Original article ISPreview UK:Read More
One of the UK’s largest alternative broadband networks, Netomnia (Substantial Group), has revealed that they’re in the process of joining Openreach’s (BT) network in order to harness their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) products in areas where their network doesn’t yet reach or may be unlikely to reach in the future. But the initial reach will be limited.
The change of strategy, which on the surface seems to mirror Hyperoptic’s recent move (here), could help to give both a further boost to customer take-up and also solves the problem of what happens when existing customers on Netomnia’s own fibre (on-net) move house to a location outside their existing network area (off-net).
At present Netomnia’s own full fibre broadband network, which offers blistering speeds of up to 8000Mbps to consumers via ISPs like YouFibre, Brsk and others (and technically c.40Gbps to some businesses on-demand via 50G PON tech), already covers 2.7 million UK premises (375,000 customers). But as above, their on-net deployment will only take them to 5m by the end of 2027 and, even with consolidation, there will be gaps in their reach.
However, ISPreview has been told that their strategy is currently only planned to go as far as Netomnia’s existing reach allows within BT’s exchanges. Put another way, the operator has already connected their network to Openreach using CableLinks (Ethernet capacity), and they have a max presence within about 200 BT exchanges, so this will enable them to reach around 1.5 million extra incremental properties beyond their own fibre.
Just to be clear, this mixed on-net and off-net strategy will thus see Netomnia’s ISPs reaching 5 million premises with their own fibre and then the extra 1.5 million via Openreach (total reach of 6.5 million). Netomnia said they aren’t planning to wait for Openreach to launch their new XGS-PON based symmetric speed FTTP packages (speeds could go up to 3.3Gbps) and plan to launch their new approach around the end of 2025 or early 2026.
At present the operator doesn’t yet know whether they will go beyond 1.5m premises (c.200 BT exchanges) via Openreach’s network in the future, which may well depend upon how successful this strategy becomes. Netomnia also doesn’t seem worried about the fact that Openreach’s current FTTP products have much slower upload speeds and higher wholesale prices, so it will be interesting to see how they balance this for their consumer packages/prices.
Interestingly, Netomnia also hinted to ISPreview that Openreach may not be the only other third-party FTTP network they onboard with in the future, but it’s too early to talk about that with any certainty. Finally, Netomnia also confirmed via a related report on TheTimes (paywall) that their long-held plans for launching a UK Mobile service this year (here) will harness the combined Vodafone and Three UK (VodafoneThree) network.