10,000 Midlothian Premises to Get Virgin Media’s Ultrafast Broadband

Cable operator Virgin Media has confirmed that 10,000 premises in Scotland’s Midlothian council area will gain access to their TV and 300Mbps capable broadband network before the end of 2018, which forms part of the operator’s wider expansion to another 360,000 premises across the country.

As usual this work reflects Virgin Media’s £3bn Project Lightning network expansion, which plans to reach 17 million premises across the United Kingdom by 2019 (i.e. an extra 4 million premises – 50% of which will be delivered via pure fibre optic FTTP lines); this will boost their national coverage to around 60-65%.

Midlothian MP, Owen Thompson (SNP), said (here):

“Broadband is crucial for the future prosperity of Midlothian – helping pupils with homework, supporting businesses and helping reduce social isolation by making it easier for people to communicate online.

I know from the huge volumes of correspondence from constituents that this will be welcomed by residents and businesses across Midlothian.”

At present Virgin Media only has the tiniest level of coverage in the Midlothian region, although it’s likely that the operator can expand here because of their other big roll-out in neighbouring Edinburgh (here). However we note that around 90% of homes and businesses in the region are already covered by Openreach’s (BT) 24Mbps+ FTTC/P “fibre broadband” network (credits TBB) and Virgin’s deployment will almost entirely overlap.

On top of that some of the most remote rural premises in the region can also be reached by the Lothian Broadband ISP, which operates a state aid supported wireless network.