News Virgin Media announces £3B network expansion

I cant wait.

i work for virgin and can get a really good discount haha.

 

Kinda makes sense though.

Average monthly package cost vs minimum 18 month contract.

 

Good for competition. I have had 152meg for a few months now and its great.

I even got a EE guy phone me up trying to sell me 70 meg on VDSL, it feels good to be able to tell them that I currently have double that. He then tried to tell me that my line cant handle more than 5 connected devices, but the one he proposes could handle 256 connected devices at full speed. The crock if s**t that these sales people try to tell you should be illegal.

 

All tv type entertainment will be internet based at some point. I guess the analysis guys figured nows the time to get the rest of the 'easy to get to' folks.
I only live 10 miles from the city centre and would happily pay £750/yr for some virgin cause best i can get is 2mb on plusnet

 

I may get very busy if this comes to the team I work in.

Still very good news and will be a good year.

 

I do find it curious that the government gives our money to BT so it can increase speeds in rural areas, yet seems to do nothing to increase competition by investing in alternate providers like VM.

I would have much preferred to see our money invested into expanding the reach of other networks than increasing the speeds of an already established network.

 

IIRC BT said they could do it cheaper and are loosing money by doing what they are doing.

Hopefully with the numbers that are being quoted on the conference call that I am currently on, that the competition will open up within the next couple of years for not only residential but business as well.

 

So those that live in rural areas should be stuck on ADSL (with often sub 2Mb connections) and the public money should be given to VM so those that live in urban areas and already have fast fibre connections can have more choice in providers?

Seems very unfair to me.

 

Stuck on 10mbps here and that varies depending on if its raining or snowing!

 

If the government gave money to VM, part of that mandate would be that they would have to service rural areas too.

 

Easily - I've given virgin about 500 quid in the last 9 months, AND they just put the bill up 3 quid, across the board.

 

I kinda expected someone to say that, my thinking was that i would prefer our money to go into providing more than one network with 100% coverage.

The way things stand ATM is we have one network with 100% coverage all be it really slow in some areas, and another network with 30% coverage (idk the real coverage btw) and much better speeds.
It seems the government gave our money to a company so it could bodge up an old existing network, instead of expanding the reach of the more modern one, my betting is that if we had two networks with 100% coverage that they would be more interested in investing their own money in increasing the speed of their respective networks.

EDIT: Darn Parge beat me to it, and put it more succinctly.

 

The investment was in Openreach (not BT retail) and was for infrastructure improvements, that infrastructure is used by multiple suppliers and already services almost all of the UK.

Investing public money in VM would limit those households to a single supplier which would never pass funding scrutinisation... and VM aren't going to open their network to others and loose their USP.

Not to mention upgrading existing infrastructure is vastly more cost effective than laying brand new cable, so the investment in Openreach was the most cost effective route for the gov to increase rural broadband speeds.

Don't get me wrong VM are good at what they do, but for them to serve rural areas would not be cost effective to maintain once installed and they are a commercial business after all.

There was nowhere near enough money to expand the VM network to anywhere near compete with Openreach, as I said above the investment was the most cost effective route for the gov to increase rural broadband speeds.

 

£3B and it still won't fill the gaps, just run parallel to existing BT infrastructure offering choice for those who already have access to high speed broadband.

 

I am very happy with my Virgin broadband except for the upload speed. I'm lucky if it hits 3meg.
They are soon putting me up to 100meg down too and I told them I would rather have an extra meg uploading than 40 down up but thats not an option unfortunately.

EDIT:This just reminded me to active that 100meg upgrade
Though I now see they offer XXL at 12meg up. Hardly great but a big step up

 

@Atomic
Doesn't BT, or for want of a different name Openreach already service most of the UK, and hasn't BT/Openreach been laying new cabling ? I thought the way things stand ATM is you can get awful ADSL down the existing POTS lines, or BT/Openreach has to lay new cabling to get better speeds.

It seems that giving consumers a choice between laying new cabling so one company can improve it's infrastructure, or laying new cabling so they can choose between two operators would drive competition and result in a better experience for the consumer, remaining with a single supplier means they don't have to bother with customer satisfaction.

I don't doubt that it was cost effective, although I'm not sure it was the best long term investment or the most pro consumer choice.

 

They will be doing "Infill" which basically means areas close to the network if it's cost effective will get connected eventually, although it may take a couple of years due to council permissions etc.

Towns and Cities will get expanded in to but at a slower rate than the "Infill" but again it depends on cost and new technologies.

Although £3B sounds like alot of money, as I have actually planned some residential areas I know the cost and believe me £3B is not as big a number as it sounds.

For those who are not in a cabled area, I would just keep putting in the information to the Cable My Street site and I believe there is going to be, another site or variant of Cable My Street that you will be able to put your information in to.

It will take time but hopefully Virgin will get to everyone eventually.

 

no wonder they can invest 3bn they keep putting my price up the robbing gits