Virgin rolls out fibre to 1m

Virgin Media has promised to roll out fibre to more than one million homes and businesses in the UK. Its ultrafast network offers speeds of up to 200Mbps for consumers and 300Mbp. Overall the biz is seeking to connect 17 million premises to the network by 2019. In contrast, BT has been slammed for its reluctance to invest in …

[BugabooSue]

Too Late!

OK, while I am not a BT fan (TL;DR), I have to laugh at this - I live in an isolated captive area that could not get ADSL broadband due the length of copper to the exchange. Virgin dug up several miles of road to get to us, caused massive traffic disruption for months, then stopped: Just across the road from the first house. Despite a petition of over a thousand residents, pledging allegiance, Virgin decided not to go ahead.

Nearly ten years on, BT got off its butt, and brought Infinity to the area (and unless you are on the cheapest options, there are absolutely no caps on the BT service; unlike Virgin).

Virgin is now looking at coming to our area again, BUT using BT's fibre+copper!

I really hope that this new push helps those who are lacking broadband, but I think they are flogging a dead horse now for a lot of people. Also, having seen the crap a friend of mine goes through quite regularly with their Virgin service (over Virgin's own cables), overcharging, expensive phonecalls, etc...

Nope. Not gonna happen in this household. Ever!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Too Late!

Same here. The Virgin cable[1] is 50ft from my house. It was built several years after NTL had dug up the street. Will Virgin connect me? Like hell they will yet the mailing and phone calls and even the odd visit still keep on coming.

I've not put a notice up in my porch stating

'If you are trying to flog me anything to do with Virgin, you might leave with a backside full of buckshot'.

As I don't own a firearm (legal or otherwise) I'm safe.

Seems to have worked so far.

[1] The 'cable is old NTL Coax. No sign of fibre coming to the houses that have signed up for Virgin any time this side of the next epoch.

[Martin Summers]

Ok, so you're a tech site and everyone here knows that what Virgin offer is NOT fibre it is coax. I cannot believe you are publishing their marketing bullshit as news. BT are the same crowing on about fibre when it's copper wire and fibre is only going to the street cab. By their reckoning we've always had fibre optic broadband since they started trunking using it. Seriously El Reg, please don't start shilling for them.

[Ben 47]

Virgin Media have being doing full fibre network expansion in some areas since 2014.

http://about.virginmedia.com/press-release/9448/superfast-broadband-comes-to-cambridgeshire-village

http://about.virginmedia.com/press-release/9490/virgin-media-gives-leicestershire-homes-an-ultrafast-broadband-boost

The figure being quoted is an expansion of that FTTP install method to 1 million properties not currently connected.

[Martin Summers]

Hmm, not sure where you get the 1 million figure from Ben. Looking at their press release yes they are doing some fibre but the big numbers are coaxial. If they were doing 1 million FTTP that'd be impressive but they're not.

[Ben 47]

It's pretty clear it's 1 million in Virgin Media's latest press release, which is where this story comes from.

http://about.virginmedia.com/press-release/9512/virgin-media-announces-largest-uk-fibre-broadband-rollout

"The ultrafast broadband provider will connect fibre to the premise (FTTP) to at least a quarter of the 4 million additional homes and businesses being added to the Virgin Media network, as part of its ‘Project Lightning’ expansion plans."

[Spacebots]

I've had the same broadband connection since 2000. Originally NTL World but rebranded Virgin Media, I've always gone for the fastest available connection and have never suffered any slowdowns. I've downloaded around 50 GB this month so far. Amongst other things. I use it to watch 4K streaming downloads from my Amazon Prime account and it works perfectly.

Virgin don't have any caps for most users. I think they DO throttle the upload speeds at certain times of day for people on the cheapest packages, which seems fair enough to me. It doesn't effect people on the higher levels of service and everyone can download as much as they want without any throttling.

[IvoryT]

Dear Virgin, why have you treated the west end of Glasgow so disdainfully? Having had a Virgin account since year dot, I would have loved to switch to fibre, but you refused to fibre the street and instead sold me off unceremoniously to TalkTalk (ditto many others). I have no doubt that I will not be among your lucky "millions".