Comex 2000 Expansion Boosts Virgin Media’s FTTP Rollout in Scotland
Civil UK engineering firm Comex 2000 has announced that they’re expanding their operations into Scotland, which forms part of an effort to grow their support for Virgin Media (VMO2’s) rollout of Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based gigabit broadband ISP infrastructure. This will also create 300 new jobs over the next 2 years.
The company, which claims to carry out over 300,000 business and residential installations every year, has long been one of Virgin Media’s preferred contract partners (since 2008). Comex 2000 also has similar arrangements with other popular builders of full fibre networks, such as CityFibre, Gigaclear, CommunityFibre and Zayo.
The expansion into Scotland is said to build on Comex 2000’s existing deployments in England, which in terms of their work with Virgin Media are said to have typically focused more on the West Midlands region.
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Gavin Laird, Director of Scotland at Comex 2000, said:
“Comex 2000’s mission is to bolster Virgin Media O2’s network over the next 5 – 10 years, ensuring Scotland’s connectivity is on par with the UK and Europe. We are actively recruiting roles to deliver these essential services and upgrades, offering an array of rewarding career opportunities and welcoming anyone that’s keen to contribute to Scotland’s digital future.”
The announcement appears to state that the company will be based out of the Houston Industrial Estate in West Lothian, although they’ve also long had a site just outside of Glasgow in Chapelhall. The news also focuses on Virgin Media (VMO2) being the company’s main partner, which suggests to us that this might also be about upgrading their old Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network to XGS-PON based FTTP (due to complete by 2028).
This is because the vast majority of new FTTP build taking place today is actually being handled by the semi-separate company Nexfibre, albeit still harnessing Virgin Media’s engineering resources and partners. Virgin access Nexfibre’s network via a wholesale agreement, thus acting as an anchor tenant ISP for the new infrastructure (the only one they have).
Nexfibre’s £4.5bn aspiration (£1.4bn in equity and £3.1bn in debt) – as backed by Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners (here) – is to expand full fibre to reach “up to” 7 million additional UK homes, starting with 5m by 2026 (i.e. homes not currently served by Virgin Media’s own network). In theory, this could push the combined VMO2 and Nexfibre footprint to around 80% of UK premises by 2028 (up to 23 million premises), which is close to Openreach’s primary target (i.e. 25 million by Dec 2026).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Is it actually an FTTP build? Certainly when VM originally announced they were going full fibre by 2028, they admitted that this was actually “fibre enabled”, since the plan was not to deliver FTTP to all customers, but to replace droplinks to the property only for new customers or those taking a service that VM designated as needing FTTP. In which case DOCSIS and HFC would live on for a good many years after 2028. If Roger Gooner is around, perhaps he’ll know?
They aren’t building any new HFC now and haven’t for a while other than tiny extensions of a matter of a handful of missed premises.
Even pretty modest extensions to HFC if they needed line extension were done using reverse nodes: converting coax to fibre.
The plan is to make FTTP available to all customers initially not to replace all the HFC with FTTP. Same thing Openreach are doing and at some point they’ll stop selling HFC in those areas then eventually they’ll require customers to move.
I haven’t been following VMO2, but you’d think they’d want to transition from HFC/DOCSIS asap. BT will be switching off PSTN in December 2025, so everything will move to IP/Cloud including the remaining FTTC cabinets. Once PSTN is switched off, theoretically BT should then be able to switch off all the legacy voice and associated network equipments, running everything on a single Core IP Network.
If VMO2 are running two access networks feeding into different head end core networks, surely that’ll affect their operation costs and put them at a profit margin disadvantage to both BT and the Altnets?
This is almost certainly part of project Mustang to install the cabinets, 12mm microducts and spliced fibre for XGS-PON. VM has a multitude of build partners throughout the UK who are doing just this on an area-by-area basis. No work was done in Scotland in 2023, so it has to start in 2024.
Mustang work was absolutely done in Scotland in 2023, Roger. Bits of Glasgow at very least.
‘If VMO2 are running two access networks feeding into different head end core networks, surely that’ll affect their operation costs and put them at a profit margin disadvantage to both BT and the Altnets?’
Why would the access networks be going into different core networks ex-Telecom? Same core but in some areas getting there in a different way as part of the project to tie together the mobile and fixed networks.
The cable network is modular and all-IP from the hubsites where the CMTS, equivalent of OLTs, live.
Their network is CCAP, Converged Cable Access Platform, and in some areas some of that has been pushed out to cabinets as Distributed CCAP. That stuff is Ethernet out to the field so can be anything on the other end, PON or coax.
VMO2 are continuing to build a Converged Interconnect Network out in the field where OLTs and O2 cell sites can connect, switches in cabinets, to be aggregated and brought to the head end where they’ll attach to the IP core and from there the backbone.
The new CIN makes sense. The OLTs that aren’t using CINs have switches waiting to aggregate them at hubsites to be fed to the core at PoP sites.
The cable network’s CMTS are an IP edge and have switches behind them to get them to the core routers that may be in a remote PoP waiting to take them on their trip to IP wonderland. The CIN can go to the switches at the hubsite or around it entirely depending on fibre route and straight into a PoP site.
So existing all-IP core and transport: Ethernet everywhere and the additional kit in the transport network is backhauling cell towers as well as fixed line so a big efficiency gain and this can all go into existing kit at the hubsite to get to the PoP where it lands on an edge router then into the core.
Could put said edge routers in hubsites where it permits, too, no need for it to always only be switches and transmission kit. Depends how they want to play but lots of common kit at equivalent of Openreach headed and VM equivalent of handover point will be in a cabinet in the field feeding some OLTs and some mobile masts.