Virgin Media has pledged to accelerate the UK’s rollout of fibre optic broadband direct to homes and businesses.

The ultrafast broadband provider will connect fibre 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.

Backed by parent company Liberty Global, Virgin Media will connect a total of 17 million premises to the network by 2019. This is the single largest investment in the UK’s broadband infrastructure in more than a decade.

Ofcom recently reported that the UK has the lowest proportion of fibre connections running directly to homes and businesses (known as FTTP) of any OECD nation.  The plans unveiled by Virgin Media today are a significant boost to the UK’s ambitions to become a ‘fibre nation’.  As a result, Virgin Media becomes the UK’s largest wholly fibre broadband network in the UK.

Today’s announcement marks the latest stage in a transformation of Virgin Media. The Company is already extending its ‘always faster’ network to more areas of the UK, as an alternative to the ageing copper telephony-based network offered by incumbent BT.

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