaking of which..
Rajiv Datta, CEO of nexfibre, said:
“As we look ahead, we are mindful that a significant proportion of our build plan would result in overbuild with existing altnet infrastructure in the current fragmented environment. This would clearly be an inefficient use of the significant capital we have available and do nothing to help move the market to a healthier place.
We’ve long said that the current market structure is unsustainable, and we continue to believe that industry rationalisation and consolidation is both inevitable and necessary. That’s why we’re reassessing our plans with a view to using some of our financial capability in a smarter way to seize opportunities as they emerge.
Our mission remains unchanged: to create a national-scale challenger to Openreach, in collaboration with our partner Virgin Media O2”
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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Until Nexfibre goes truly wholesale, it’s hard for me to sympathise with their woes, such as they are.
Most businesses want to make their offerings as accessible as possible.
Nexfibre instead tie themselves to Virgin and its ghastly reputation.
Want money? Make it appealing to potential customers to want to give it to you.
I’m nigh on desperate to throw money at anyone who’d give me a solid symmetrical fibre connection. I’d even happily sign up for a 10Gbps package. Just let me use a respectable ISP and my own hardware. Easy peasy.
Needless to say, the money is there. The offerings, however, are nil.
If you need for symmetric service is so important and urgent, plenty of ISPs will sell you a leased-line using Openreach EADs or other suppliers.
And that’s the beauty of most ALTNETS.
Using superior modern technology, not legacy GPON, and offering symmetric, usually at cheaper prices than asymmetric with BT. Who cares a stuff, at a residential level, for leased lines from BT/Brokenreach at horrendous pricing and installation cost?
Presumably the original poster who claims no-one is currently offering him a symmetrical service despite being willing to pay for one.
Could they look at buying Trooli who have a large presence across the South East?
VM is like a terminal disease. It’s loaded up with debt, milks customers at every opportunity.
I’d rather keep my ALTNET in my area as Netomnia has no in contract prices increases, re-contracting means you can have new customer pricing, and you can use your own router with speeds currently up to 8gbps.
I really do not want NexFibre OR VM taking over Netomnia. They obviously eying up Netomnia because they dropped DOVER area of Nexfibre roll out (yes it has HFC already, but was on Nexfibre’s roll out last time).
Netomnia’s You Fibre doesn’t help itself though. On two occasions for other members of the family, their customer services totally ignored emails about new customer taking the service. If it wasn’t for me, they would have connected. And I am still waiting for them in my road, despite promising by addressed letter two years ago and metres away, other roads have it. I think this is because they are waiting for BT to complete work.
So Jeremy, I know you visit this forum, for freaks sake sort your customer services team out – you could be losing new customers who are NOT impressed when they ask a question before signing-up. You do not want to lose money, so VM take you over.
On one date an email was about static IP and IPV6, months later another email from a different email address was about whether you still supply a Grandstream ATA adapter (or similar) for landline use when customers use their own router. Both members of family were not going to sign up because of no response, they said they were not impressed and wondered what service would be like going forward.
Perhaps they would like to complete the work in Dankshire town, as the other altnets promising connectivity seem to have vanished.
Part of the area is already ducted (and have been checked), other parts have existing poles.
Never before in human history has a project to create decent connectivity in a country been so farcical.
NextFibre really need to focus on completing their rollouts in the towns and villages they’re already in, instead of this mismatched patchwork they currently have.
Edit:they still haven’t included Upp’s previous rollout in their list
Why? What benefit do they get from ‘finishing’ towns? If they’ve covered all the properties that are economic to serve in a town, job done. They don’t have the same driver as Openreach who need to work towards closure of their copper network.
Details – https://www.nexfibre.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/05/nexfibre-Q125-coverageupdate-web.pdf
Already linked in the article above, in bold.
From Rajiv Datta’s forward “In just over two years, our progress has been remarkable; expanding our full fibre network to more than 2.2million premises, faster than any other UK network operator”. Really? Openreach do that every 6 months.
Looking at their list and map, they are not coming here now, not a bad thing, give Zzoomm or what ever it becomes to get more of a foothold.
I bet Openreach breathed a sigh of relief, and Zzoomm I expect. Saying that, at least our roads and paths won’t be dug up again for a new network.
Maybe Nexfibre realised that this city is too small for three networks,
Almost no blue anywhere outside Scotland which is pretty much the hardest place to rollout in the country due to whoever had the bright idea of placing poles in peoples backyards
Why does nexfibre exist if not to gobble up the AltNets? That seems remote at this point, so….?
WALES! If it was for Ogi and Netomnia, we would be still using wet string and tin cans!
Thank you Jeremey may be some expansion in North Wales Now?
It’s now looking like my only hope now is going to be from Openreach. Nexfibre looked to be coming but it has now been removed.
CityFibre have deployed but left the work unfinished, and I have little faith they will actually come back and get it up and running.
My street is a yellow/white area on that recent map that was published, making out it is project gigabit dependant. I just pray that Openreach pick up the job and build it. A few build projects of that type have been going on around it so fingers crossed.
so yeah, Nexfibre was de to start the build at the end of the year and West Cumbria seems to have been cancelled.
Nexfibre started laying cables last june 24 in Gretna Dumfriesshire and completed by Oct 24 and we are still waiting on it going live!!
The updated rollout plan seems to be incorrect as the it does not contain Kingsbury (North Warwickshire), but as I type their ground crew are just installing the street equipment?
Does this mean they will finish streets and areas they had started work in. I’m sure there must be places currently in limbo with the work paused before this change was made.
It is disappointing though considering they did appear to be a savour to people without gigabit, plowing cash into areas without Virgin with so much ambition. The wheel seems to have fallen off somewhat.