Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

"Virgin Media has announced the largest expansion of its network since the company launched in 2007."
"Work to bring cable TV and broadband is already underway in Bethnal Green, the Isle of Dogs, Newham and West Ham. Homes in Stratford, Poplar, Stepney, Bow and East Ham will follow."

http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2014/...work-expansion

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

About time the network started expanding. Good to see more investment being made.

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

Interesting that despite all the experiments with electricity cables and BT poles, there's no mention of these so probably being implemented in the normal manner.

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

Why London all the time?

Someone I know cant get Virgin (They live in the new street).

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

Possibly density of properties? And possibly distance from the existing network to the build out is less.

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

Reading today's numbers its clear expansion is needed.

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

Has anybody got the latest results?.

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

On this thread aren't they http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/10...r-results.html

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

Absolutely, 100,000 homes should give them between 37 to 42,000 new customers if they get their normal penetration rates.

Think they have finally realised that they can't simply pass customers between the big 3 and they have to seek new opportunities. They maybe knew this before but didn't have the cash for expansion.

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

The Isle of Dogs, and possibly the other areas here, used to have analogue cable, so the ducts will already be in place.
http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/62...wharf-e14.html

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

It's not the first expansion VM have done in recent years http://www.ispreview.co.uk/story/201...s-in-2011.html but I think it's a the biggest single block work rather than being smaller build out.

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

It will be interesting to see what VM's penetration rate is. Its existing 42% penetration rate probably includes a lot of people who have been with VM for a long while. It would be optimistic to think that a similar proportion would convert to VM from other providers because of inertia. I guess it depends on the speeds from VM's competitors in the area and turnover of occupants.

I think your words in bold sum it up.

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

They definitely didn't have the cash before. They could barely maintain the network, let alone expand it. I think they made the right calls over the years, fix the broken network then expand.

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

One of the benefits of being part of Liberty. A bit more financial clout.

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

Many years ago when I worked for one of the companies that later became Telewest and then Virgin, we hit over 70% take up on some streets when we first hit them. Had a lot of churn, though and also alot of none payers - shall we just say the areas we went into were high in take up but did not stack high on the credit rating scale. We did used to take deposits in advance but it still involved cutting them off!

It took around 12 months after opening a new area before we had around 40-45% of addresses active.

What we did find is that when we went into the "better" areas, we had less initial take up but churn was considerably less.

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

I hope they do go for network expansion on a bigger scale.

My parents moved to a new build home a few years ago and they can only get BT/Sky for combined packages.

They would happily switch back to Virgin but the new estate is about 500m from the edge of the existing network so hopefully they will look to expand that way eventually.

This is a prime area to the southern edge of Glasgow. They are building LOTS of new houses in the area and these aren't cheap houses either 500k plus, which is very expensive in that part of the UK. So take-up rates would be good, I'd expect, as Infinity still isn't there yet and who wants an amazing house with rubbish internet nowadays.

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

Hopefully when the East London expansion is done, VM will get a good idea of the uptake. I can see that an area like East London with thousands of apartments and small houses would have far more potential customers than a road with large £500k houses in them though.

Re: Virgin Media to expand network by 100,000 homes in East London
 

Wish they'd come and cable up my new place. New build Barratt development in the middle of Crawley. Literally 100ft from my house is the next street which is cabled. Apparently it's too costly to get our little development cabled up. Real shame - Sky sucks!