Broadband provider Imagine agrees fibre deal with NBI 

NBI is charged with delivering on the National Broadband Plan which aims to connect over 564,000 premises and 1.1m people with high-speed fibre broadband. Picture: NBI Infrastructure DAC

Rural broadband provider Imagine has pivoted and agreed a deal with National Broadband Ireland (NBI), which will expand the company’s potential customer reach by nearly 340,000.

This is the first major deal announced by Imagine since the Armenian firm Team Group took a majority stake in the broadband provider in December last year. The group operates a telecom company in Armenia called Telecom Armenia which has 1.1m customers.

Prior to its takeover, Imagine had been struggling to compete in the market citing the rollout of the National Broadband Plan as a major hurdle. The issues for the company became so pronounced that was forced to make service cuts with insolvency a very real possibility.

However, this latest deal will see Imagine launch its service on the NBI fibre network putting it in position to offer faster speeds and a better service to over 337,440 premises across the country.

Chief executive of Imagine Niall Tallon said switching to the NBI’s fibre network “our customers are getting a superior service at comparable cost while the company gets to expand its reach and offerings”.

“We have ambitious plans for Imagine and we believe that by leveraging innovative technologies and collaborating with infrastructure partners like NBI we can provide the very best broadband speeds and services to our customers,” he said.

Chief executive of NBI Peter Hendrick said they are “delighted” that Imagine is “joining the growing number of retail service providers offering broadband packages on our network”.

There are now over 70 providers on our network, meaning there is huge choice for anyone connecting to high-speed fibre through NBI.

NBI is charged with delivering on the National Broadband Plan which aims to connect over 564,000 premises and 1.1m people with high-speed fibre broadband. NBI will be responsible for the management of the new national broadband network for at least the next 25 years.

It has already enabled fibre access to 337,440 premises across Ireland.

Imagine was started in 1993 and has largely focused on offering broadband services to rural communities. However, in recent years it has been struggling to stay afloat.

During its 2023 financial year, it posted a nearly €50m loss as it was forced to scale back its growth plans.

As a result of the increasingly challenging market environment, the company decided to “impair the value of the fixed assets and investment in subsidiaries” which resulted in a write down in the group’s accounts of €32.7m.

This impairment resulted in the company posting a €49.8m loss for 2023 — up significantly from the loss of €12.2m reported in 2022.