6000 Musselburgh Premises to Get Virgin Media Ultrafast Broadband
National UK cable ISP Virgin Media has confirmed that their soon-to-be 500Mbps capable ultrafast broadband and TV network is about to be rolled out to cover 6,000 premises in Musselburgh, which is the largest coastal settlement within the East Lothian (Scotland) area and home to about 21,000 people.
Back in 2016 Virgin Media announced that their £3bn Project Lighting investment, which aims to cover an additional 3-4 million UK premises (roughly 60% coverage), would ultimately result in their DOCSIS based cable (hybrid fibre coax) and fibre optic (FTTP) network being extended to reach a further 360,000 premises across Scotland (here). The latest development forms part of that on-going effort.
The East Lothian Courier reports that work on the new roll-out will get underway from the middle of April next month and is expected to run until the very end of this year.
Advertisement
Eddie McGuigan, VM’s Community Liaison Officer, said:
“The idea is to give everyone the opportunity to get the cable. It’s a great thing for businesses and homes that use a lot of internet and wi-fi.
The downside to that is we are going to have to do some work on your pavements. We do about 100 metres a day, so wherever we are, we come and go quite quickly.”
Apparently the first homes and businesses to benefit will be in the Fisherrow Harbour end of Musselburgh, followed by Wallyford, then Tranent and Port Seton.
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« New UK ISP Lightning Fibre Preps 10Gbps Broadband for East Sussex
Latest UK ISP News
- FTTP (6109)
- BT (3675)
- Politics (2756)
- Business (2460)
- Openreach (2432)
- Building Digital UK (2352)
- Mobile Broadband (2181)
- FTTC (2092)
- Statistics (1935)
- 4G (1839)
- Virgin Media (1793)
- Ofcom Regulation (1605)
- Fibre Optic (1481)
- Wireless Internet (1472)
- 5G (1435)
I’m assuming this means that the 500Mbps service is not going to be a business only offering as was described in an earlier article. Really looking forward to upgrading!
I don’t mean this in a bad way but what do you do ? I have 100MB down and i see that as fine don’t struggle to watch or get anything.
A large family could hammer the 100 limit. I know some people in the audio/vid world who max pretty much any connection.
@Matthew Williams 100mb bandwidth could easily be suffocated in my household, one kid downloading a 40gb PS4 update file or entire game, another streaming a 90gb 4K Dolby atmos film, it soon gets swallowed up
Ahh the age old “who needs faster speeds” argument, if only such people had foresight.
Matt,
Why not?
My own business as to why. Even if I purely wanted to have a higher speeds that’s all the justification needed.
Cheers!
If anything residential will get it before business users do, Archie, if business users get it at all.
VM Ireland have left their business users with maximum 400/40 while they’ve released a new 500/50 tier for residential to go alongside their 360/36 tier.
I would tend to agree that the ‘why’ is the business of the seller and purchaser.
As 1G over 1G capable connections are getting more common, from all the FTTP being built now very rapidly, that forces the game up on connection speed.
If nobody wants and it nobody buys it it will remain a niche product.
Our main office we used to have two leased lines (redundancy) and FTTC for the guest network. We got rid of one of the silly expensive leased lines and used a very very cheap connection from an alt net that actually performs better and replaced the FTTC connection with a bargain Alt Net connection that was faster and symmetrical (we bought the cheapest which at the time was 100/100).
Is it symmetric or VM style 15Mbps upload?
Virgin Media || DOCSIS != Symmetric
Jack, this is FTTH not coaxial.
Doesn’t matter, it’s coaxial when it goes through the wall. For now they are only selling RFoG which uses DOCSIS and is pretty asymmetrical, especially given the kit they are using.
Name there press claims it’s FTTP even when there talking about Docsis 3/3.1, they do have some FTTP networks but there still rolling out more Docsis 3.1 than real fibre in new areas.
Also || means or
VM aren’t rolling out DOCSIS 3.1 in new areas. They’re trialing it at a small scale in a couple of areas only.
They are rolling out ‘real fibre’ however they are running DOCSIS 3.0 on it. RFoG.
The only area they have with symmetrical services is a tiny area of Papworth Everard running an XGSPON pilot, the rest of the network, whether HFC or FTTP, is running asymmetrical DOCSIS 3, with a whole 5-65 MHz of spectrum devoted to the upstream, with nearly 650 MHz devoted to downstream, another 250 MHz of downstream available if they want it and that’s it without swapping out hardware – 60 MHz upstream of which probably 45 MHz is reliably usable, nearly 900 MHz downstream and those are the capabilities of the kit VM are using – they have specifically chosen to make their FTTP network horrendously asymmetrical by design.
They could have done it way better – there are HFC networks, hybrid networks, with a 5-204 MHz upstream band, over triple the capacity total of VM’s FTTP areas and 4 times the reliably usable spectrum.
The new build HFC areas actually have better specifications than the FTTP ones on some levels. That kit is capable of higher downstream frequencies and runs to 85 MHz upstream out of the box, movable to 204 MHz upstream by swapping out a single component per 500 homes passed rather than having to swap one out for every home served.
VM have just rolled out in my Town and despite it being literally brand new cables and infrastructure, the 350 package is unavailable and can only order the 200mb. Any ideas why this is? Seems bizarre that a brand new fttp rollout is limited on capacity already
It was the same when they rolled out here – 200mbps to start with. It took about 6 months for 350mbps to become available
Techman,
It was the same when they built fibre into my area. I could only get 200/12 for the first year-ish and then I was able to get 350.
May just be the rollout was ahead of the backhaul capacity upgrade
I currently get normal FTTC 50mb down and its not quick enough for streaming HD videos, I’d love to have at least 100mb, but its still not available in my area.
50Mbps down is not good for streaming HD? I’m streaming 4K (Netflix, YT, Prime) without any problems on my 38Mbps FTTC from Vodafone.
Haha 500mbps don’t make me laugh honestly there networks are over popularised and I am with VM ! now there 350mbps internet DOES NOT deliver near that speed so the 500mbps will be a joke, I’m on the 350mbps now ( vivid 350 package ) and honestly you do not get anywhere near the 350mb downloading, i am averaging 80-90mb constant,even though speed test shows 200mbps, had 200mbps once for 20 seconds, had engineers at my house twice and they have told me in writing that my house will not get more then 200mbps due to the network being over popularised, DO NOT BUY ANYTHING ABOVE 200MBPS WITH VIRGIN !!
I’m on Vivid 350 and get speeds of up to 386Mps and it’s rock solid, I don’t and have never seen the kind of speeds you’re reporting on Vivid 350
Steve, your power levels must be way off then, you have to check it now and then to get it near the 0Db level.
Impatient for Virgin Media didn’t support from Vodafone UK getting jobs on Cable TV live mean like to do future Scotland, Wales and England Virgin Media following what mean huh??
Quoi? Que? What?
@CarlT
Are you pathing Andrew Sachs?
I think CarlT was just genuinely confused at the rantings of the resident drunk (or i hope thats what it is) that pops up on every VM story.
What is this I don’t even
We are very concerned about our monoblock being dug up and not put back the correct way. We don’t have tarmac paving only monoblock.
Denholm Way Musselburgh
I’m laughing at people bemoaning because they’re only getting 350/50 speeds. Try downloading an Xbox game on 23/6 speeds. I can’t understand why new build areas aren’t set up with fibre already down rather than digging up to add it in. Hopefully Prestonpans will be on the roll out too, not just Wallyford, Tranent and Port Seton.