Virgin Media Name 10 UK Communities for 300Mbps Broadband Upgrade

Earlier this year Virgin Media launched the “Supercharging Local Communities” initiative to help promote their on-going Project Lighting network expansion by finding and deploying to the top 10 communities where demand for their ultrafast broadband service was strongest. Today we can reveal the winners.

Virgin’s network expansion is currently working to roll-out their predominantly urban cable and fibre optic platform to 17 million premises (60-65% coverage of the United Kingdom) by 2019 (here), which is up from around 45% in 2014. A mix of both hybrid-fibre DOCSIS and pure fibre optic FTTP (Radio Frequency over Glass) is being deployed as part of the project.

In keeping with that Virgin Media’s “Supercharging Local Communities” campaign (here) was designed to help drum up interest and publicity for their effort, not least because Virgin are a demand-led commercial operator and will deploy into areas with the strongest interest (this often includes locations were BT’s rival FTTC/P services fail to reach or aren’t very fast).

Paul Buttery, COO of Virgin Media, said:

“This is truly people-powered connectivity. The collective support and demand from across the UK has exceeded our expectations and we’re delighted to be supercharging these 10 areas with ultrafast fibre broadband and top notch entertainment. Investing and delivering better connectivity in these communities shows that ultrafast broadband isn’t just for the big cities – we urge more communities to come together and register their interest. You could be next.”

Ed Vaizey, Digital Economy Minister, said:

“This is fantastic news for the communities who will now be able to benefit from all that ultrafast broadband offers. I’m particularly pleased to see almost half of them are in Scotland. Continued commercial investment like Virgin Media’s “Project Lightning”, together with the rollout being delivered by the UK Government and local authorities, means more UK homes and businesses will benefit from faster speeds, whether they’re in the remote countryside or in city centres.”

On top of that Virgin states that all of the chosen areas will receive “fibre broadband delivered directly to premises“, which confirms that they should form part of the operator’s wider 1 million+ FTTP premises pledge (this represents a quarter of the overall +4 million premises network expansion) and indeed they will also be among the very first to benefit from it.

The Top 10 Chosen Communities

1. Kirknewton (West Lothian)
2. Houston, Crosslee, Craigends and Brookfield (Renfrewshire)
3. Bridge of Weir (Renfrewshire)
4. Ratby (Leicestershire)
5. Wilsden (West Yorkshire)
6. Kilmacolm (Inverclyde)
7. Stoke Poges (Buckinghamshire)
8. Lightwater (Surrey)
9. Hartley Wintney and Phoenix Green (Hampshire)
10. Oakley (Dorset)

Apparently the campaign attracted 7,000 votes between 29th February to 29th April 2016, which involved a mix of homes and businesses from across the United Kingdom. Otherwise Virgin Media states that “voting for the Supercharging Local Communities initiative has now reopened across 18 UK counties with more communities to be announced later this year” (www.virginmedia.com/cablemystreet).

The 18 counties are: Berkshire, Buckinghamshire, Derbyshire, Dorset, Glamorgan, Hampshire, Leicestershire, North Yorkshire, Oxfordshire, Renfrewshire, Rhondda, South Yorkshire, Staffordshire, Surrey, Warwickshire, West Lothian, West Yorkshire and Worcestershire.

The news follows hot on the heel of last week’s confirmation to ISPreview.co.uk that Virgin Media are also conducting trials of faster upload speeds (here).