Virgin Media UK Extend FTTP Network to 5,000 Homes in Debdale

A total of c.5,000 additional homes in the Debdale area of Greater Manchester have just become the latest to benefit from the on-going expansion of UK ISP Virgin Media’s (Liberty Global) new gigabit-capable and Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based broadband network.

The deployment forms part of the operator’s on-going Project Lightning build, which has so far extended their network to cover a further 2.4 million UK premises. The operator’s original network was deployed using Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) technology, but recent builds like the one above adopt FTTP via Radio Frequency Over Glass (RFoG) – both methods make use of the DOCSIS standard so as to harness the same consumer hardware.

At the same time Virgin Media are also rolling out their latest DOCSIS 3.1 network upgrade across the United Kingdom, which by the end of 2021 aims to have made download speeds of 1Gbps+ possible across their entire network of c.16 million premises (here). Outside of those areas you can currently expect average speeds to reach 636Mbps from their existing EuroDOCSIS 3.0 based packages (via their top TV bundle).

Interestingly, Manchester was one of the first areas to benefit from Virgin Media’s new 1Gbps speed, although for whatever reason the new announcement suggests that this hasn’t yet been switched-on in the Debdale area (i.e. it only references average top speeds of 516Mbps, like under the older EuroDOCSIS 3 network).