Oh Hai Cityfibre! Virgin Media to Extend 300Mbps Broadband in York

Cable operator Virgin Media has announced that their 300Mbps capable “fibre optic” broadband and TV network will be expanded to reach an additional 20,000 homes and businesses in the UK city of York, which is where Cityfibre, Sky Broadband and TalkTalk have also been deploying 940Mbps FTTP.

The work is of course part of Virgin’s on-going £3bn Project Lightning expansion, which aims to reach an additional 4 million UK premises by 2019 (around 1 million of those will be FTTP based). Meanwhile the work in York has already begun and is expected to be completed during 2017.

The operator’s press release states that their roll-out in the city will use “fibre optic” technology, although Virgin have a poor history with this terminology and thus it could just as easily mean hybrid-fibre coax rather than the superior Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) service. In fact they usually state FTTP when it’s involved, but this time they don’t.

Karen Ingham, VM’s Regional Director for the North East, said:

“It’s official – York has struck broadband and entertainment gold! Residents will soon be getting the high-speed connectivity and top-notch TV they deserve. We urge residents to come together and register their interest – your street could be next.”

However Virgin Media aren’t the only game in town. At the last count the joint FTTP network from Cityfibre and its partners had managed to reach 14,000 premises in the northern half of the city (here), although this only represents less than a quarter of the entire area (80,000 or so premises) and at present there are no solid plans to go much further.

The network may be experimental, but TalkTalk and Sky Broadband have managed to use it for bragging rights, as well as when pushing their agenda in Ofcom’s on-going Strategic Review. At this stage we don’t know if Virgin Media’s commercial roll-out will cross into any of the same areas, but we wouldn’t be surprised if it did.

The positive result could be that some locations may benefit from a choice of at least two “ultrafast broadband” networks and we must not forget that Openreach (BT) also has a little FTTP in the city, thus there’s the potential for some people to see a selection of THREE “ultrafast” networks. Nearly all of this stems from private sector investment.