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A small group of homes in the East Dorset (England) town of Ferndown have effectively been denied access to a new gigabit broadband network because a local housing association, which owns a crucial piece of land, are only willing to grant Virgin Media’s (nexfibre) engineers a wayleave (legal access agreement) for an individual property; not the wider area.
The issue centres on homes roughly within and around the BH22 8UT postcode area of Ferndown, which is presently surrounded by gigabit-capable broadband networks from nexfibre and Trooli. Network access provider Openreach (BT) has also been building FTTP nearby, but has yet to enter the same poorly served area. Homes in this are thus remain stuck on slow hybrid-fibre FTTC / SOGEA broadband lines.
Back in 2021 the area in question was originally supposed to gain access to a Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network as part of Giganet’s deployment. But the local roll-out appeared to grind to a halt in 2022 and then got shelved after Fern Trading consolidated three of their altnets, including Giganet, into AllPointsFibre (APFN). Trooli also initially appeared inclined to enter the area, but they too ultimately backed away.
More recently, in 2024, nexfibre (Virgin Media) are understood to have installed their cable ducts down some of the nearby streets, but oddly only some houses were able to order the new service and others could not. A spokesperson for Virgin Media (O2) later confirmed to ISPreview that this was because they were “in the process of obtaining the necessary wayleave from the landowner.”
The front of some of the affected houses is on a green that appears to be owned by Aster Housing, while the back of those properties goes straight onto the public road where nexfibre have dug on the opposite side (Medway Road). A few weeks passed before ISPreview learnt that Aster Housing had denied the wayleave request, which we understood had seen nexfibre/VMO2 seek permission to install to all houses within the postcode (17).
Andy, Resident of Ferndown, told ISPreview:
“[Aster Housing] would only consider granting a way-leave for an individual property. With this in mind, it seems that VMO2 are going to withdraw their way-leave applications in the area. Again, this seems to be a case of the landlord / landowner preventing the rollout of full fibre.”
The difficulty for VMO2/nexfibre in this case is that it wouldn’t make much commercial sense for them to go through all the extra civil engineering involved just to connect a single property, which would at the same time also leave other nearby houses to be excluded. At this point Andy, acting on ISPreview’s advice, involved his local MP (Sir Christopher Chope) in an effort to uncover why Aster had taken this approach.
Feedback from a communication between the MP and Aster Housing appears to indicate that the housing association had declined VMO2’s wayleave because they only operate closed networks, which they indicated would offer locals little or no choice of provider (Aster appears to say that this would effectively have limited locals to Virgin Media’s services).
The above is not entirely correct. Currently, both Virgin Media and giffgaff sell over nexfibre’s network at wholesale (with YouFibre expected to join later in 2026), although both share parents within the same group of companies. Put another way, there is more choice than just Virgin Media, but it’s also true to say that nexfibre’s network isn’t quite as open (yet) as the likes of Openreach or CityFibre etc.
However, whether the above is a valid reason to deny local homes the choice of ANY gigabit broadband network is another matter, since that appears to be the outcome. Aster informed the MP that they were not willing to approve the installation of a network that restricts customer choice, although giving people the option of more than just Openreach’s old copper lines would surely improve customer choice, not restrict it.
Aster also appears to contradict its own reasoning by indicating that they would allow installation to an individual property. ISPreview did attempt to contact Aster for a comment last month, but we received no response. In the meantime, Andy and some of his neighbours have been left to continue their campaign for gigabit broadband.