Middleton (Leeds) Broadband Campaigners See Progress from Virgin Media

Hundreds of homes around the residential suburb of Middleton (Leeds), which last April celebrated after Virgin Media deployed their 300Mbps cable (DOCSIS) broadband network into the area, have faced a long and uncertain wait after the project appeared to stall. But progress is finally being made.

Residents of the suburb know how to fight their corner and indeed it took a long battle back in 2012/13 just to entice Openreach (BT) to roll-out their ‘up to’ 80Mbps Fibre-to-the-Cabinet (FTTC) service into part of the area, but they succeeded despite BT initially viewing the location as being commercially non-viable (here).

The situation then got even better between 2015-16 after Virgin Media’s engineers slowly began installing a number of their cream / grey coloured street cabinets (the light colour helps to keep their hardware cool) around the LS10 area, which appeared to reach around 10,000 premises (here); except for a big chunk in the Forest Village estate due to cost and road adoption status.

But by June 2016 it had become clear that some areas were stuck in a semi-built state, with unpowered cabinets and other bits of unfinished infrastructure resulting in roughly 900 premises being left in limbo about their future status. At least part of the problem seemed to stem from the challenge of tackling “unadopted roads” (i.e. private roads, rather than those maintained by a public authority) and getting access to complete the network.

However the issue with unadopted roads wasn’t true for the whole area and extracting an accurate position from Virgin Media for those locations often appeared to result in the operator being just as confused about the situation as residents were. Since then little progress has been made, but after much prodding this now looks set to change.

A Spokesperson for Virgin Media told ISPreview.co.uk:

“We completely understand and sympathise with Middleton residents who are waiting to get our ultrafast broadband and entertainment services.

Virgin Media is eager to get residents connected but, as can often be the case, red tape and negotiations between local councils and developers over road adoption can slow down this process. We’re working as best we can to facilitate these discussions and get issues resolved quickly so work can be completed.

The adoption process for some of the remaining roads has now been completed and we expect these premises to be connected very soon. We have already connected more than 9000 premises in Middleton and expect half of the remaining 900 premises to be connected this year and the rest to be connected next year.”

Unsurprisingly the news has gone down well with local resident and ‘Fibre for Middleton’ campaigner, Carl Thomas, who said that the “commitment from Virgin Media to enable the subsequent properties promptly is really welcome, and for those a way from cabinets it’s great for them to know the services are on the way and to have a rough time-scale.”

Carl Thomas added:

“My thanks to those within Virgin Media who got this going again when it seemed to have stalled, and who have gone well beyond my expectations with their commitment to those areas that are awaiting construction. I was seeking clarification on the existing built areas and have gotten way more.

Thanks also to ISPReview and especially Mark for the assistance in highlighting these and other issues. He’ll be happy to hear that this is the end of my campaigning; from ADSL in 2000 to FTTC in 2013 and cable in 2016-17. Mark is probably quite bored of me now!”

Virgin Media have never put a firm cost on this deployment, much of which pre-dates their £3bn Project Lightning announcement, but it’s widely believed to involve a “7-figure sum” and remains a far cry from the local broadband speeds of 1-2Mbps that residents use to suffer some years’ ago.

Admittedly many parts of the UK won’t be quite so lucky, although in fairness it also took a lot of hard work by locals to help raise the profile / needs of the area and encourage operators’ to invest. Sometimes putting in a bit of community effort really can make a noticeable difference, even if it often takes awhile before you see some solid progress.