Virgin Media UK and Nexfibre Extend Full Fibre to 6,000 Homes in Widnes
Broadband ISP Virgin Media (O2) and network partner nexfibre, which enjoy some of the same parentage, have today announced that they’ve expanded the reach of their symmetric 2Gbps speed full fibre (FTTP) network to add more than 6,000 additional homes in the industrial Cheshire (England) town of Widnes.
The town, which sits in the Borough of Halton, now has almost complete coverage from Virgin Media after the latest expansion. But they’re not the only gigabit broadband network present, with Openreach also covering the town and Grain (Grain Connect) holding a small patch of the area.
Nexfibre reflects a £4.5bn joint venture between Telefónica, Liberty Global and InfraVia Capital Partners (here). This has so far already covered around 2.4 million premises across the UK with their new full fibre network, which is being built by Virgin Media’s engineers. But the operator’s original plan to cover “up to” 7 million UK homes (starting with 5m by 2026) in areas NOT currently served by Virgin Media’s network of 16m+ premises was recently dealt a blow by Telefonica’s strategic review (here).
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The network operator currently only expects to reach 2.5 million UK premises by the end of 2025 and uncertainty remains over what comes next. But Virgin Media has recently announced the creation of a new fixed wholesale unit, which will enable retail ISPs to harness both of their FTTP networks (here) – currently available to a combined 7 million UK premises.
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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