Irrational and anti-competitive: CityFibre CEO urges CMA scrutiny of nexfibre-Netomnia-VM O2 consolidation play

Joe Purnell and Alex Birkhead2026-03-23T10:29:00

Source: CityFibre

Exclusive: In his first interview as CEO, Simon Holden unpacks Ofcom’s TAR framework and why the Competition and Markets Authority must intervene in the contentious £2bn nexfibre–Netomnia merger to protect infrastructure competition and prevent re-emergence of duopoly stagnation.

This article includes:

Themes: Artificial intelligence (AI); Broadband; Business model; Churn rate; Consolidation; Customer take-up; Edge data centre; Fibre infrastructure; Financing; Game theory; Gigabit; Hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC); Internet of things (IoT); Margin squeeze; Merger and acquisition (M&A); Open access; Overbuild; Physical infrastructure access (PIA); Regulation; Satellite service; Significant market power (SMP); Small cell; Smart city; Wholesale platform.
Events: Telecoms Access Review (TAR); Wholesale Fixed Telecommunications Market Review (WFTMR).
People: Conal Henry; Greg Mesch; John Franklin; Mark Shurmer; Mike Fries; Neil McRae; Rajiv Datta; Simon Holden.
Geographic: Rural Britain; United Kingdom (UK); Urban Britain.
Organisations: BT Group; CityFibre; Competition and Markets Authority (CMA); Connexin; Fibrus; FibreNation; Liberty Global; Lit Fibre; Netomnia; Nexfibre; Ofcom; Openreach; Sky; Substantial Group; Virgin Media O2 (VM O2); VodafoneThree; YouFibre.

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