Fibrus is celebrating a major milestone in delivering high-speed broadband to Cumbria through Project Gigabit – with almost 12,500 more homes now able to access full fibre.
Tue, 13/05/2025 - 13:25
nexfibre has published its latest quarterly build update (Q1 2025), which shows its 10GBps FTTP/XGS-PON broadband network now covers 2.2m UK premises, with scaled back coverage target for 2025 to 2.5m premises passed, reducing future build plans for the next year.
The altnet provider shares its parentage with ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), and was set up in 2022 by Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners as a new £4.5bn joint venture.
It looked to rollout a wholesale full fibre network to reach up to 7m UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas not served by Virgin Media’s own network of more than16m premises.
The latest Q1 2025 build update now reflects the impact from wider events, following the publication of Liberty Global’s investment report, revealing several key developments.
This followed from the latest results from Virgin Media (VMO2) that showed a slowdown in FTTP build at nexfibre, which only added 165,000 premises in Q1 2025.
According to the report, Liberty Global are “adjusting nexfibre’s build ambition to 2.5m cumulative premises by year-end 2025, retaining capital discipline in an increasingly irrational altnet environment and remaining opportunistic around M&A”.
nexfibre now only expects to reach 2.5m premises in 2025 - it had previously been adding around 1m premises per year - which compares with 2.2m premises ready for service today (up from 2m in Q4 2024).
Mike Fries, CEO at LIbery Global attributed part of this slowdown to JV partner Telefonica and its recently announced strategic review.
Fries talked about Liberty Global’s desire towards “retaining capital discipline in an increasingly irrational altnet environment,” although he also spoke of pursuing more growth through M&A with other alternet operators with more consolidation planned.
These changes have impacted the latest nexfibre build update, with many areas across south west and south east England, as well as Wales, gone from the Q1 planned build locations in 2025-26.
However, nexfibre’s planned deployment across Scotland remains intact.
Rajiv Datta, CEO of nexfibre commented: “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.”
