Virgin Media may harness Openreach’s full fibre to extend UK broadband reach
In a surprising development, it’s being reported that Virgin Media (O2) are allegedly close to reaching a deal that would enable them to extend their UK broadband coverage by harnessing Openreach’s (BT) national Full Fibre (FTTP) network for new customers, albeit only in areas they don’t yet serve with their own fibre. But Virgin’s existing FTTP upgrade scheme would stop.
At present Virgin Media and nexfibre’s combined UK broadband network already reaches a total of around 19 million Homes Serviceable (both share some of the same parentage), which includes around 9 million served via their full fibre (FTTP – XGS-PON and RFOG) lines and the rest using legacy Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC / DOCSIS 3.1) infrastructure. But there are around 32 million potential premises across the UK.
Virgin Media also has an ongoing upgrade programme (Project Mustang / Fibre Up), which has been slowly working to harness their existing cable ducts in order to make FTTP available across their existing HFC estate too. The original goal was to complete that work by the end of 2028, but that target hasn’t been mentioned for a while (likely shelved).
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The previously agreed £2bn deal to acquire Netomnia would have helped to expanded the coverage of nexfibre’s side of this FTTP network to 8m premises by the end of 2027 (currently 2.6m) and unlocked a £3.5bn investment in the UK market – while also assisting in the upgrade of 2.1 million of Virgin Media’s premises from cable (Hybrid Fibre Coax) to full fibre (FTTP) broadband. But recent developments suggest that this agreement may be rejected by the CMA on competition grounds.
The above provides some context for a new report in the Financial Times (paywall), which claims that Virgin Media are set to halt both the planned upgrade of their existing HFC network and future deployments of new FTTP infrastructure – partly due to the need to make c.£600m of significant cost cuts and ease pressure from a c.£22bn debt mountain.
Instead, the report claims that VMO2 are close to reaching an agreement that would enable them to harness Openreach’s existing FTTP network in areas the operator doesn’t yet serve itself. All of those involved have so far declined to comment on the report.
However, it’s worth noting that the CMA have not yet made a final decision on whether to clear or block the proposed Netomnia deal with nexfibre, thus there could be some tactical merit in leaking these discussions to the media as a way of highlighting VMO2’s own counterfactual to a rejection of that deal – one where Openreach’s biggest competitor ultimately becomes more dependent upon the national incumbent, while stopping it’s own fibre build and upgrades.
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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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Bring back o2 broadband!
This sucks! Not only was i hopeful of the expansion of their network, i was at least hoping that they would finish upgrading their network from hfc to fttp.
They are currently upgrading around here. They’ve just gone round putting in new cabinets, chambers and unblocking ducts. It would be crazy not to finish the job. We don’t get OR fibre here, so don’t have an alternative.
While you’d imagine that they’d finish the work they started Community fibre did a lot of work near me and then stopped. There are CF cabinets and manhole covers that have been sitting there for 5 years. VM02 are a much bigger company and presumably they’d be able to finish the jobs they’ve started
They’ll finish the ongoing projects, Dave.
Why would it matter to you what they do with their network assets? Surely your only point of interest is the service they could potentially offer to you.
@Polish Poler :
I am not sure that is the case. Work that is near completion will continue, but it is unlikely that they will complete work streams if expenditure on that work has yet to reach the cut-off threshold. It would be more cost-effective to just terminate work streams that have not yet incurred significant expenditure, for instance.
I’m in the same position. Netomnia stopped installing full fibre on our estate when the proposed takeover by Virgin Media came to light, Openreach decided years ago it was too expensive for them to do it and now we’re left with unconnected FibreUp cabinets installed 2 months ago…
They have to do something. Not reaching over 33% of country is surely not viable going forward.
They are, they going to utilise OR.
They were way too late to the game, even OR recognised the urgency and did a rollout at lightning speed, whilst VM started a turtle paced rollout with no rollout schedule and were trying to remove competition to compensate.
I wonder if their TV service would be available on the openreach network too. This could really help them compete with Sky in areas they never could.
Since Virgin’s STREAM box is basically just a broadband-based IPTV solution, then the underlying infrastructure should no longer be an obstacle. You’d still need to be a customer of their broadband service first though.
As Mark said. Their Stream product is IPTV, but just to add they already have they GO product that allows for TV streaming “off-network”, So I can’t see too many hurdles they would need to jump to make it possible.
Not looked too deeply into VM’s tech stack, cause its VM… But Even Sky’s stream product uses unicast rather than multicast which seems to be fine for everyday TV streaming over Openreach.
Wow this is bad.
What will happen to the old HFC network.
Left to wither and people will be switched to Openreach FTTC.
They will end up with a horrible mishmash of technologies.
We will end up with much less competition to Openreach.
They needed to accelerate, this looks like surrender. Not sure what their purpose will be.
“… the old HFC network Left to wither and people will be switched to Openreach FTTC.”
Just nonsense.
“which claims that Virgin Media are set to halt both the planned upgrade of their existing HFC network and future deployments of new FTTP ”
Just going by the article. If you can get faster on Openreach FTTP why bother maintaining or upgrading the copper network, as time goes on.
Were you aware that you wrote FTTC not FTTP?
The details of all that is planned have yet to be made public. The likely outcome of any consolidations and migrations will be a customer base hosted on a mix of wholesale-provided networks, with the VMO2 entity becoming an ISP.
HFC will stay, they even rolling out 2 gigabit services on it now.
For 99% of people providing HFC isnt too congested, it will do the job fine.
I’ll be curious about the supposed details and how they would differentiate themselves from most other OR based providers, because quite frankly not being OR based was their biggest and things like TV aren’t as unique these days.
Guess they’d also be a in favour of OR discounts now?
Smells like BS… Or with how how they have been currently acting, a used diaper, because I’m left wondering how many more toys do they have left to throw out of their pram!?
WAAH WAAH WAHH! We can’t buy Netomnia, so we are not going to upgrade to FTTP, in fact HFC is brilliant, its best thing since sliced bread (regrading their recent statement about how MOST people only care about if the pipe is reliable not the type of pipe itself, I mean they ain’t wrong)! Next they are gonna say they never wanted Netomnia in the first place and they are a bunch of stinky heads (Friendship ended with Netomnia / Now Openreach is my best friend.)!
Here’s an idea VMO2/nexfibre – Use that 2 billion you wanted to spend on Netomnia and upgrade your network and dethrone Openreach like you said you wanted to do with the Netomnia deal? I thought it was only costing you ~£100 per perm passed to upgrade your existing network with Fibre Up, lets bee generous and say that figure has tripled since you said that figure, that still half as expensive as your paying for Netomnia!
And they wonder why they have the rep that they do!
VMO2 weren’t paying for Netomnia and are £950 million down if the deal doesn’t happen. It was nearly all being financed by InfraVia, the other partner in nexfibre.
Sorry to interrupt the rant with, you know, facts.
Without the Nexfibre deal, there will be no release of capital.
I think mustang was never going to finish anyway, and the nexfibre project was also questionable given how late they are to the game. It seems they have just brought forward the announcement.
Notice e.g. how they had no published rolout schedule like Openreach did, they were never committed.
Hard reality biting.
In my view this really questions why did they spend so much on the Netomnia purchase. Was it simply to stop City Fibre.
They didn’t. InfraVia, the other partner in nexfibre, were funding virtually all of the Netomnia transaction. VMO2 were in line for £950 million in cash, the YouFibre customer base and network, and millions of premises of theirs being upgraded at zero cost to them. They have a lot of debt. Saving Capital expenditure very useful to them.
There has been no exchange of funds, given that the deal has not been finalised. It would seem, however, that there are some service contracts in place.
Shame if they stop current planned upgrades, on the wirral they’ve installed all the new cabs for FTTP and was hoping to get it but seen nothing since they were installed a year or so ago.
Those should get finished, Chris.
@Polish Poler:
I am not sure will happen in every case.
A little off topic but the Virgin Media office pictured in the article is its Sunderland office – famous amongst VM old hands as being the address to post cancellations by recorded delivery given that every other possible route used to be routinely stonewalled until Ofcom finally cracked down.
This is pure theatre to pile pressure on CMA to approve Netomnia deal and nothing more.
If they went down this route, they would be dependent on Openreach pricing, provide an asymmetric service because over 99% of the Openreach full fibre is GPON. Only a third get XGS-PON over next five years as stated by Openreach and the symmetric option would be expensive, more than VM charge today.
For one, my HFC connection would be cancelled after being a customer since 2007 – no need to wait for symmetric Nexfibre/Fibre Up anymore. Who would choose VM as an ISP on Openreach when there are plenty of others who would be cheaper and provide far superior customer service/support….
Beginning of their demise if they went ahead and did this.
They’ve been working on this for ages. They didn’t abruptly start on it when there was a negative response from the CMA.
The symmetric thing done to death.
No. It allows them to increase their potential customer base by 50% without spending capex on network rollout. It’s a logical and sensible move.
Openreach’s prices are regulated. If all the other ISPs riding their network can make money using them, so can Virgin.
And no-one cares about symmetry. If they did, Openreach wouldn’t be the largest network.
So, in areas not having HFC/Fibre which the article wavers around- who would choose VM over other Openreach ISP’s then? Why not just hop straight onto Openreach anyway without VM and pick a better ISP?
As so many say on here, passing a property does not equal take up.
Symmetric was stated in my own case, and the fact that VM had the option on both Nexfibre and Upgraded HFC>FTTP areas. Going Openreach creates another exception with a provider that you can’t, so their service catalogue offering becomes conditional/complex to customers.
This is not theatre; this is the real world.
We have known since 2025 that vmO2 was not going to complete the upgrade of its heritage infrastructure under prevailing market and financial conditions. This is a natural outcome of those considerations.
@FANNY ADAMS :
This is not about customer numbers; this is about cutting costs, increasing returns, and freeing up capital. Don’t be surprised if there are not more announcements to come; it is, after all, a business, not a hobby.
I have had VM people telling me for months mustang wasnt getting done for my area, and OR deal isnt done in 5 minutes, they clearly have been working on thios for a while, also evident in that a 2gigabit rollout has started on DOCSIS.
And to add, if they did do this, then they should be forced to open their ducts for others to use as if they are using Openreach that would likely be pole deployment and the ducts could then have the coax removed/reduced and used by another party.
Time for regulator to get tough in response to this tantrum they are throwing.
As per if you’d bothered to look into it before offering your opinions you’d have read that the Openreach agreement apparently involves areas outside their network coverage. The duct network, not just where they’ve fibre in it. They aren’t going to be clearing their ducts of cabling and leaving them empty to lease use of ducts and poles from Openreach.
Why? What reason is there for Virgin to have to share their ducts? Because they have a plan you don’t like? What competition imbalance would be rectified by mandating duct sharing?
The usual bile from Polish Poler.
The article at the top stated “But Virgin’s existing FTTP upgrade scheme would stop.” aka FibreUp/Mustang. Confirmed later by saying the original 2028 date was shelved. Any complaints, ask the person who wrote the article.
‘The article at the top stated “But Virgin’s existing FTTP upgrade scheme would stop.” aka FibreUp/Mustang. Confirmed later by saying the original 2028 date was shelved. Any complaints, ask the person who wrote the article.’
Article is accurate. It doesn’t say anything about using Openreach instead of upgrading their network.
‘Instead, the report claims that VMO2 are close to reaching an agreement that would enable them to harness Openreach’s existing FTTP network in areas the operator doesn’t yet serve itself.’
For clarity:
‘Under the proposed deal, Virgin Media O2 would use BT’s Openreach network to serve new customers in areas not covered by its existing network, the report said’
They aren’t using Openreach where they have network. HFC or FTTP.
They may well sell off the heritage network to an asset management business in a similar move to that made by BT Group. They are likely to transfer headcount to contractor service providers as well to reduce costs.
I would add that, rather than criticising the business, I suggest you direct your venom at the government for its heavy-handed regulation of the sector and for the damage it has caused to the UK business environment in general. It is excessive government spending that has caused the rise of UK borrowing costs to a level that businesses can not cope with.
Lol’z . Fate is not without a sense of irony it seems.
I find it hard to believe the 33% of the country they don’t cover figure. Surely it’s way higher than this .
18.8 million homes serviceable in July 2026. So more like 40% of total UK homes they don’t reach.
Ha!and yet they can’t even sync the clocks going back 1hr on my VM hub 5 which is well known issue with their various hubs and backend infrastructure,that must ooze confidence to potential hook up business partners.♂️
This is terrible news for Cityfibre. Virgin and Openreach will be massively incentivised to win back ground in areas that has no existing Virgin network but where Sky and other have taken business away from Openreach to Cityfibre. Cityfibre also has a big churn problem, so this will only exacerbate that.
Virgin Media are at a bit of a crossroads. Their USP always used to be that they offered the fastest speeds even if it was at a premium price. They also had a TV service albeit essentially a repacked version of Sky. Now multiple networks are springing up that are faster and/or cheaper than VM, so why pick VM? Some of these companies are offering TV services but that’s gradually being replaced by streaming. The only thing they’ve got left is branding and inertia. They should have moved over to FTTP 10 years ago, now it seems like they’ve lost all their ground and now they’ve got an uncompetitive offering so they won’t catch up
Facts, mostly. 10 years ago there was no business case to upgrade to fibre. They still had the fastest speeds nearly everywhere.
They knew they’d have to respond to FTTP but how and when were open questions. They weren’t late to the game with the rest of the Liberty Global family and needed to know how much upgrading the HFC would cost relative to the full fibre build.
It might cost £100 a premises to upgrade the network to full fibre but that backloads a lot of the costs of getting a customer connected to it.
No Cam was right. They had leading speeds and should have accelerated conversion of HFC quicker in past few years.
Instead they took a long pause to review VMO2 strategy, whilst everyone else was full steam ahead. The delay of a Netomnia acquisition which they thought was in the bag added additional months of little movement, because nothing happened in Netomonia overlap areas. There are still big swathes of HFC with no conversion even begun. They 100% can’t meet 2028 for finish of conversion from HFC to FTTP now without huge ramp up which costs.
‘No Cam was right. They had leading speeds and should have accelerated conversion of HFC quicker in past few years.’
No business case. Hindsight is always 20:20.
‘Instead they took a long pause to review VMO2 strategy, whilst everyone else was full steam ahead. The delay of a Netomnia acquisition which they thought was in the bag added additional months of little movement, because nothing happened in Netomonia overlap areas.’
Must’ve imagined the install of OLTs and XGSPON overbuild in my local area. They built around the overlap, and the teams were still going full bore in other areas: of which there were many.
I’d suggest that Virgin Media are very late to the game. They’ve gone from being far ahead of Openreach to now trying to catch up to Openreach and the altnets. If they can’t compete on speed will they compete on price? They’ve always been more expensive than Openreach but faster, so now they’re just more expensive. Maybe they concluded it was too expensive to do this in the past but if they lose all their customers surely that’d be more damaging.
Executive compensation packages usually run on fairly short timescales which is a nightmare for infrastructure. Save now, collect bonus, the investment is someone else’s problem.
The consumer market is driven by cost, not speed.
The vast majority have no need for higher speeds than are already available. We are now entering a mature market where scale and returns on investment matter, not coverage or speed.
Virgin Media O2 has enjoyed a gilded existence, as Ofcom has not found it has Significant Market Power, so it has not had to open its networks to wholesale customers.
Where I live, we only have two FTTP providers: Openreach and Virgin Media. Most Virgin Media customers are on the HFC network. Project Mustang XGS-PON appears to be available, as neighbours who do not currently subscribe to Virgin Media service can order Giffgaff FTTP. There is still no easy way to move to Giffgaff FTTP without first ceasing Virgin Media services, and no way to migrate existing Virgin Media HFC service to FTTP.
So, Virgin Media spent a lot of money installing an XGS-PON network in this area that is difficult to move to. I was considering ceasing the Virgin Media services and subscribing to Giffgaff FTTP for our backup broadband connection (the primary connection is Zen over Openreach FTTP). However, given the reports of technical issues with Giffgaff FTTP in the forums, and the ongoing lack of modem mode on the Virgin Media Hub 5x (which would presumably be installed if we moved from Giffgaff FTTP back to Virgin Media, rather than putting us back on the HFC network), I’m going to leave it for now.
As others have said, the timing suggests that Virgin Media O2 are throwing their toys out of the pram over the CMA blocking the Netomnia deal or in furtherance of their objections to the likely approval of BT Group’s rescue of TalkTalk and PXC. VMO2 are customer-hostile anyway; their out-of-contract pricing is a disgrace.
Virgin Media’s strategy has seemed, for a while, more about milking legacy assets than managing a transition to a full-fibre future. If this is a genuine change in business strategy rather than a spat with the regulators, VMO2 are waving the white flag and tying their future to Openreach.
There are clear criteria for SMP and Virgin Media didn’t reach them.
Starting to upgrade the network was the expensive choice, would’ve been slightly cheaper to deploy the new version of DoCSIS.
Discussions with Openreach started months ago. They weren’t abruptly started when the CMA started getting hostile to the Netomnia deal. The timing of a leak, of course, might be a different thing but the engineering required to hook up to Openreach has been ongoing a while.
Deployment of DocSIS 4 was later found to be more expensive than just doing full fibre conversion. Initial figures indicated it was roughly the same, but kit increased in cost as the standard was ratified by cablelabs, and VM found that even more work was required to deploy it to actually release the value of offering multi-gig packages above the 1gbps they were currently offering. Thats why they have stuck (well, till today?) to doing full fibre. It also costs less to maintain full fibre than HFC kit and has far less faults.
‘VM found that even more work was required to deploy it to actually release the value of offering multi-gig packages above the 1gbps they were currently offering.’
Spectrum increase part of the cost of overbuild.
On 4.0 cost of both options increased however VM never publicly released any calculations. Privately 4.0 was about 75% the cost of FTTP to install in the network. It saved some cost in being able to use the existing coax in the home but with a few changes.
Power was the big cost. Power for the new nodes, more nodes, new amplifiers.
Necessary move by Virgin. They can no longer afford to avoid the Openreach platform.
Correct. They need customers wherever and however. They actually built out the network and were intending to use Openreach FTTC over a decade ago. Liberty nixed that plan in favour of Project Lightning.
All that duct digging in the 1990s and the network is now practically worthless
You have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.
PP, Tell me the value of those pipes when VM would rather use Openreach’s network than upgrade their own to FTTP
Nor do you. The poster was correct. The HFC kit is worthless, it will eventually become a legacy DocSIS 3.0/3.1 network. Those that keep DocSIS would have upgraded to 4.0. It cannot compete with likes of full fibre going into the future with speed and resiliency. 50PON or higher will become reality, and even as of today it can’t compete. Full fibre has far less faults and is cheaper to support and run.
Some of VM isn’t ducts either, it’s direct buried in places and not all cabinets have fibre to them, some are coax runs to one that does have the fibre. All depends on design of the original cable company when it was done.
With the Netomnia deal looking dead in the water and a mountain of debt, Virgin will be looking at all revenue streams and that should include PIAing those ducts IMHO.
Hence my comments in an earlier post about “Open the ducts” 🙂
No. You said they should be forced to. Not that it could be an extra revenue stream they might choose to launch.
Why not force them to open up?
They have Nexfibre (in disguise of arms length yada yada) and then using Openreach to get extra coverage as well as their own current network. Isn’t that now big enough to come into range of being regulated like Openreach is?
Be interested what Ivor thinks – he may, or may not think the same…..
I was talking about the network including the ducts. Not worthless.
‘Some of VM isn’t ducts either, it’s direct buried in places and not all cabinets have fibre to them, some are coax runs to one that does have the fibre. All depends on design of the original cable company when it was done.’
All the VM access network is their own ducts. There is no directly buried cable, it’s all ducted.
Most of the cabinets don’t have fibre to them. That’s standard for HFC as you’d know if you knew what you were talking about.
FT: “Only about 9mn of the 19mn homes it covers in total have access to a fibre connection.
Plans to upgrade the remainder have now been shelved, one of the people said, adding the economics of the UK broadband market made the investment “unviable”.”
Yes there are spots with direct buried cable unless those have now been ducted which I doubt. I didn’t say the whole network was.
Also the super node cabinets are where the VM backbone has optical kit from coax cabs. Some cabs have optical amplifiers too. It’s a mix!
‘Also the super node cabinets are where the VM backbone has optical kit from coax cabs. Some cabs have optical amplifiers too. It’s a mix!’
Word salad.
The backbone and the optical nodes aren’t connected directly, they’re pretty much about as far away on the network as you can go from each other.
There are no supernodes, there are nodes. They’re where electrical and optical get converted into each other. There’s no super variety. They take in 1-4 coaxial trunks, convert to optical and send on however many fibre pairs are available.
Optical amplifiers for RF in cabinets if they’re there are really rare. Where that’s done it’s usually in a small hubsite where lots of nodes are gathered to travel to a remote site. Usually involves WDM as well to save fibre count.
No cable company whose network is still in use today directly buried cables as far as I know. Replacing it with fibre for a node split or repulling to a customer would be pretty challenging. If there is some small area be interesting to know.
@clive peters: VM’s biggest physical asset is its duct network built since the late 1980s by a large number of cablecos and VM itself who dug up roads and pavements to install the ducts and underground chambers. This is why VM can run new fibre through them even though some are rather clogged.
As for the cable plant: that can be kept running for ages but it’s costly, and the whole business case for project Mustang was to run a much cheaper and higher capacity XGS-PON over fibre (but the CAPEX is high to overbuild the entire HFC network). I think VM will complete the fibre overbuild when it becomes affordable as funds are really tight now even with InfraVia on board.
As much as I dont like VM, I dont agree with your statement.
FTTP is a necessity for DSL services to modernise, however DOCSIS is far more capable than DSL, so VM will be competing for a while with it. The vast majority of consumers wont be signing up to 5+ gig packages, its a niche for geeks.
They also now rolling out 2 gigabit over DOCSIS. I used the gig1 service prior to moving over to cityfibre, and it was pretty damn good. The main issue was they wanted me to pay circa 90 quid to keep it after my sign up offer ended, thats a commercial issue, not technical.
So yes it has value, as do the ducts.
This looks like an attempt to disrupt the CMA assessments by press release. We are being asked to believe that in a time of expensive Capex, that Virgin spent speculatively on changing order journeys to enable the use of the Openreach, while they were also investigating in system integration with Netomnia? They may not have the best management team in the sector, but that proposition sounds incredible.
To me it sounds like a sensible backup plan as the Netomnia deal was clearly laden with risk. An insurance policy against the main plan failing. I’ve worked on lots of plans and developments that never came to fruition because the backup wasn’t needed.
BT stock has jumped over 5%. Clearly the stock market disagree with you on how seriously to take it.
Netomnia’s wholesale interface is similar to Openreach’s. Everyone’s is. VMO2 already had some integration for tail circuits including GEA. They have offered Openreach for business users for years.
I assumed VM were already using OpenReach. There’s a road near me with a number of FTTP Virgin Media customers (judging from the brown boxes on their houses), but no VM infrastructure within 5 minutes walk.
They are already utilising the infrastructure through PIA. In your scenario, there would be a Meet-Me Chamber further down the line, with their sub-duct running through the Openreach network.
The whole point of the arrangement in the article is to allow them to utilise the Openreach network in areas where they don’t have their own infrastructure. Essentially, they become an ISP operating over the Openreach network.
Seems like it’s just to stop people canceling if they don’t provide their new address with service?
That was what the original offnet product did (later sold to TalkTalk) – a basic phone and ADSL service that didn’t really compare to what the HFC could do at the time. If they’re going to become an Openreach FTTP provider then they have no reason not to provide the best possible service including TV.
Won’t be quite the same as if on Mustang or Nexfibre as it won’t be symmetric, but most users don’t care about that, though it would mean anyone could use it as an excuse to cancel without penalty.
True, we can only hope OR upgrades areas to xgs quicker, must be some time line or something listed with which will be getting it first.
I’m really disappointed VMO2 won’t upgrade the cable network. Where I live in London, it’s Openreach FTTP or Virgin Cable. I hoped to get at least two FTTP options.
My box outside is Cable and Wireless branded! That tells you how old this is.
According to Sky news Virgin Media O2 are due to announce big numbers of redundancies very shortly …
They are axing thousands of people, probably after the deal with NO fell through.
When you are going to report that?
It was reported about 35 minutes after your post.
There is no surprise at all about news of this development.
The Liberty Global/Telefonica JVs made it clear from the start that they would cease all fibre roll-out if the Netomnia deal did not go ahead. The deal reported here is likely accelerated by the requirement to cut costs and boost the return on capital due to developments in the bond markets over the course of the year. If the Department of Culture acts upon what now seems the likely recommendation of the CMA to block that deal, then the guidance will become a reality.
This move was more than likely on the cards anyway to run alongside the formation of the new Nexfibre entity. Throughout the discussion of that acquisition, commentators consistently rolled the DOCIS network assets into the calculations of the size of the JVs network rather than focusing on the formation of an expanded Nexfibre. Customers on parts of the DOCIS networks were to be migrated onto the Nexfibre entity as part of the acquisition of Netomnia. It should be noted that at no time was there any mention by the JVs of what would happen to the rump of the DOCIS-hosted customers, nor to the future of the Project Mercury upgraded network.
If the deal with Openreach goes ahead, then clearly there are further options now to cut costs by migrating groups of existing DOCIS-hosted customers onto Openreach’s full-fibre network. Such a programme of migrations would be nuanced, but such a move would boost APPU by facilitating the decommissioning of the heritage network assets and by transforming the VMO2 JV from a vertically integrated entity into an ISP. The sale of the Project Mercury Network assets would raise capital for the VMO2 JV and would be a logical transition away from the vertically integrated entity. There will likely, however, be groups of customers that would not fall within the scope.
I expect we have yet to hear the full details of changes in and around the JVs and possibly of the future ownership.
I really hope they do because BTOpenworld currently have no plans to extend full fibre into our close in Thorpe Village, Egham,Surrey. Fibre has been installed just outside our close on Green Road and the ducting ring has been installed under the pavement leading to each house! It’s incredibly frustrating as at best we can get download speeds of around 20mbps and an upload speed of no more than 8mbps. It doesn’t make any sense most of the work has been done and there are approx 16 houses that want to be connected!
How would any of this change Openreach FTTP availability in your locality?
Incidentally, BT Openworld ceased to exist years ago.
As On Openreach FTTP engineer, I say good luck! The network we have or building is totally messed up! Openreach let go their build team and sources it to Circet who are not building to the plans and claiming the THP on them. This will only add to mess
I believe that VMO2 will have to redesign how their modems work to go on the OR network(using PPPoE not IPoE). There are certain things that VMO2 perform at the OLT level that OR push to the ONT.
This will not be an easy change as the Liberty wheel of change is incredibly slow & is poorly run by Infosys, from what I hear.
Basically don’t expect anything for a year.
IPoE is fine on Openreach. Wouldn’t be using their own ONTs, router only.
BT never moved on.. PPPoE is what OR auth with & it’s bloated.
Most modems, TP-Link, Vigor or Echo’s can switch between either.
I’m please that VM are now likely not to upgrade my coax DOCSIS line. I like my Virgin 360 box and it’s ability to record multiple programmes. I would lose this if I was “upgraded” to full fibre. I would then probably leave VM and go back to a Humax recorder