Virgin Media UK and Nexfibre Bring Full Fibre to 12,000 Homes in Sleaford

Network operator nexfibre and supporting broadband ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), which share some of the same parentage, have today announced that they’ve expanded the reach of their symmetric 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network to more than 12,000 homes in the Lincolnshire market town of Sleaford “for the first time“.

The town was previously dominated by full fibre broadband coverage from Openreach, Lightspeed Broadband and Netomnia’s (YouFibre, Brsk etc.) respective networks, as well as a few smaller deployments by Hyperoptic, OFNL and possibly others (Quickline is nearby too but seems to have stopped short of fully entering the town). Suffice to say that Sleaford isn’t short of competition for gigabit broadband connectivity.

Nexfibre, which reflects a £4.5bn joint venture between Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners (here), has so far already covered around 2.3 million premises across the UK with their new full fibre network. But the operator’s original plan to cover “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT currently served by Virgin Media’s network of 16m+ premises was recently dealt a blow by Telefonica’s strategic review (here).

At present, nexfibre now only expects to reach 2.5 million UK premises by the end of 2025 and uncertainty remains over what comes next. But Virgin Media has recently announced the creation of a new fixed wholesale until, which will enable retail ISPs to harness both of their FTTP networks (here) – currently available to a combined 7 million UK premises.