Fibrus Full Fibre Rollout Update for Northern Ireland and the North of England

Fibrus has released an update on its build progress across its commercially funded and subsided programmes in Northern Ireland and the North of England. It also provides an update on the operational capacity it is building across the new territories in which it operates.

The company announced at the end of September 2022, it had passed 190,000 premises and remains on target for a total of 250,000 by the end of this financial year (Mar 23).

On Project Stratum, the company remains ahead of schedule having now delivered over 50% of the contracted premises.  This programme remains on course, to be delivered on time for the Department of the Economy.

Fibrus has also recently completed the build programme for the Full Fibre Northern Ireland (FFNI) Consortium of Councils. FFNI contracted Fibrus to deliver full fibre service to over 950 public sector sites across 10 council areas.

In Northern Ireland, Fibrus is targeting a total build of 350,000, but plans to grow this with ‘infill’ projects in areas contiguous with its network. One such initiative is ‘Project Halo’,  covering the smallest villages and settlements in NI supported by the Project Gigabit voucher scheme, which continues to make these projects commercially viable to build.

In Great Britain, Fibrus alongside its primary delivery partner, Viberoptix, has set up a new strategic site in Penrith, Cumbria, enabling both companies to co-ordinate their localised build in the North of England. This site will act as a training school and centre of excellence for rural fibre delivery and will also provide fully serviced accommodation for employees and subcontractors, who are travelling to the area to deliver the programme.

Having previously announced its commercial build locations in Cumbria, Fibrus is soon to announce its plans for the North East in Northumberland and Durham.

In terms of future plans, Fibrus has said its medium term goal is to deliver 500,000 premises by March 2024 and then look at assisting ‘Scotland’ with its full fibre ambitions. This will see the company developing a build engine that will deliver 250,000 premises per year, an output which it will maintain thereafter.

Speaking on the build and operational update, the company’s Chief Delivery Officer Conor Harrison said:

“Building networks at pace is a resource intensive business and our organisation is continuing to grow to meet the demands of our full fibre network roll out. We are expanding our operational capabilities in the new areas we are now operating and we’re delighted with the quality of talent that are choosing to invest their careers in Fibrus.

“We are completely focused on the task and continue to deliver all our programmes on time and within budget.  Project Stratum as an example, is a highly challenging rural build,  we are rolling out over 12km of network a day.

“With this level of output and the continued growth of our build capacity, we are well placed to deliver over 1 million homes in the future, many of which will be the most rural and remote premises across the UK.”