Nexfibre Confirm FTTP Broadband Upgrades for 7 Further UK Locations

Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of its parentage with Virgin Media (harnessing the same build teams) and giffgaff, has today followed up the recent announcements for Crawley and Bradford (here) by announcing a further seven UK locations – reflecting a total of 226,000 premises at a cost of £31.7m – that will benefit from an upgrade to their latest full fibre (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband technology.

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 FTTP network to reach “up to” 7m UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT served by Virgin Media’s own network of 16m+ premises. Virgin also had a separate plan (Fibre Up/Project Mustang) to upgrade their old Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network to FTTP.

However, nexfibre’s rollout plan suffered a blow last year after Telefonica launched a Strategic Review of their global business (here and here), which resulted in nexfibre scaling back their planned FTTP build. In practical terms this meant there wasn’t a clear build plan for going beyond the current level of coverage (2.6m premises passed).

The situation recently changed again after Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia reached a £2bn deal to acquire rival network Netomnia (here), which is still awaiting final regulatory approval. But as part of that deal nexfibre announced a plan to finance the FTTP upgrade of 2.1 million VMO2 HFC homes (i.e. those that are “adjacent” to the Netomnia footprint), with VMO2 paying wholesale fibre access fees on its customers in those homes as the fibre becomes available (with the “majority expected to be ready by the end of 2027“).

The recent upgrade announcements in Crawley and Bradford were the first locations to benefit from this and today a further seven have been confirmed. Just to be clear, these are places that can often already access gigabit-capable broadband via Virgin Media’s old HFC network, but which will now be getting FTTP via the wholesale platform established under nexfibre.

The Latest 7 Nexfibre HFC to FTTP Upgrade Areas

• £4.9 million broadband investment in Barnsley. Up to 30,000 homes and businesses set to benefit.
• £5.1 million broadband investment in Erewash. Up to 32,000 homes and businesses set to benefit.
• £4.3 million broadband investment in Oxford. Up to 27,000 homes and businesses set to benefit.
• £5 million broadband investment in Rushcliffe. Up to 32,000 homes and businesses set to benefit.
• £5.5 million broadband investment in Stockton-on-Tees. Up to 34,000 homes and businesses set to benefit.
• £1.5 million broadband investment in Swansea. Up to 37,000 homes and businesses set to benefit.
• £5.4 million broadband investment in Wakefield. Up to 34,000 homes and businesses set to benefit.

Rajiv Datta, Chief Executive Officer of nexfibre, said:

“We are committed to delivering high quality connectivity to everyone across the country. Full fibre broadband is a crucial driver of economic growth, and our investment in [these locations] will help deliver better access to education, jobs, and opportunities that can transform lives and uplift entire communities.”

The combined nexfibre and Netomnia full-fibre network footprint is now expected to reach around 8 million premises by the end of 2027. The goal of nexfibre is to make this network “available to all internet service providers“, which should hopefully result in them putting a lot more effort into enticing non-group ISPs to sign up to their platform at wholesale (progress on this front has previously been rather glacial).

In an ideal world nexfibre will perhaps be hoping to sign some large ISPs like Vodafone, Sky Broadband and Zen Internet to sell packages over their network. Such deals may also help to allay any potential concerns that the competition watchdog (CMA) may or may not raise about their pending Netomnia consolidation.