News
Cableco to connect fibre to a quarter of premises covered by its network in-fill programme.
Virgin Media UK this week revealed that one in four homes and businesses due to be covered by its Project Lightning network deployment will get a fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) connection.
Work on connecting premises has already started in Cambridgeshire and Leicestershire, and work is due to start soon in Devon, East Sussex, and West Yorkshire.
Virgin Media launched Project Lightning in February 2015. The £3 billion network in-fill programme will see 4 million premises connected by 2020.
Initially the rollout was based on DOCSIS 3 hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) infrastructure, but now the company has thrown FTTP into the mix as well.
"Our £3bn investment to bring ultrafast connectivity to more parts of the U.K. is not just about better broadband, it’s about future-proofing the country’s network infrastructure with the best and most modern technology," said Virgin Media CEO Tom Mockridge, in a statement on Wednesday.
Since Project Lightning’s launch, 250,000 premises have been covered by the network. During 2016, Virgin Media expects to connect a further 500,000 premises.
"While some companies talk a good game, Virgin Media is putting its money where its mouth is and laying fibre to the premise alongside our superior HFC network – delivering the fastest widely available broadband speeds," said Mockridge.
Virgin Media said it is keeping costs under control by using new engineering techniques such as ‘narrow trenching’, which, as the name suggests, sees fibre buried in narrower trenches, resulting in a faster deployment.
"In just over one year we’ve laid enough new cable to stretch all the way from Land’s End to John O’Groats, reaching a quarter of a million more homes and businesses – and there’s much more to come," Mockridge said.
