Virgin Media Bring 1Gbps to 3 Million People in London and N.Ireland

Cable broadband ISP Virgin Media UK has tonight switched-on their new DOCSIS 3.1 network upgrade for 3 million extra people across both London and Northern Ireland, which means that a total of 6.8 million homes can now access their top Gig1 service (1104Mbps download and 52Mbps upload).

At present nearly all of Virgin Media’s customers can already access top ultrafast speeds of 516Mbps (636Mbps via Ultimate Oomph) via the operator’s existing EuroDOCSIS 3.0 based Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) and Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network. Meanwhile the boost to Gigabit speeds is all thanks to the latest DOCSIS 3.1 upgrade.

Until today around 3.6 million premises had already gained access to this upgrade across big parts of Southampton, Manchester, Reading, Birmingham, Coventry, Edinburgh, Liverpool, Leeds, Bradford, Glasgow and surrounding areas.

However, today’s huge addition of the London and Northern Ireland (inc. Belfast) areas adds more than 3 million extra premises, which takes the overall total to 6.8 million premises. The rest of their network – 15 million+ premises in total (likely to hit 16 million in around 12 months) – are planned to follow by the end of 2021.

For the the next few years VM can rightly claim to be the largest UK provider of gigabit speeds, even if it is only the on the downstream side. Meanwhile Openreach (BT) plan to cover 20 million premises with FTTP by the mid-to-late 2020s, although VM have signalled that they could extend to a further 7 million premises within a similar time-frame (here).

Lutz Schüler, CEO of Virgin Media, said:

“It has never been clearer that our services play a vital role in supporting people’s everyday lives and powering the economy. The nation needs next-generation connectivity and we’re delivering.

Our ambitious target will see us roll-out gigabit speeds across our entire network of more than 15 million homes by the end of next year. We’re on track to deliver that promise with homes in London and Northern Ireland the latest to gain access to blisteringly-fast Gig1 services.

As our rollout continues at a speed and scale unmatched by anyone else, whatever the future holds, we’re keeping our customers and the country connected to what’s next.”

The Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan, said:

“The rollout of ultrafast broadband is vital for London’s future: it will create jobs, stimulate growth and give a much-needed boost to businesses at a crucial time.

As Mayor I’m proud we’re making real progress on London’s worst ‘not-spots’ – including getting mobile coverage on the Underground, starting with the Jubilee Line.

It’s great news that Virgin Media is continuing to invest in London and ensuring six million Londoners can access gigabit speeds.”

Customers who take out the related Gig1Fibre package will be sent a new HUB 4.0 (TG3492LG-VMB / Gigabit Connect Box) router and you can see the specification for that at the bottom of this article from last year. The HUB 4.0 is VM’s only router with DOCSIS 3.1 support, although they have made the device available on some slower packages in certain areas to help tackle issues of high utilisation (here).

Prices for the new 1Gbps broadband package typically start at £62 per month (standalone broadband) on an 18-month term and come attached to a guaranteed price freeze for at least 24 months. Customers can also take this alongside Virgin Media’s various Pay TV packages, albeit at extra cost.

As before we should point out that the operator’s D3.1 upgrade currently only fully applies to their downstream connectivity, while the upstream side is still delivered using the old D3.0 network (this will change eventually). As a result, some of the latency improvements that come with the D3.1 standard won’t be introduced and upload speeds continue to be restricted to the same level as on their 516Mbps plan.

On top of all this the operator has also published a complementary new report, which predicts that gigabit broadband could unlock an opportunity worth more than £11bn a year in saved working hours to the national economy. However, trying to accurately gauge the economic impact of deploying faster broadband is notoriously difficult, not least since most premises won’t be starting from a point of zero connectivity. The biggest immediate benefit is usually felt in rural areas, which tend to wait the longest for an upgrade but these have less impact overall due to smaller populations.

Likewise, we’re all very different in our consumption requirements and not all businesses benefit from having access to significantly faster broadband speeds than are currently available. For some tasks the difference between, for example, 10Mbps and 1000Mbps is largely irrelevant when talking about online shopping and banking etc.