Virgin Media UK Start Making XGS-PON Full Fibre Upgrade Available
Last month we reported that broadband ISP Virgin Media (O2) were gearing up to start making their new XGS-PON powered full fibre (FTTP) network upgrade available to homes in existing coax (cable) areas (here), which was expected to occur in March 2025. Since then we’ve observed a growing number of areas where the service and symmetric speeds of 2Gbps are now becoming available, albeit with a catch.
Just to recap. The change being referenced above is separate from nexfibre’s expansion of their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) network into new UK areas. This has already added over 2 million premises and aims for 5m by 2026, before possibly rising to 7m thereafter. Virgin Media’s customers can already access this, but its availability is obviously limited.
Instead, we’re specifically talking about Virgin Media’s own efforts to upgrade over 16 million of their legacy Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC / DOCSIS 3.1) and Radio Frequency over Glass (RFoG FTTP) powered areas to add support for the same 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology as nexfibre use. This is a programme they aim to complete by 2028 (aka – Project Mustang or Fibre Up).
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At present we don’t know precisely how many HFC areas have completed their XGS-PON deployments (costing c.£100 per premises), but several million premises do now have both Virgin Media’s HFC + RFOG and XGS-PON networks existing side-by-side. But the fact that XGS-PON is just sitting there, doing absolutely nothing (i.e. not generating revenue), makes very little financial sense and this is now starting to change.
In our last update, we noted how several credible sources had informed ISPreview that Virgin Media was gearing up to launch new products in March 2025 (although delays are still possible), which we expected would reflect the provider’s move to start making their upgraded XGS-PON areas available to customers.
Since then we’ve received more feedback from customers, industry sources and fresh data from the Better Internet Dashboard, which when taken together appears to confirm that Virgin Media is now actively starting to make their newly upgraded XGS-PON full fibre areas available to customers in various locations (i.e. we’ve a good number of examples from previously HFC-only areas, where symmetric speed 2Gbps packages can now be taken).
The process, which appears to have started sometime around early February, is currently ramping up – it’s not yet available in all upgraded areas, although it has reached quite a few places already. But so far as we can tell from Virgin Media’s API, there may be a bit of an initial catch. At present, in the HFC locations where we’ve seen XGS-PON from Virgin Media going live, only new customers seem able to order it. So if you’ve already got or previously had HFC from Virgin Media, then it seems you can’t order it.. yet.
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Naturally we did ask Virgin Media about all this and, once again, the response was one of “no comment“. At present, Virgin Media and nexfibre’s FTTP lines cover a combined total of 6.4 million UK premises, although this includes both RFOG and newer XGS-PON areas.
In addition, sources have informed us that Virgin Media may not be expecting to have migrated all of their HFC customers over to XGS-PON based FTTP lines until around 2040 (not to be confused with the 2028 date for the network upgrade itself to complete), which is perhaps to be expected given the need for an engineer visit (bulk migrations would be difficult).
Now back to waiting for Virgin Media to make an official announcement, which may or may not end up being aligned with the launch of their new NetCo wholesale solution.
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.
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This upgrade rollout seems all over the place. They’ll install *new* HFC infra if you go for any package other than Gig2, unless you choose the symmetric add on option. No idea why they aren’t just doing XGS for everyone, surely costs them more in the long run when people eventually upgrade.
Is that what the article here says?
Because as I read it, if you’re a new customer, they’ll install it via XGS-PON regardless of which package you take.
It’s not clear however what they class as a previous customer. That could mean you yourself, or it could mean the premises.
They are charging a premium price for the infrastructure, so they will not want to potentially impair the available bandwidth for paying customers by migrating customers that will not be paying the asking price.
Agreed
I suspect the lack of TV360 and phone services on XGS-PON is the main problem.
It currently makes no commercial sense for VM to offer XGS-PON if that means losing out on TV and phone revenue and driving some customers to Sky for their TV service. Once a household has Sky TV, it’s only a matter of time before Sky starts selling their own full fibre products which (other than Gig 2 or symmetric add-on) aren’t much different to what VM offers.
If a customer is willing to pay for a niche, high margin product like Gig 2 which can’t be provided over HFC then VM are probably more willing to forego the potential TV360 revenue, and those customers probably aren’t the ones that spend money on landline calls.
When I have checked the prices before for Broadband only using an XGS-PON capable address, the prices matched HFC prices, except if you wanted symmetric and that was extra £6.
They sell TV to XGSPON customers, CJ.
Mega Volt bundle
Gig1 Full Fibre Broadband, 230+ TV channels inc. Sky Sports HD & Sky Cinema HD & Netflix Standard with ads + 250GB O2 SIM
Billing system evidently still can’t handle a property that had HFC taking XGSPON. Potentially they have to do some manual work on the back end to make it work and keeping it to Gig2 reduces that load. Once that’s sorted they’ll switch to default XGSPON: it does make no sense to place customers on HFC now.
@CJ They do offer VOIP phone services on their Hub via RJ11 sockets (a RJ11 to BT adapter is supplied) and all new customers regardless of whether they’re on XGS-PON or HFC get the phone line this way.
@Polish Poler: VM doesn’t have a recordable box for XGS-PON, it’s just the streaming Flex (formerly known as Stream).
360 is EOL, Stream is the way forward
GBP 84 p/m for residential Gig2 quoted by some sources will probably out of reach of many, and hard to justify.
I can’t imagine many people are paying the full amount. +£6 for symmetric makes it £90 but you will find people that have it for £50
@kevin I was an early adopter of gig2 and there were no discounts available at the time, so £84+6.
To add insult, they are putting my price up by £6.30 in March on the logic their costs have gone up, all while I know others paying £45/m, demonstrating that the price rises are nothing but greed.
Meanwhile Vermin media Ireland are doing no price rises this year.
Other smaller ISP’s offer 2.3Gbps at £50 pm, like Befibre, plus £5 for a static IP, and no yearly price hike, very reasonable I think, but only available in select areas.
New XGS-PON Cabinets are springing up like Mushrooms
in Edgware, North West London and in Watford
but it is still on the floor level with no doors or sides
and no equipment yet
How can we tell if it’s available (as a new customer) in my area?
Will it come up on the package search?
Yes, it will come up via their availability/ordering system (2Gbps), provided you’re checking against an address that hasn’t had HFC before and is XGS-PON enabled. You’ll then get the same result as those in nexfibre areas.
It should also come up on https://bidb.uk/ if you search your address
If the requirement is that the property has never had a HFC install, then I suspect it will only be a tiny majority of properties that can order it, as VM have very good take up levels in areas they cover.
@Mark Jackson: An address that hasn’t had HFC before and is XGS-PON enabled is on nexfibre. Project Mustang is the overbuild of the HFC network with fibre for XGS-PON and you can tell when it’s happening when new cabinets are installed next to existing ones. When VM gets its ordering system sorted out HFC customers can finally get migrated to XGS-PON even though this overbuild has been in progress for the past three years.
By ‘not had HFC before’ they mean in an area where it was available but haven’t taken it up. Premises that have had an HFC install between street and home seem unable to order right now only premises covered by HFC that are brand new to Virgin Media.
There is an issue with these fibre in into the router. You are unable to do port forwarding.
Pah. It’s Netomnia this year (hopefully) or at least Openreach FTTP ISP if not, then boot up the jacksy for VM. A Hub with no modem mode is of no interest here.
Still no official working modem mode on 5x hubs which are used for xgs installs.
What type of modem are you expecting to be incuded in the hubs?
@ Fara82Light
Its not a different modem, its a different mode you can put the hubs into.
Instead of being a router and provided wi-fi and other services, modem allows you to connect your own router, then all your on-prem equipment behind that.
Hubs including the 3, 4 and 5 offer this, but the 5X, which is the only hub available for XGS-PON connections, does not.
Without this, you can use your own router but it will double NAT connections. This could cause issues depending on what you’re trying to do.
You see lots of comments on here from people who use modem mode and won’t switch to a service without. But in the real world, 99.9% of VM customers won’t be aware of this, of how to use it or even care whether its available.
@Anon: OK, I got it.
I’d be unhappy if I didnt just get Youfibre installed – the fact older HFC installs can’t avail of this is a joke. My next door neighbours are all XGS Mustang and I’m still HFC
Brand new network and no IPv6 support in 2025. What a disappointment.
Verging on criminal 🙂 obviously the staff don’t know how to configure it
I live in an area with RFoG and XGS deployments. It’s disapointing to see XGS not go live for RFoG customers on day 1 considering the limited work required, but thats Virgin Media for you.
It’s not limited work though is it…
I have checked my father in laws address and even though it was 18 years since he left VM it won’t allow you to order XGS but a house two doors can both fed from same cabinet
While i’m happy with my current openreach broadband, and potentially youfibre in the future it’s nice to see VM offering symmetric speeds. I always felt both them and openreach were being a bit stingy on the old upload speeds. Given that DOCSIS3.1 and openreach’s GPON could have easily offered better than 110mbit upload it seemed like a no-brainer to offer increased upload speeds to people who are willing to stump up for it. I do question virgin media’s stability though they were down again just a few days back or maybe a week or so don’t recall just recall people at work saying they couldn’t do anything or log into anything. It’s just nice to have choices I suppose. I feel for people that are still stuck on old copper connections but it also feels like we’re finally dragging these companies kicking and screaming into the 21st century
BT don’t really want to do symmetric. Any offering at the moment on one tier, 1gbps, is purely symbolic as way over priced compared to Altnets and even VM where they offer symmetric over xgs-pon.
Available at my address in Belfast now, 2GB Symmetric for £69 (£63 without)
I think part of it is that if a property had HFC in the past, they can simply send out the equipment to do a self install. This will be cheaper for them, and easier for the end user.
I do wonder though when they’ll look to switch off DVB-C(2) and move to IPTV. Maybe a software update could allow for this on the 360 boxes. It would maximise bandwidth on HFC and ease the transition long term
doubt they’ll do anything with any freed up capacity.
RF TV is more of a nuisance to those cable companies that are trying to get everything they can out of coax, and especially to those that want to move to node+0, mid/high split and eventually FDX DOCSIS.
Virgin won’t be doing any of that so there’s no point in abandoning RF TV while it is generating a profit and customers are happy with it, at least until the time comes to shut down HFC entirely
@Martin
I would doubt if they will send a self install kit to an HFC user? I would have thought the existing co-ax will need to be replaced by the fibre from the new XGS-PON cabinet.
Even this will give problems as some users, myself included, have the co-ax from the pavement Toby just buried under the grass. As there is no conduit to the property, it will be interesting to see how they do it.
Besides, with no modem mode on the 5X, that’s a non starter right away.
Are they going to replace cable/docis with this new fibre service eventually?
Yes by 2028 HFC areas will be xgs-pon. That doesn’t mean all existing HFC customers migrated over by then though.
Are they still alive with all the full fiber installations and competition available?
I’ve left 4 years ago when openreach put full fibre on my street, never looked back, virgin boxes in my street are all rusting away, I’d imagine nobody on the entire street is getting service from them and with their inferior, dated Internet.
You must be a a fortunate area, for myself and several others I know, its VM or Openreach FTTC service and thats it.
Don’t get me wrong VM are not without fault, but rolling out XGS-PON will see them using the same technology AltNets use, so the gap is closing.
Currently in an existing area with 1GB
How does TV service work in the new fiber areas, do you have the old coax coming from the green box in the street to provide tv in addition to the new fiber for broadband, or do they somehow supply the TV service down fiber?
No, you have to ditch your old Tivo/V6/360 service and use their Flex service (formerly called Stream)
https://www.virginmedia.com/the-edit/tv/flex
This delivers service over IP instead of RF.
Lots of similar channel lineups and apps, but no record facility.
For the love of god DO NOT DO IT.
I joined Virgin in October. I have the Hub 5x and it is a DISASTER. It doesn’t work! Every day, constant drops outs. Customer services are useless! They have no clue!
I’m losing internet access multiple times and hour. This a snapshot of just today’s BQM;
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/ce519744b19e0cbf30c752366205ba0dd35e9dbf-07-03-2025
It is like this all the time;
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/335be62d89faadfba4ab135ba546dc30c8b8d3a7-02-03-2025
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/bc3a487d9695ee31c363719f24df4b9ba5fb50bc-26-01-2025
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/broadband/monitoring/quality/share/13ec52141f08e1221d7fd63d75996120ff75428b-02-01-2025
VM simply do not get it, like their indian based “customer service” which know nothing, VM are deluding themselves with the lack of cost vs speed. Alt nets are the future.
I am an ex VM customer, and am so glad that I have left them. Far too costly and the scam call from india was happening many times a day. Don’t get that many now.
Just had XGS-PON installed after initially ordering it in November after having my install delayed 5 times then my account closed and having to re-order and start the whole process again.
I’m now being told on the phone (1 hr 30 minute call so far) despite adding symmetrical 1Gbps upload add-on to my original order. I found I only had 104Mbps and i’m being told I can’t have 1Gbps upload even though the postcode checker gives it as an option as i’m in a new deployment area with XGS-PON
Honestly I’m not surprised they get complaints about bad customer service.