Following on from this morning’s announcement of nexfibre’s network expansion across Bradford (here), we’ve now spotted that the operator also appears to have announced a similar £6.8m deployment to reach “up to” a further 42,000 premises in the West Sussex (England) town of Crawley with their full fibre (FTTP) network.

As with the equally unexpected Bradford build, nexfibre hasn’t yet issued any general press releases about the new deployment to the wider media, but it still appears as if they’ve notified the Sussex Express. The rollout is curious because, much like in Bradford, the combined Virgin Media and nexfibre broadband network already covers the vast majority of Crawley.

NOTE: Virgin Media and giffgaff are currently the only major retail players on nexfibre’s open access XGS-PON FTTP network, which all share some of the same parentage.

On top of that Crawley already has extensive coverage from a number of rival networks, including Openreach, CityFibre and F&W Networks. Not to mention some smaller builds from the likes of OFNL and Hyperoptic. The per premises build cost of c.£160 is also surprisingly low, which would make more sense if this were part of Virgin Media’s Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) to FTTP upgrade plan (except that’s normally done by Virgin itself).

The ongoing Netomnia acquisition by VMO2/nexfibre’s parents also doesn’t appear to come into play for Crawley (yet..) as they never built across the town and that deal has yet to reach full completion (pending the usual regulatory checks). Nevertheless, all the currently planned build by nexfibre within the town (using Virgin’s engineers) is present in the same areas as Virgin’s existing gigabit network (much of which is HFC and not FTTP).

Rajiv Datta, CEO 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 Crawley will help deliver better access to education, jobs, and opportunities that can transform lives and uplift entire communities.”

Just for those who aren’t staying up-to-date with developments. 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 HFC network to FTTP.

The catch is that nexfibre’s rollout plan suffered a significant blow last year after Telefonica launched a Strategic Review of their global business (here and here). The decision resulted in nexfibre scaling back their planned FTTP build, which in practical terms means there isn’t currently a clear build plan for going beyond the current level of coverage (2.6m premises passed). As the recent deal to acquire Netomnia shows, the greatest focus now seems to be on expanding coverage through consolidation (here).

Suffice to say that today’s news looks like it could be the first signs of a different approach from nexfibre, which we think could possibly feed into suggestions that Virgin Media and nexfibre are still intending to combine their XGS-PON (FTTP) network estates and open them all up to wholesale for every ISP to harness (here); even if this won’t necessarily be exactly like the originally planned NetCo model that was shelved last year. We have asked VMO2 if they can clarify the strategy a bit and await their response.

ISPreview UK

Message History

Delivery option(s)