Virgin Media Reduce Roll-out in Wargrave Due to Disruption and Low Demand

Cable operator Virgin Media has had to roll back on part of last year’s pledge to roll-out their ultrafast broadband and TV network across the large Berkshire village of Wargrave. Apparently the work would cause too much disruption and there hasn’t been enough demand in related streets.

Some may recall that the village was one of several selected for deployment as part of the operator’s “Supercharging Local Communities” campaign, which was designed to help promote VM’s £3bn Project Lighting expansion to an additional 4 million premises by encouraging people to vote for their local areas (i.e. those with the strongest demand would be upgraded).

The deployment in Wargrave is currently on-going and should be completed by mid-September 2017, although it’s emerged that several streets will not benefit. The reason for this actually sounds quite understandable because the relevant streets have shown low demand for the service and digging up the roads would be very disruptive due to the narrow pavement (this is already home to the gas and electricity mains).

According to the Henley Standard, the work could require a key road junction (School Lane) to be closed and a diversion of up to 12 miles, which would no doubt attract a lot of negative publicity for Virgin Media and be more than a mild inconvenience for locals.

Paul Hartley, VM Virgin Project Manager, said:

“We outlined concerns with High Street, Ferry Lane and Church Street. They are central roads and would lead to closures. At the moment it is still a no.

The School Lane junction would be a road closure with a 12-mile diversion, which we are not keen on. My concern as well is access to the school. We have to demonstrate that the demand is there for 130-odd premises.

We would like as many customers attracted to us as possible but there’s commercial viability and brand impact or damage. I’m happy to debate but there has got to be a clear understanding of what could happen.”

Deploying new infrastructure is an expensive business and sadly there are occasions where the potential for disruption is too significant to continue. In this case we think that Virgin Media has made the correct call, particularly given that locals have already raised concerns about the disruption and rudeness (swearing at residents etc.) of their contractors.

On that last point Mr Hartley said that the operator’s third-party contractors had been warned about their behaviour and work quality. However in other areas of the village Virgin’s contractors have received praise for their effort. You can’t win them all.