Virgin Media Confirm 300Mbps Broadband Roll-out for 42,000 Devon Premises

Cable operator Virgin Media has announced that some 42,000 additional homes and businesses across Devon (England) will soon gain access to their ultrafast 300Mbps cable broadband and TV service, which forms part of the £3bn Project Lightning network expansion.

Apparently work on the latest deployment has already begun in Torquay, where almost 24,000 new premises are predicted to be put within reach of the service. The roll-out in Devon is then due to complete by the end of 2019.

Project Lightning aims to cover a total of 17 million premises by 2019 (i.e. 4 million extra premises, including 2 million via FTTP), which should boost their coverage of the United Kingdom to around 60-65%.

Maurice Daw, Regional Director of Virgin Media, said:

“We’re delighted to be expanding our network to thousands more homes and businesses to help to make Devon a world class digital hotspot. Local residents and businesses will soon be getting the high-speed connectivity they deserve. We urge more people to come together and register their interest – your street could be next.”

Kevin Foster, MP for Torbay, said:

“I am delighted that thousands of local homes and businesses will soon be connected to ultrafast broadband. This investment, bringing speeds of up to 300Mbps, is great news for keeping the bay connected and driving forward our economy. It is great that Virgin Media is not just talking about improving our digital infrastructure, but picking up a trowel to do so.”

The news follows Virgin Media’s recent speed boost of their consumer broadband packages (here) and some controversy over a failure to report the correct level of progress for their national network deployment (here).