Virgin Media Complete FTTP Build to 3700 Premises in Hyde, Tameside

The piecemeal announcements continue today as UK ISP Virgin Media confirms that they’ve completed an extension of their 500Mbps+ capable “full fibre” (FTTP) broadband and TV network to 3,700 premises (homes and businesses) in the Tameside town of Hyde, Greater Manchester.

By the sounds of it this part of their build may have benefited from Virgin’s decision earlier this year (here) to join the local Cooperative Network Infrastructure (formerly the Tameside Digital Infrastructure Cooperative), which has enabled them to extend their ultrafast broadband ISP network via commercial re-use of around 50km of existing local authority owned cable ducts and fibre optic cable.

As usual this forms part of their national Project Lightning work, which aims to add an additional 3-4 million premises to their UK coverage (so far they’ve completed over 1.7 million) via a mix of Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) technology and Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) via Radio Frequency Over Glass (RFoG). Both methods make use of the DOCSIS standard so as to harness the same consumer hardware (Hub 3.0 router and V6 TV Box etc.).

Paul Hutchinson, VM’s Regional Director for North West England, said:

“Hyde residents and businesses can now start to enjoy the benefits of our incredible services. Giving them the UK’s fastest widely available broadband speeds will enable them to do the things they need to do and love doing more quickly and more easily.”

The operator is now believed to cover nearly 720,000 premises across the wider metropolitan region of Greater Manchester.