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Residents of the 100-home Amberwood estate in Carlisle (Cumbria, England), which was originally built by Persimmon Homes and thus served by a single full fibre (FTTP) network from FibreNest (recently acquired by OFNL), have expressed frustration after another protracted broadband outage hit the area – allegedly the latest in a long list of disruptions over the past 6 years.
The latest outage is said to have disrupted internet connectivity for three long days earlier this month, which FibreNest attributed to being caused by “malicious damage to infrastructure owned by its network partner, Virgin Media” (likely a reference to a core fibre link that feeds data capacity to the development).
However, residents told the local News & Star that the latest outage is part of a long-running pattern of unreliable service stretching back more than six years, with complaints highlighting a lack of support from the ISP and the need to spend extra money on 4G/5G based mobile broadband as a backup due to local connectivity being deemed unreliable.
“This isn’t a one-off – it’s happening all the time, with days of no internet,” said estate resident Melanie MacPake. Complaints like this have cropped up on other estates where FibreNest / OFNL are present (example) and tend to be exasperated by the fact that the operator is often the only gigabit-capable broadband network present, which in this case stems from the fact that FibreNest used to be part of Persimmon and thus held some degree of exclusivity over the estate.
FibreNest’s dominance of such estates often makes it challenging for rival networks to enter (residents in other areas have previously described this as being similar to a mini “monopoly“). Persimmon Homes did respond to this criticism in 2021 by launching a wholesale product (FibreNest Wholesale) that rival ISPs could harness (here), but this has thus far not been attractive enough to entice any other providers.
The new owner of FibreNest, BUUK Infrastructure (GTC, OFNL – Open Fibre Networks Limited), has said that it plans to introduce customer choice across FibreNest-served developments in 2026. But this is currently only likely to reflect an expanded choice of retail ISPs, albeit via the same underlying network infrastructure (i.e. the ISPs on OFNL’s platform), and should thus not be confused with real competitive infrastructure layer choice. This may also not be enough to address the unreliability of the existing infrastructure.
A spokesperson for FibreNest added that it “strives to deliver the best possible experience for its customers” and “continuously reviews all aspects of its service“. But it’s currently unclear whether they plan to make any changes that might improve the resilience of their underlying network on the estate.
At present situations like this rarely catch the eye of the government and thus wider debate, since they exist at a fairly small scale relative to the wider UK broadband market. But it’s possible that may change as the national deployment of full fibre lines slowly reaches its target of near universal (c.99%) coverage by 2032. This could potentially shift some of the focus back toward resolving infrastructure competition in such niche areas. But hope is not a strategy.