Netomnia Takeover Winners & Losers20 Feb 2026 15:54
So thanks to fleccy for crunching the numbers. All clearly too much for poor old Aus to get his head around, so he reverted to his usual incomprehensible prophesying about what may or may not happen next — none of which makes any sense to me. Anyway, now that the dust has settled, here’s where I think the main players stand.
Netomnia Investors – Winners
Well, NOT losers would be a better way to look at it. But they got out at the right time. The investors backed an aggressive fibre build during the peak of the altnet gold rush. Demand hasn’t matched the fantasy projections across the sector, funding conditions have tightened, and the easy money era is over. Yet they’ve managed to exit cleanly.
They’ll get their capital back, likely with a slight profit. Not the spectacular return that was once implied — but in today’s market, a smooth £2bn exit looks like smart timing rather than brilliance.
They played a bad hand well and left the table before the game turned ugly. Plenty of other altnets won’t be so fortunate.
VM/O2 – Losers
They’ll spin this as bold consolidation, but it’s more a desperate attempt to stay in the game. They did not react swiftly enough to a challenge that posed an existential threat to their business.
At roughly 500k live customers, a £2bn deal works out at north of £4,000 per connected customer. They have massively overpaid because they had no choice. The figures are astonishing. Yes, they also have a lot of Netomnia fibre in the ground, but where is it exactly? In many cases, right next to their existing VM/O2 cables. They could have built more organically. Instead, they bought scale because they didn’t feel they had time to wait.
This isn’t a victory lap. They are just playing catch-up!
CityFibre – BIG losers
CityFibre have long positioned themselves as the consolidation leader — the natural aggregator of the altnet field. Yet the biggest prize has eluded them.
To put it bluntly, they were outbid by a desperate competitor with deeper pockets. Now the market has consolidated around someone else and they face a choice:
• Overpay for another sizeable altnet
• Or risk looking like the only major player not shaping events
They’re still large. Still credible. But they’re reacting now, not dictating. That boat sailed a couple of weeks ago when they announced massive layoffs, meaning they slowed down or stopped building altogether.
BT – Winners
Sitting on the fence watching events. BT couldn’t have bought Netomnia even if it wanted to — regulatory reality makes that a non-starter.
But consolidation among altnets works in their favour. Capital gets absorbed. Balance sheets get stretched. Rivals inherit integration risk. And the fragmented threat reduces.
The nightmare scenario for BT was distressed fibre being snapped up cheaply by well-funded competitors. Instead, consolidation has happened at a full price. Even better, rivals are overpaying, which suits BT just fine.
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