Middleton Broadband Campaigners in Leeds Hail Arrival of Virgin Media

Campaigners in the residential suburb of Middleton (Leeds) are celebrating a second victory after Virgin Media deployed their 300Mbps cable (DOCSIS) broadband network into part of the area, which follows several years after a separate campaign encouraged BT to upgrade a local street cabinet.

The situation began all the way back in 2012 after locals initially petitioned both Virgin Media and BTOpenreach to deploy their faster broadband services into the area, although Virgin Media ruled that the roll-out would not be commercially viable and BT also rejected several cabinet upgrades for a similar reason.

Thankfully a campaign by local residents eventually enticed Openreach to roll-out a new ‘up to’ 80Mbps Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) service to the previously non-viable cabinet 82, which managed to fill all of its available ports within the first 24 hours (here). Further work has since taken place to help accommodate more lines.

However the latest bit of good news is that Virgin Media have now also deployed their ultrafast cable broadband network into part of the area. You can see two of their new cream cabinets in the picture above, which includes one Multi-Service Access Node (MSAN) and a Power Cabinet side-by-side. The cream / grey colour helps to keep their internal electronics cool.

Carl Thomas, Fibre for Middleton Campaigner, told ISPreview.co.uk:

“Since mid-2015, pre-dating even the official announcements of Project Lightning, Virgin Media began an initially very cautious build in the LS10 area. As of very early 2016 this build was pretty much completed – bar the New Forest Village estate due to cost and road adoption status. Approximately 10,500 premises.

Going forward to this month Virgin Media have completed build of primary cabinets for the estate and built out to some adopted streets with the plan being to build to other streets in the estate as and when they are adopted.

I’ve had some numbers bandied at me and, due to the quantity of block paving and the need to fully reinstate some pavements and highways to get fibre to where it needs to be, Virgin Media are going to be spending a considerable amount of money per home passed and will be taking a pretty long payback period on the project in this area. I suspect that the very high uptake of BT’s services hasn’t harmed the business case that’s been made.

In the space of 4 years we’ve gone from beseeching BT for something, anything, to being in a position where even G.fast will struggle to compete which is a massive transformation and a testament to both the appetite for higher speed broadband here and the willingness to pay. We have made amazing progress; I am grateful for this and grateful to all those residents, politicians and indeed the suppliers willing to invest in us that have made it happen.”

We don’t have a specific cost figure for Virgin Media’s deployment, although it’s said to involve a “7-figure sum“. Separately there’s also talk of a 1000Mbps capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP/H) provider deploying into part of the area later this year, although that hasn’t been confirmed and is understood to be dependent upon Ofcom’s future regulatory changes (here and here).

Sadly there are still some parts of Middleton that have yet to be covered by superfast broadband and part of that relates to the existence of so many unadopted roads, which are not maintainable at the public expense and this can make them very expensive to tackle when upgrading local infrastructure.

“I very much hope our experiences become the rule, not the exception, wherever the costs and the expected uptake can justify the investment. While it’s never going to be an option everywhere in the country, competition is key to progress and competition will spur all players to do better,” said Carl.

It’s all a far cry from the local broadband speeds of 1-2Mbps that residents use to suffer.