Virgin Media UK Extend 350Mbps Broadband to 9000 Washington Premises

Some 9,000 homes and businesses in the new Tyne and Wear (England) based town of Washington will be the next to benefit from Virgin Media’s £3bn Project Lighting network expansion, which aims to complete its local deployment by the end of 2019.

Project Lighting hopes to reach an additional 4 million premises across the United Kingdom by the end of 2019, which should extend their overall coverage to around 60-65% of the country (a total of 17 million premises). Some 2 million of those extra premises will be via FTTP, while the rest will extend Virgin Media’s traditional Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) based EuroDOCSIS cable network.

At present the fastest broadband download speed offered to consumers and small businesses on this network is 350Mbps (300Mbps residential) and that includes optional access to their premium cable TV content.

Hugh Woolford, Regional Director at Virgin Media, said:

“By expanding our network in Washington to thousands more homes and businesses, we are making the area a digital hotspot. Time-strapped families will soon be benefitting from the reliability of a service that’s up to 17 times faster than the local average.”

Harry Trueman, Deputy Leader of Sunderland City Council, said:

“More than two decades ago, Sunderland set out to become a truly digital city and we now have a thriving tech and software sector. The arrival of ultrafast broadband in Washington further helps to reach our potential and further boosts our tech credentials and will transform the quality of broadband in the area, helping attract new business to Washington and supporting firms already here. It will also come as a major benefit for people working from home and sole traders in the area.”

So far around 1 million of the 4 million premises network expansion has been completed and the build currently appears to be ramping up (i.e. they delivered 147,000 new premises in Q3 2017 vs 127,000 in Q2 and 102,000 in Q1).