Virgin Media Build Network to More Premises in Leeds and Scotland UPDATE2

Cable ISP Virgin Media UK has announced that their 350Mbps ultrafast broadband and cable TV network has now been extended to cover 35,000 premises in Leeds (West Yorkshire, England). Next on their list to benefit is Cleckheaton, Micklefield and Osmondthorpe (plus more of Rothwell) during 2018. Plus some for Scotland.

We should point out that the £40 million deployment plan for Leeds, which has an overall coverage expansion target of 80,000 premises, was first announced three years ago (here) and at the time Virgin said that once completed it would deliver “first time access to ultrafast broadband for 80% of homes and businesses in Leeds.” All of this is of course part of their wider £3bn network extension program – Project Lightning (i.e. adding an extra 4 million UK premises by the end of 2019).

One of the first areas to benefit was Middleton (11,000 premises) and most recently the operator has also been working to reach another 11,500 premises in Rothwell. The latter was only announced in April 2018 (here) and today’s update confirms that they’ve already completed 5,000 of the total being targeted. Overall this means that more than 100,000 premises in Yorkshire are now able to access their “gigabit-ready broadband network.”

Hugh Woolford, Regional Director at Virgin Media, said:

“Yorkshire has been one of the biggest beneficiaries of our Project Lightning programme and we are planning to connect thousands more homes and businesses this year. We hope that continuing to work closely with the local authority will help accelerate Leeds’ digital ambitions and allow the community to do the things they need to do and love doing more quickly and more easily.”

Alec Shelbrooke, MP for Elmet and Rothwell, said:

“I welcome this announcement by Virgin Media and I am encouraged by their promise to connect thousands of Rothwell homes and businesses in 2018, building on their current rollout across the UK. This will help those living and working in and around the town to finally get access to the benefits high speed internet can bring.”

At present Virgin Media are somewhat maximising their PR by issuing progress updates on existing deployments, although today’s announcement does at least confirm that they now also intend to target the next phase of their rollout towards Cleckheaton, Micklefield and Osmondthorpe. Sadly there’s no indication of the expected coverage or deployment time-scale for those areas.

On top of that Virgin also confirmed that they’ve so far completed 1.2 million premises out of their 4 million target and they also reiterated the Project Lightning goal by stating that it “could extend the total reach of [their] network to up to 17 million homes and businesses“. But the end of 2019 isn’t all that far away and their progress will need to improve in order to achieve 4 million before 2020.

UPDATE 10:27am

Awkwardly Virgin has also issued a second press release today, which confirms that 4,200 extra homes and businesses in Dunfermline (Scotland) are now on their rollout list. To date, Project Lightning has connected more than 120,000 additional premises across Scotland to ultrafast broadband since 2016 (overall total of more than 1 million premises passed).

The Dunfermline deployment will focus on Headwell and Beveridgewell (work is underway already with completion expected by the end of 2018). We’ve updated the news title and introduction to reflect this, rather than write a second article. Virgin Media will also be holding a drop-in community information event at Baldridgeburn Community Centre (Baldridgeburn, Dunfermline, KY12 9EH) today at 4pm-6pm.

Take note that back in 2016 the operator pledged to extend their network to reach a further 360,000 homes and businesses across Scotland (here), thus they’re not yet at the halfway point.

UPDATE 12th July 2018 – 1:59pm

Some 2,800 homes and businesses in Paisley (Renfrewshire, Scotland) have now also gone live on the new network.