Virgin Media Planning £3B Broadband Network Upgrade

Virgin Media is planning to spend £3 billion on upgrade their existing network hardware in what is known as ‘Project Lightning.’ The new scheme will see broadband speeds of 152Mbps being provided to 4 million more UK homes.

The new scheme is said to provide the UK with 6,000 new jobs, 1,000 apprenticeships and more over the next five years.

The “Cable my Street” campaign will gauge public interest on where to install the new networks, although they’ll still favour areas that are near existing networks, which is no doubt bad news for those in rural areas.

“This could mean rural customers are knocked down the priority list if there aren’t enough residents in remote areas to convince Virgin to ‘Cable My Street’,” Ewan Taylor-Gibson, broadband analyst at uSwitch said.

This is still great news, but it does mean that already well-connected areas will develop their networks, while other areas remain in the dark.

Thank you CNET for providing us with this information.