Virgin Media Broadband Covers 150000 Extra N.Ireland Premises

Good news. Cable operator Virgin Media UK has today effectively completed the target they set in 2017 (here) by growing the reach of their “gigabit-capable” broadband ISP and TV network to a further 150,000 premises in Northern Ireland (total of 375,000). As a result half of all premises in the country can now access their service.

The operator says they’ve so far invested more than £100m into Northern Ireland, which includes the recent opening of a new office in Belfast that houses the majority of the company’s 350 employees in the country. Meanwhile the network build itself forms part of their wider £3bn Project Lightning build, which originally aimed to add an additional 4 million premises to their UK coverage (so far they’ve completed c.2.2 million).

Overall Virgin Media’s latest network expansion in Northern Ireland has benefited 30 towns and villages such as Belfast, Bangor, Ballymena, Carrickfergus, Craigavon, Lurgan, New Buildings, Portadown, Magheramason, Sion Mills, Templepatrick and many others.

On top of that their on-going upgrade to the latest DOCSIS 3.1 technology means that every premises covered by their network will gain access to speeds of 1Gbps (albeit just 50Mbps upload) by the end of 2021. Hopefully they’ll eventually get around to adding that upgrade to their upstream channels too.

Seamus McCorry, VM Regional Director for N.Ireland, said:

“We’re expanding our gigabit-capable network in Northern Ireland so that more homes, businesses and public sector organisations can benefit from our ultrafast, reliable and resilient network.

Our investment is benefitting citizens right across the province and laying the digital foundations that will continue to support growth and drive forward Northern Ireland’s digital agenda.”

Sadly VM has not set any new future targets for the expansion of their network coverage in N.Ireland, which suggests that we may only see a more limited build going forward (if any at all).