Virgin Media Extend Cable Broadband Network to 5000 Glasgow Homes
Virgin Media has just announced the third expansion of its 152Mbps (Megabits per second) capable cable broadband (DOCSIS), TV and phone network since the summer, which will this time add an additional 5,000 homes in Glasgow (Scotland) to their coverage.
The move follows the operators on-going deployment to an additional 100,000 premises in East London during August 2014 (here) and October 2014’s expansion to 5,000 in North East England (here). Apparently most of the work in Glasgow is expected to take place across Cumbernauld, Duntocher, Barrhead and Uddingston.
The network expansion also follows Virgin Media’s pledge to help close Glasgow’s digital skills gap as part of its legacy as a partner of the 2014 Commonwealth Games, which was held during the summer. Another part of this effort will see the operator create a new team of 50 “digital coaches” to deliver sport-inspired digital skills to over 1,500 hard-to-reach people across the city.
Tom Mockridge, Virgin Media’s CEO, said:
“Extending our network across the region means thousands more families will benefit from the UK’s fastest widely available broadband for the first time. We are proud to be supercharging Glasgow, helping build an exciting digital future for the city.”
According to Virgin Media, the roll-out in Glasgow is expected to be complete by the end of this month. Virgin usually only expands into areas where demand is likely to be strongest and so it will be interesting to see what impact all of this will have on their uptake figures.
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 Twitter, Google+, Facebook and Linkedin.
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It seems a bit silly to be pushing new coaxial cable to new customers when they should be pushing fibre-to-the-home for new areas so that it is future proof.
‘Virgin usually only expands into areas where demand is likely to be strongest’
Hmm – where it’s cheap to build is perhaps more accurate. They are probably deploying in an area where one of their forerunners had a partial build but didn’t complete.
As far as I know the areas they have expanded coverage to have been such areas thusfar, along with premises very close to existing network and of course new build estates.
I agree with your point about being next to an existing network as Duntocher is next to clydebank where there is a big vm footprint