Kingsway Village Residents Petition Virgin Media to Rollout Superfast Broadband

Residents of Kingsway Village in Gloucestershire (England, UK), which is home to a population of over 3,000 people, have started a new petition (Kingsway Villagers) that calls for Virgin Media to deploy their cable based superfast broadband, TV and phone services in the area.

Apparently local people are unhappy with the level of existing service availability, which is interesting because BT has recently started taking orders for its new superfast FTTC ( BT-Infinity ) service (officially due 1st March 2012) after upgrading the local Hardwicke telephone exchange (several LLU ISPs like Sky Broadband , O2 and TalkTalk are also available).

Barry Kirby, Kingsway Villagers, said (This is Gloucestershire):

“We feel there is a lack of choice of cable TV and internet here. We have made a number of representations to Virgin Media but they have just told us there are no plans in the pipeline.

I really don’t understand their thinking; we have hundreds of people wanting this in an estate that is set to grow to 3,600 homes in the coming years.”

Part of the problem is that the BT-Infinity / FTTC and Virgin Media cable services tend to focus on the main Quedgeley area, which often leaves Kingsway Village feeling neglected with slower service speeds. Meanwhile BT doesn’t reveal which cabinets will be enabled for its up to 40-80Mbps FTTC service and as a result locals cannot find out whether or not they will benefit.

A Virgin Spokesperson said:

“We would love to provide our services to everyone but, having already invested £13 billion of private money to build our network across half the country, we have to carefully consider where we can expand further within our own means.

We would urge residents to email cablemystreet@virginmedia.co.uk so we can see if there is enough demand to make this possible.”

The good news is that “hundreds” of people are said to have contacted the Kingsway Residents’ Association about this issue, although Virgin Media hasn’t said how much interest would be required before its service could be extended. This situation just goes to show that slow broadband is not merely an issue for remote rural areas.