Nexfibre and Virgin Media O2’s £2bn Netomnia UK broadband deal in trouble UPDATE2
Full fibre network operator nexfibre has today issued a joint statement with shareholders InfraVia, Liberty Global (Virgin Media) and Telefónica (O2) to confirm that they do not plan to submit any remedies to the Competition and Markets Authority over their £2bn acquisition of Netomnia (Substantial Group). The move comes after the CMA found significant competition concerns.
Nexfibre, which is being backed by InfraVia Capital and shares some of their parentage with VMO2 (i.e. Liberty Global and Telefónica), had originally argued that the deal would have expanded the coverage of their network to 8m premises by the end of 2027 and unlocked a £3.5bn investment in the UK market – assisting in the upgrade of 2.1 million of Virgin Media’s premises from cable (Hybrid Fibre Coax) to full fibre (FTTP) broadband.
However, critics of the deal, such as CityFibre, which had also been attempting to acquire Netomnia before nexfibre tabled the most attractive offer, stated that there was a lot of overlap between the nexfibre / Virgin Media and Netomnia broadband networks. A recent Point Topic study put the overbuild figure at 832,000 premises when looking at the FTTP side of these networks (here), but there’s much more overbuild with HFC (see below).
Advertisement
The CEO of CityFibre, Simon Holden, previously warned that the proposed agreement would “significantly reduce competition and the choice available to consumers, as well as force hundreds of thousands of Netomnia customers back to VMO2” – potentially raising the prospects of the UK returning to a duopoly between Virgin/nexfibre and Openreach.
The situation started to reach a head in early October 2026, after the CMA published their initial report, which showed that they had not been persuaded by nexfibre’s arguments. Instead the competition regulator rejected some of the operators claims and found that the transaction amounted to a relevant merger situation (RMS), which they said was “expected to result in a substantial lessening of competition (SLC) in the wholesale supply of fixed broadband services.”
The CMA’s report was particularly tough, especially given how the UK Government had previously welcomed the agreement, and left nexfibre with few potential options in terms of viable remedies that could be proposed as a resolution.
Statement from InfraVia, Liberty Global and Telefónica:
“The CMA’s Interim Report is fundamentally flawed. Its conclusions rely on counterfactuals that do not reflect the commercial and financial reality of the UK fibre market. In particular, the assumption that CityFibre will acquire Netomnia is not a credible basis on which to judge this transaction. Nor is the assumption that the billions of pounds of investment enabled by this deal would simply happen anyway.
Since the Interim Report was published, that position has become even harder to sustain. BT’s acquisition of TalkTalk is shrinking the available wholesale market, while CityFibre’s latest accounts and debt restructuring raise further questions about its financial viability. The market has moved on and the CMA’s analysis must move with it.
We engaged in good faith on potential remedies, including commitments on investment and wholesale access. But there is no remedies package that can address the CMA’s current counterfactuals, and on that basis we have not submitted one.
The UK now faces a stark choice: a real, funded plan to unlock £3.5 billion of investment and develop a scaled and sustainable challenger to Openreach, or a fantasy future that will never come.
We remain ready to engage constructively with CMA once the counterfactuals reflect the reality of the market.”
As it stands the CMA has yet to publish their final decision, which is working to a statutory deadline of 15th December 2026, although on the surface nexfibre’s decision today would appear to make it increasingly likely that the deal might be formally blocked by the competition authority. Virgin Media will also need to revise some of their plans for upgrading their old HFC (coax) network to FTTP, part of which had become dependent upon the Netomnia deal.
Advertisement
Such an outcome will have wider impacts across the sector as many altnets had been anticipating that approval would help to open the floodgates to further market consolidation. But now any agreements between larger players will need to pay much closer attention to the negative competitive impacts of network overbuild between parties, so as to avoid the same fate as the above deal.
On the flip side today’s news represents a fresh opportunity for CityFibre to make a renewed offer for Netomnia (something they seem to be preparing), albeit one that may not be as financially attractive to the operator’s owners as their agreement with nexfibre (i.e. a lack of competition in the bidding process gives CityFibre more power). This does at least make it more likely that the market will end up with at least three major providers of broadband infrastructure, as opposed to the longer-term risk of a duopoly returning.
The alternative is that the CMA could, having listened to nexfibre’s strongly held objections to their decision above, still have a change of heart.
UPDATE 4:46pm
Advertisement
Just prior to today’s statement an earlier report had indicated that nexfibre were seeking to reopen the CMA’s assessment by raising questions about CityFibre’s financial position (i.e. questioning the viability of the CMA’s counterfactual to their deal), which is a strategy that has worked before and promptly attracted a response from CityFibre.
A spokesperson for CityFibre said:
“The CMA has already examined CityFibre in detail and is well aware of our financial position, our intentions to recapitalise and of the new £900m contribution from our shareholders. All that evidence is already reflected in the CMA’s Interim Report.
Over recent years, CityFibre has invested some £7bn in the UK fibre market and the company expects to invest a further £5bn by 2040. This is on the basis of a clear and consistent regulatory policy, and a robust and independent competition regime.”
CityFibre does have a valid point here, but at the same time nexfibre’s strategy also puts more pressure on them to reach a final agreement on shoring up their finances, ideally sooner rather than later. Failing to do this in a timely fashion now could lend at least some credit to nexfibre’s argument.
The CMA has today effectively already issued an invitation to comment on the possibility of blocking the proposed transaction, partly on the basis of no remedies being offered, which is only open to responses for a week.
UPDATE 21st Oct 2026 @ 8:25am
Just to give a bit of extra context to nexfibre’s strategy above, which wasn’t initially made clear enough. The operator appears to be attempting to follow the same approach as the recent ABF/Hovis merger. The parties involved in that case challenged the counterfactual featured in the Interim Report, prompting a second version to be created and published, which ultimately found in favour of the merger.
As above, this is nexfibre trying to show that CityFibre’s financial situation has changed and that they may struggle to mount a serious bid for Netomnia (a justified aspect to test), which the operator has already responded to above. This is why we’ve suggested yesterday that it will now be much more important for CityFibre to get their underlying finances in order as quickly as possible.
The difficulty here is that the ABF/Hovis merger is not a perfect mirror for the nexfibre/Netomnia case. The two progressed somewhat differently through Phase 2 and for Hovis and ABF, the CMA ruled that the competitive pressure from ABF’s Allied Bakeries would disappear with or without the merger because the business was fundamentally unsustainable.
The situation isn’t quite as clear cut for nexfibre/Netomnia, where the CMA views that the acquisition would harm wholesale broadband competition by removing a critical independent. Granted this does place a lot of focus on CityFibre being the only counterfactual option considered, but Netomnia may also have other prospects for M&A outside of that.
We’re still of the view that nexfibre may be fighting up a hill that’s now already too steep, but then we live in strange times and only recently we didn’t think it was likely that BT would end up taking over TalkTalk either. Today’s market isn’t always predictable.
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.
« Leaving UK broadband ISP Virgin Media ends in huge bill and debt collectors
Advertisement
Leave a Reply
Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message and display names can be almost anything you like (provided they do not contain offensive language or impersonate a real person's legal name). By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your entries for comment content, display name, IP and email in our database, for as long as the post remains live.
Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.
Is this a relief for the Customers and Jeremy? or just the customers!
As the finance firms will still be looking to off load, and or reduce their liability.
No staff and no deal, oh dear oh dear. If I’m the regulator I’m keeping an eye on Netomnia now for what will inevitably poor performance.
What a mess. Is the expectation now the government leans on the CMA to support this? Or, as you say completely dead?
I’d still predict Nexfibre ends up the ultimate consolidator of distressed AltNets, CityFibre just doesn’t have the finances to do it.
And whilst short term competition remains, it’s pretty good for BT folks as Openreach builds and *connects* as the only viable national wholesale network. Not sure CMA has done consumers a long term favour here.
Cityfibre will offer a lower bid than previous (now no other viable buyers) I guess.
No, the CMA has indeed failed to grasp the key essentials.
The CMA are entirely correct. It’s so much better for the consumer to have a choice between half a dozen financial basket cases rather than two or three providers that have the resources to ensure continual investment and are able to actually guarantee a consistent service.
Ed, you are frothing bile about debt.
You may want to check out the humungous pile of debt that VM sits on, and even BT(including pension liability).
They are all in debt.
Slight difference tho between manageable debt and unmanageable, tho. At least VM and BT aren’t begging for forgiveness from their lenders.
Again not true. Look over the years, VM have certainly gone cap in hand over debt and BT were nearly subject of takeover at one point in the past as their price decreased because of pension debt/other debt.
The CMA has failed to consider the key essentials.
The UK market can only support three major players. Any more than that, and none of the players would be able to make sufficient profit to continue investing to complete the roll-out.
The CMA has failed to fix the problems within the sector by blocking this deal. Most of the AltNets are too small to acquire, while they lack the means to consolidate under their own steam. This risks exposing the AltNets to further collapses.
A CityFibre acquisition of Netomnia would just be more of the same, with little sign that CityFibre could benefit from it in the foreseeable future without further funding.
The CMA has blocked the only currently credible grouping that could be expected to compete at scale with Openreach. There would still be three main competitors if Nexfibre had acquired Netomnia, so its arguments are flawed.
The problem is not the lack of three players but the level of debt gambled on the AltNets acquiring market share. This latter problem is not resolved by the CMA’s initial findings, and blocking the Nexfbire/Netomnia deal puts a stopper on the only option so far for any of the non-BT players to break free into a growth trajectory.
Not 2 or 3, if Virgin gets its hands on Netominia it is game over, we are back to square one with only 2 players. The other small ones would gradually disappear or get taken over. Far better for the smaller ones to combine to create a real competitive environment.
Oh, not much can be said. Just have to see what happens from here.
Perhaps VM should take a good long look at how they operate as reflection. i.e. expensive pricing – particularly out of contract, dubious customer service experience as reflected in their user forums which they have now extinguished since February, and publicly threatening not to invest a penny more in fibre deployment in UK if they didn’t get their own way with Netomnia deal as stated in various public speeches.
I still don’t believe conclusion until CMA publish their final report. Hopefully its Cityfibre and they already operate wholesale access to ISP’s, so finally get a 3rd national provider. Having read the speeches by VM stakeholders, to me, it appears they just wanted to squash BT ultimately, probably so they could continue milking customers much like they have done for years (and yes was a customer for many years so fully aware).
VM is not involved in tmaking the bid for Netomina.
It’s VM in most people’s eyes. You can set up a partner, you can setup another company even but its intertwined even when fair trading regulations are applied.
Is it April fools today?
Cityfibre are in no position to successfully acquire Netomnia. The CEO and CFO have effectively been asleep at the wheel in terms of what has been going on in the business for the past 18 months. They have solely focussed on funding rather than the operational and trading aspects of the business (which are disastrous). The strategy now seems to be taking a gun to the heads of shareholders and the banks. If they capitulate to the blackmail, those being forced to take a significant haircut should insist on replacing the full CxO suite and executive team that have presided over years of mismanagement.
100% this! No project has ever been run on time and to budget in the history of CF. The whole oss and bss is held together with sticky tape. Youd think the main accountable person would be gone, but gets promoted to COO and given ever larger accountabilities with each and every reorg. As you say, those who should be holding them to account are not aware of what’s going on or interested in any level of scrutiny. The business has no resilience operationally so any investor beware!
Agree. There is no-one left (well, very few and certainly no leaders) in CityFibre that have even the remote capability of delivering an integration with anyone, let alone something the size of the Netomnia deal. If the investors are stupid enough to provide the money, the result will be a long winded, completely over budget project that bumbles from one painful problem to the next attempting to do the integration. Before the last round of redundancies it was painful; post redundancies there CF are left with an organisation that is more disjointed than before and remains completely rudderless.
I can predict that the end result would be a combined CF / Netomnia with little available capital to effectively run the organisation and grow, a worsening customer service and a network creaking at the seams with no cash or capability to grow to meet demands (all of the things everyone is frightened of with a Nexfibre purchase)
@ByeByeCityFibre
Anger will eat you up inside.
It is the lenders who hold the cards.
Jeremy is very quiet…
Hello 🙂
I assume VMO2 are going to follow through with their threat to stop building then? Oh they aren’t? Ok then.
Telefonica own half the company and are absolutely fuming with UK how UK authorities are, from their point of view, choosing the winners. BT get PXC and TalkTalk within weeks of them being told their joint venture can’t have Netomnia because CityFibre should instead.
Their opinions, allegedly, not mine.
It is not VM that is funding the acquisition; the curtailment of network expansion is also not a threat.
Maybe they’ll just go into administration and BT will gobble them up like PXC/TalkTalk.
Clearly the CMA came to the only logical conclusion. NexFibre and VMO2 share the same parentage and this was clearly an attempt to take out a serious VMO2 competitor. At the same time this deal, if passed, would prevent CityFibre from expanding and competing into those same areas, since it would be financially unviable for a third Altnet to build and compete in the overlap areas.
If the deal is rejected, as now appears on the cards, Netomnia and CityFibre will likely reach a merger agreement and NexFibre/VMO2 will likely use the £2 Billion to upgrade the current DOCSIS/HFC network to FTTP in those same areas; The CMA came to the only decision possible under their own current rules, no one should be surprised by the outcome.
Conflating the BT TalkTalk takeover and this deal, as somehow similar to each other, is clearly obfuscation and wont work
Made zero financial sense to VMO2 anyway, it just seems they were trying to prevent CityFibre acquiring them & becoming a scale competitor as both networks had large amounts of overbuild with VMO2 anyway. Now that CF is in financially distressed state they probably perceive that is less of a threat anyway & the CMA is a good cover for them.
CF have been saying they are coming here for years – they built a little bit out towards the motorway and left.
No, the deal would have helped unblock the logjam and facilitate new investment. That is now effectively lost.
The only thing stopping CityFibre from expanding is its finances.
By suggesting that investment by a third network is unviable, you are undermining your own argument.
The UK market will support three competing major networks. The issue is not the competition between three networks; it is the financial state of many of the players in a market with far too many players.
Until the CMA accepts that prices have to rise, the sector will remain stagnant with the added benefit of the risk of more players going bust.
‘Made zero financial sense to VMO2 anyway’
Other than the £950 million, the half a million new customers, the £200+ million saved on upgrades, the 15% of nexfibre, the increased revenues from operating the network and longer term the NetCo plans, sure. No financial sense at all.
VMO2 weren’t paying. Even if you consider their finances their parent company’s finances as one and the same their parents end up £875 million initially as InfraVia were picking up most of the tab.
Considering the huge overlap between VMO2 and Netomnia networks, the main objective of the acquisition seems to be the elimination of a competitor. With a choice between Virgin Media or “anyone else”, many people will choose “anyone else”, given how badly VM treat their customers. Furthermore, if the “anyone else” is a wholesaler providing a choice of ISPs, the effect is even stronger.
A secondary objective could to be to cover up VMO2’s abject failure to upgrade HFC to fibre, which they claimed would be complete by 2028 but clearly isn’t happening. Presumably it turned out to be much more difficult and expensive than they had thought, but they have not yet acknowledged that it has come to a standstill.
Now they have an extra £2bn in their pockets, they could afford to invest in their own infrastructure, their own customer experience, or create a wholesale offering of their own.
The majority of the over build is in HFC areas, hence one of the reason to buy Netomnia. It’s cheaper to buy the already built network the to rebuild old HFC areas.
There is no major overlap between Nexfibre and Netomnia.
The build plans of all players in the sector have been impacted by rising costs from various sources.
‘A secondary objective could to be to cover up VMO2’s abject failure to upgrade HFC to fibre…
Now they have an extra £2bn in their pockets, they could afford to invest in their own infrastructure, their own customer experience, or create a wholesale offering of their own.’
VMO2 are £950 million in cash and 15% of nexfibre down immediately if it doesn’t happen with another £200+ million *if* they decide to upgrade the 2.1 million prems nexfibre were going to pay for.
We all knew what Virgin’s game was.
Looks like the CMA know it too.
The CMA has consistently failed to demonstrate competence in handling mergers.
I think the CMA is missing the bigger picture here.
The UK fibre market is already under significant financial pressure, with billions invested in overlapping networks, rising debt and many altnets still struggling to reach sustainable profitability.
The suggestion that CityFibre acquiring Netomnia is somehow the more credible outcome raises some serious questions. CityFibre is reportedly trying to restructure billions in debt, yet the CMA appears comfortable treating its acquisition of another major network as the likely alternative. On what financial basis?
Theres also the timing of BTs acquisition of TalkTalk, which makes the regulatory position look increasingly inconsistent.
That said, nexfibre walking away from remedies is a significant gamble. The CMA cannot simply ignore competition concerns because the industry needs consolidation.
What concerns me most is what happens to the industry if this deal collapses. Investment decisions get delayed, build programmes slow down, contractors suffer and ultimately jobs are put at risk. This is evident in todays market and I have seen first hand of this impact to the work force.
The UK fibre industry needs consolidation, but it also needs some commercial realism from the regulator. Blocking one transaction based on an alternative that may never materialise doesn’t necessarily protect competition.
I’d be interested to see what the CMA believes happens next if CityFibre cannot secure the funding required to acquire Netomnia. Because that seems to be a fairly fundamental question that still needs answering.
If the deal collapses due to gov interference then all these other companies underwater will be unable to get any sort of investment
The TalkTalk situation is totally different. The free market, ie all of BT’s competitors, had months to make a successful takeover bid. It failed to do so and BT was tasked to pick up the pieces with the understanding that the government will wave it through. BT was clearly not a willing buyer and it is unclear if they’re going to make a profit on it overall.
Netomnia are not insolvent. They are not at risk of collapse. They (presumably) don’t have countless vulnerable and CNI customers who can’t tolerate a significant outage if the plugs were literally pulled. VMO2Nexfibre is not making a credible argument by comparing the two situations.
I agree with Ivor, was a different set of circumstances, and collapse would have caused significant issues. Netomnia were not bankrupt or as large (in terms of actual paying customers – residential and business)
Woop Woop GOOD
VM are horrible. I was actually planning to leave when they took over.
I suspect customer churn already started when news of VMO2 was taking over for those out of contract, or nearing end within 8 months or so. Even though Netomonia never delivered to my own address after sending lettes saying it was coming and online checkers saying they were doing work to enable for 2 years+, I had managed to get other members of the family (both sides) onto Netomnia in that time. Of course, the moment VM strided in, those contracts would end and not be renewed. Nobody wanted to be under VM’s operating practices.
I agree Fanny.
I actually kept my FTTP going on a cheap monthly deal just so I could get rid of Youfbire once Virgin took over. At least I can shut it down for the next 23 months now. (New contract)
Will we see a price rises by YouFibre now?
I hope not it’s fixed for the next 21 months
I am suprised CF kicked up such a fuss. In my case they did about 1/3 of the town and then left again.
I’d love to have multiple ISP’s by choice – It’s not like they have said they are going to fill in where they feared the merger would tread
Weird lot
Microsoft can gobble up Activision, massively reducing competition, and the CMA thinks that is OK.
Vodafone can gobble up 3, massively reducing competition, and the CMA thinks that is OK.
Nandy and the Labour government pave the way for BT Group to gobble up TalkTalk, massively reducing competition, and the CMA are OK with that also.
Can anyone say not fit for purpose?
Cue CityFibre tabling a lower bid. Which is doomed to fail?
And then what? Nandy and the Labour government pave the way for…..
Making a videogame is not the same as a broadband subscription. If anything the videogame market is more inflated than ever before since anyone can just make a game with a few prompts. Activision being bought does not change this fact, all it does is burn a pocket in microsoft so that they can attempt to make a cod that doesnt suck
The CMA has not yet published its preliminary investigation into the BT Group’s acquisition of TalkTalk Group.
““significantly reduce competition and the choice available to consumers”
Says the people who build a little bit of somewhere and then leave. They reduce their own competition and take away the choice!
They were avoiding Brsk/Netomnia. Brsk/Netomnia didn’t overbuild CityFibre in most places either.
Great news, finally a sane decision from the CMA forces the hand. Good luck seeing that ‘£2bn’ for investment, it mostly debt and equity swaps. Hopefully CF get Netomnia for a song now and we can see some proper consolidation.
The £2 billion was cash and acquired debt, zero equity.
Let’s be honest.. CMA are right about the overbuild.. just didn’t make sense and I suspect VM are breathing a sigh of relief.. paying way too much.. everyone knows it..
will be interesting to see IF CF do go for Netomnia.. I wouldn’t and if I did I would go in significantly cheaper (especially after Jezza shook hands on the deal).. my feeling a better option would be comm fibre… but again .. can CF afford it? Interesting times..
Jeremy since your replying , hello to you aswell….. how would you now approach this considering the view of some is you completely abandoned your challenges ethos and decided to sell to an incumbent as your company called them , with binary choices as it was stated by your company ,in some eyes it was a complete sell out , especially for lots of your staff,
Not to mention the customers who where sold a choice but where and might still end up ultimately as vm customers. How to you defend the same apart from it was money driven .
Sorry – if you actually think that was jeremy, then I have some magic beans you might want to buy.
@Completely Real Jeremy – You mean… just LIE? You really think someone would do that? Just go on the Internet and tell LIES?
What’s your price? That was him.
If the Liberty Global/Telefonica JV is forced to abandon the bid for Netomina, CityFibre is not going to automatically be the beneficiary. CityFibre will want to make sure that any bid it makes is not priced too low.
Without a new bidder other than CityFibre entering the competition for Netomnia, this response to the CMA from the Liberty Global/Telegonica JV, in effect, marks the end of the fibre buildout in the UK.
BT Group is still building, but this investment is already coming to an end, and future build expectations will already have been scaled back due to increased costs in recent years and the economic outlook. Few others are undertaking new builds under their own steam to any significant extent. The Government’s funding for special cases cannot be maintained at its current levels under current financial pressures, while at the same time a continuous stream of new regulation will only add to the cost of delivery.
CityFibre is stretched. A successful bid by CityFibre for Netomnia or any other network will consume management and financial resources in the consolidation process. It would be difficult to achieve this and improve returns at the same time during the consolidation. Even with its existing proposals, CityFibre is not aiming particularly high on its delivery of newbuild. It is not clear if CityFibre would achieve any significant benefit from added scale without further funding.
If the CMA, Ofgem and the Government allow CityFibre to acquire Netomnia, BT Group would be reasonably well placed to demand changes to the regulatory regime. Specifically, one area it could point to is the debt financing of unsustainable business models within the sector, facilitating undercutting of market rates – an item that is already topical following the failure of the TalkTalk Group.
Far your so far off the mark , CF’s long term goals and targets are all achieved by a Netomnia merger, rfs homes , percentage uptake, ebitda all would increase to achieve long term goals in one swoop , actually at one point previously it could have been argued net could have came for cf , both companies and the rest of the alt net market while borrowing cheap knew this type of infrastructure was long term , investors would throughout investment cycles look to claw back/change , what wasn’t on the cards was the scale and ammount of altnets , most of these where always going to be sold off to bigger fish , with cost of borrowing so high the pressures on the companies has increased and forced market into m and a over companies naturally doing it over time . VM debts are hardly small , have existed since time began and aren’t getting better , the move was a straight removal of competiton and blocker of consumer choice , there’s no other way to look at it . The rest of the altnet market consolidating is correct thing to happen , vm/nexfibre can and should target non overlapping altnets , but will they?……..seems people forget how these incumbents where charging staggered costs for different variations of fibre for years when fibre wasn’t even what people where getting , Cf deserve so much praise for kickstarting altnets all over the uk , consumers have no idea how much they where taken advantage of and how long it might have happened had cf and companies alike not started , this deal was another attempt to hoodwink the consumer
The end of build means: no investment and lots of job losses…It is sad for the U.K.
Appreciate you’re a big CityFibre fan, Anonymous, but doesn’t change that in their last accounts their interest bill was over twice their total revenue and they’ve spent over £6 billion passing less than 5 million premises. They, single-handedly, made financing for the sector more expensive with their insane cash burn rate and cost per premises passed.
Unsure how often it has to be pointed out but VMO2’s debt would be at least £950 million lower if this deal went through.
I find VMo2 stance on this bizarre. They had to see this coming which is why they went straight to a phase 2 investigation.
CMA isn’t stupid (well not completely) on this merger they’re spot on. Because the deal is clearly not about Nexfibre taking the network on, Virgin want it for themselves and are using the Nexfibre as a front to act like they’re separate companies.
This would be equivalent to BT prior to dividing into Openreach and BT. CMA aren’t going to do the leg work on this for Virgin, who knows fine well what remedy is required. They have to structurally separate their network and retail business. This way they will own a wholesale network which offers equal treatment of any ISP wanting to use their network.
City fibre don’t have this issue as they don’t own a retail brand so there is conflict of interest.
If VMo2 concede and offer this as a remedy the deal will go through, but this is where VMo2 really show their colours because they have spent the last 2 decades slagging off BT and Openreach and how their must be extreme regulation, now the shoe is on their other foot they want to slide by.
‘Because the deal is clearly not about Nexfibre taking the network on, Virgin want it for themselves and are using the Nexfibre as a front to act like they’re separate companies.’
Nope. Wholesale covering both nexfibre and the VMO2 XGSPON footprint is about ready to go. Infrastructure has been worked on all year. It wasn’t offered as a remedy because it was in the submissions already provided to the CMA.
Build always becomes built , the boom in jobs was inevitable, the decline as inevitable, if your the Jeremy we think you are what a cop out reply ,
Build exists still just in things like power where lots of experience and skills are transferable ,
Not sure jobs where anywhere near the forefront of thoughts during the sell out discussions
‘Build always becomes built’
Probably the wrong site to make that claim. Nowhere has come close to the level of employment FTTP has generated over the last years.
CityFibre’s backers have yet to announce any agreement to the proposed debt refinancing other than the additional funding. The scope of the proposed agreement would amount to nearly GBP 4bn. While that proposal remains unresolved, the claims regarding CityFibre’s financial stability remain valid.
CityFibre is itself a potential takeover target. Even if the Nexfibre takeover of Netomnia were to continue, we would still have the basis of the three major network providers. However, in the absence of that takeover, we would be stuck with just one.
I’ve made the point before, but will again. At the current time, there are only two fibre wholesale providers to the major ISPs – Openreach and CityFibre. NextFibre / VM do not currently offer a wholesale product. Netomnia say they have a wholesale platform, as do many other altnets, but none of the major ISPs (who make up the vast majority of the retail customer base, buy from them). If CF take over Netomnia, there will still be only two Wholesale providers. If Nexfibre take over Netomnia AND offer a wholesale product with attractive terms to Sky, Vodafone and the smaller players, then there will still be two Wholesale operators in those areas.
The best thing NexFibre can do is launch their own Wholesale product and announce Vodafone and Sky as customers, only then will there truly be three Wholesale providers for FTTP. And the retail suppliers can choose which network to place their order based on price and performance (install and ongoing).
At that point it really will become interesting as there will be three Wholesale operators competing and also the Retail choices.
Oh some happy news for once, I sincerely hope that Virgin do not get their way. There should be an extremely high bar for either. Irvin or OpenReach to be given the go ahead to acquire other network operators. I would much prefer consolidation of some of the smaller players into a larger group that would see a third operator in a better position to compete with the two incumbents. Virgin was formed by buying up all the cable TV companies, they shouldn’t be allowed to do the same with fibre broadband providers.
Think about all the investment and jobs that are going to be lost if it happens…I don’t think you should celebrate that. It is sad 🙁
Fibre roll out completes at some point and jobs disapear anyway. Many people lost their jobs in any industry due to takeovers, outsourcing, transformations, economic constraints. It bee happening for years and is accelerating particularly under AI going forward. Investment would be there by another fibre provider. If you ate the real Jeremy you’ll get a golden handshake to go anyway.
You can’ really compare BT purchasing TalkTalk to the merger. One is two service providers merging and the other is wholesale ISP merging. It would be a massive blow to the industry were Nexfibre to acquire Netomnia, rural customers would be back to choosing between OR and Virgin again with no competition other than service providers reliant OR. A CityFibre merger would at least add competition to rural and smaller cities outside of London. Cruel that so many engineers/employees have gone through a redundancy on the back of this.
Ahh right.. Now things are starting to make sense, this is why my YF connection is no longer symmetrical ?!?
1800mbps package, (2gbps down only 1.3gbps up!!) YF support NO help, 3 days of back and forth on chat, Still no help lol. YF shouldn’t have merged with VMO2 then my backhaul would be over Fibre pair rather than HFC coaxial.. That’s my thoughts on the situation anyway! Also, the fact the marketplace is returning back to basically a monopoly..