News
Companies sign two partnership deals; Virgin Media to offer 4G to mobile customers from October.
Virgin Media on Thursday agreed to acquire infrastructure provider Arqiva’s WiFi business, increasing the cableco’s WiFi footprint by 31,000 access points across 6,500 locations.
Financial terms were not disclosed; Arqiva WiFi will become part of Virgin Media Business.
"We have made significant investment in WiFi in recent years, resulting in a scalable and robust platform for customers and I firmly believe that Virgin Media will be a great owner of the WiFi business. Under this new stewardship, the business will be well placed to grow and gain market share," said Arqiva CEO Simon Beresford-Wylie, in a statement.
Virgin Media said the acquisition builds on its existing public WiFi network, which includes providing access points at 250 London Underground stations. Approximately 500,000 devices connect to these hotspots every day.
"Millions of homes and businesses across the country already rely on Virgin Media for ultrafast broadband. By complementing our existing offer with the acquisition of one the U.K.’s biggest and best public WiFi providers, we’ll soon be able to expand the same high-quality connectivity outdoors," said Peter Kelly, managing director of Virgin Media Business, in a statement.
The two companies have also signed two partnerships. The first sees Arqiva providing indoor solutions to Virgin Media’s WiFi customers, while the second sees Virgin Media using Arqiva street furniture for outdoor public WiFi equipment.
"These new agreements will enable both Virgin Media and Arqiva to leverage their respective strengths to deliver innovative and compelling solutions to customers where the need for capacity and coverage is ever increasing," said Nicolas Ott, managing director of telecoms and M2M at Arqiva.
Meanwhile, Virgin Media also revealed that its Virgin Mobile MVNO will begin offering 4G service from October. More details will be shared at a later date, a company spokesman said.
