Virgin Media Has 4.8m UK Broadband Customers

Virgin Media has announced that its UK broadband customer base is up to 4.8 million, adding 70,400 during the past three months as its £3bn ‘Project Lightning’ network expansion gathers pace.

The Liberty Global-owned frim has 5.6 million customers on its cable network, of which 3.7 million take television services and 4.4 million have a telephone line. Virgin Media also has three million mobile customers on its mobile virtual network operator (MVNO), which runs on EE’s infrastructure.

The network reaches almost 13 million homes, with 70,000 premises added during the first quarter of 2016. The company says it is on track to reach 500,000 additional homes and businesses by the end of the year.

Virgin Media broadband

In total, Project Lightning is expected to increase Virgin Media’s footprint to 17 million properties by the end of 2019 – at least one million of which will be connected via fibre to the premise (FTTP).

The majority of properties passed will be connected to the wider network using coaxial cables, which can currently deliver 200Mbps to homes and 300Mbps to SMBs. However the use of FTTP opens up the potential for even faster speeds of up to 10Gbps in the future.

Total revenues for the UK and Ireland during Q1 reached $1.7bn (£1.2bn), a 1.5 percent year-on-year decline, contributing to wider Liberty Global revenues of $4.59bn (£3.2bn), an increase of 1.6 percent.

Indeed, Liberty Global declared Virgin Media to be the “standout performer” across all of its European territories.

Vodafone and Liberty Global have held talks about a “possible exchange of assets”, leading to speculation that the cable giant might by the mobile operator, or Vodafone might buy Virgin Media.

Talks broke down without a definitive agreement, but the two parties have since decided to launch a joint-venture in the Netherlands aimed at taking on market leader KPN.

“We also remain in constructive dialogue with the European Commission regarding the combination of Ziggo’s fibre-rich broadband network with Vodafone’s leading 4G mobile network in the Netherlands,” said Liberty Global CEO Mike Fries. “This highly complementary joint venture will create a strong national competitor and we expect the transaction to close around the end of 2016.”

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