Virgin Media Deploying to 11500 Premises in Rothwell, Leeds UK
Cable operator Virgin Media has announced that their 350Mbps ultrafast broadband and TV network is being extended to cover 11,500 premises in the Rothwell part of Leeds via their £3bn investment under ‘Project Lightning‘, which should complete by the end of 2019.
At this point we’ve had to ask the operator (currently awaiting a reply) whether or not this is another piecemeal re-announcement of some sort, not least because they’ve already revealed that 80,000 premises in Leeds (West Yorkshire, England) would benefit from their deployment; albeit all the way back in July 2015 (here).
Back then the operator hinted that its work would cost about £40m and the first to benefit were approximately 11,000 premises in the mostly residential suburb of Middleton, which we know is a deployment that did take place and one that probably cost a bit more than they forecast (judging by some of the delays and complications that we’ve seen over the past 2-3 years).
Hugh Woolford, Regional Director at Virgin Media, said:
“Time-strapped families and small businesses across Rothwell will soon be benefiting from our brilliant broadband service. Giving them greater speeds will enable them to do the things they need to do and love doing more quickly and more easily.”
Overall the network extension aims to reach an additional 4 million premises across the UK by around the end of 2019 or 2020, which should extend their overall coverage to roughly 60%+ of the country (a total of 17 million premises); but so far they’re a bit behind schedule and have only completed c.1 million premises. We’d very much welcome a full rollout plan for the UK, as opposed to being fed small bite sized chunks of info.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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VM’s address checker used to give some indication that an address was within their future plans, albeit without a timescale attached. Even that limited info seems to have been removed now.
I’d love to know whether I am in scope for project lightning, but with a growing number of infrastructure providers including Openreach starting to form their own plans I don’t think anyone can really blame VM for not wanting to tip off the competition too early. Otherwise Openreach or someone else could easily try to steal the first mover advantage, destroying some of the assumptions around likely take-up rates.
Good to see more people with a choice. I note VM currently offers VIVID 100 free on the TV bundle that normally comes with 50. So obviously feeling the pressure.
Honestly in the state Virgin is currently in, don’t bother, go with BT suck up the slower speeds and wait for G.Fast, Virgin will sell you a straight up LIE. You’ll rarely ever see 350Mb, because their national core is already over exerted on the current customers piled on to it, they need more core bandwidth and really I wish that Ofcom/ASA would intervene, not only in the fact their network is hugely congested. But also the ridiculous Intel Puma 6 Chipset issue they’ve been knowingly getting away with for 2 years and again Ofcom/ASA do absolutely nothing to resolve this, it would be so easy for Virgin to say you can use modem X at your own expense and you need to call us give us the MAC and we will authenticate, that would cost them nothing but man hours to implement a fix, but no that would be expenditure. I’m fed up of it but I don’t have much option unless I want about 10% of the speed via BT FTTC. I can’t believe website such as this and another well known BB website have let them get away with this for so long and totally unchallenged, theres such little coverage, but then again 90% of Virgin’s customers are neckbeard scrolling on facebook, streaming netflix and posting on mumsnet so….won’t notice it, thats the reason why because you can guarentee if it hit browsing more intensely they’d all be up in arms about it and Virgin would be forced to do something, but no here we are Virgin quietly sweeping it under the rug still getting away with selling a service they are not providing….
Do you also speak incoherently with no pause for breath in real life?
Virgin media… Lol
Still a shower of ***T of an outfit.
@ the truth.. as for sucking up the slower speed on bt.. Our internet provider delivered by the old copper line is doing perfectly fine.. nowt wrong with it..
However our neighbour on virgins 350 package.. cant use his connection after 5 pm and its utter useless for gaming… So ill stick to my fttc connection. even in a household of 7 we still dont think 64mb isnt enough..+ with 18mb upload its more than enough for us.. and we stream, browse, game, etc..
FTTC is slow garbage