Network operator nexfibre, which shares some of their parentage with UK broadband ISP partner Virgin Media (O2), has announced that they’ve built to cover 11,000 additional homes in the Cheshire (England) city of Chester to their new 2Gbps speed Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) broadband network.
The top half of Chester is now well covered by Virgin Media and nexfibre’s gigabit-capable broadband network, although they’ve yet to do the bottom half. The city is also home to significant full fibre coverage from Openreach, as well as some modest to smaller deployments by CityFibre, Hyperoptic and OFNL etc.
Nexfibre itself has already covered over 1.3 million premises across the UK with their new full fibre network, and they’re currently in the process of investing another £1bn during 2024, which should enable them to cover an additional 1 million UK premises (reaching a total footprint of c.2m).
Just for some context. Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners originally setup the new £4.5bn nexfibre joint venture in 2022 (here), which aims to deploy an open access fibre network to reach “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT currently served by Virgin Media’s network of 16m+ premises. The funding reflects £3.3bn of fully underwritten financing and up to £1.4bn in equity commitments.