If you follow British broadband news even a little bit, you know that poky broadband speeds are often bewailed. Both residential and business subscribers complain heartily and often, especially outside of the major cities, and in bigger metro areas as well. One of the major hurdles, of course, is the fact that installing more fiber is a usually a plodding procedure.
Virgin Media announced it is using the democratic process to dive further into that issue by unveiling 10 communities — picked by local residents and businesses — that will reportedly “benefit from an ultrafast broadband and entertainment boost this year.” Four of the 10 communities are located in Scotland where demand for faster connectivity soared among local communities, according to the company.
Residents and businesses in these 10 communities can get fiber run directly to their property. Virgin Media points out it recently committed to connecting fiber to the premise (FTTP) to at least a quarter of the 4 million additional homes and businesses being added to the Virgin Media network as part of its ‘Project Lightning’ expansion plans. “These communities will be some of the first to benefit from this pledge,” the company says in a statement.
The 10 communities, which will see fiber delivered directly to premises, snagged the most votes as part of Virgin Media’s ‘Supercharging Local Communities’ initiative. Launched earlier this year and run across 18 UK counties, the initiative is part of Virgin Media’s £3 billion Project Lightning network expansion. Local residents and businesses were asked to vote for their community to get the speedier speeds.
“This is truly people-powered connectivity. The collective support and demand from across the UK has exceeded our expectations and we’re delighted to be supercharging these 10 areas with ultrafast fiber broadband and top notch entertainment,” Paul Buttery, COO at Virgin Media, says. “Investing and delivering better connectivity in these communities shows that ultrafast broadband isn’t just for the big cities. We urge more communities to come together and register their interest.”
Virgin reports that around 7,000 votes were cast between the end of February and the end of April. The top 10 communities named were:
Kirknewton (West Lothian)
Houston, Crosslee, Craigends and Brookfield (Renfrewshire)
Bridge of Weir (Renfrewshire)
Ratby (Leicestershire)
Wilsden (West Yorkshire)
Kilmacolm (Inverclyde)
Stoke Poges (Buckinghamshire)
Lightwater (Surrey)
Hartley Wintney and Phoenix Green (Hampshire)
Oakley (Dorset)
For residential customers, Virgin Media’s Vivid 200 reportedly offers download speeds of up to 200 Mbps. According to the company, this is more than two and a half times faster than the top widely available speeds from BT, TalkTalk and Sky.
For businesses, Virgin Media Business is hawking speeds of up to 300 Mbps – which is said to be almost four times faster than its main competitors’ widely available top speeds.
Virgin points out that this FTTP expansion uses an “innovative way of bringing ultrafast broadband to people’s homes with minimal disruption” via narrow-trenching. It reportedly reduces the width of the trench used to lay fiber from around 40 cm to 10 cm and is said to enable engineers to cover up to 100 m in a day, making it more than twice as fast as current methods. A similar technique has been used recently in Leicester where Virgin Media is connecting six villages.