Virgin Media to offer ultra fast broadband

Virgin Media hopes to be able to offer its ultrafast broadband network to 40,000 homes and businesses across the Borough of Barnet by the end of 2018.

Theresa Villiers, MP for Chipping Barnet, told the Barnet Society that a connection to the network should become available to several thousand properties within her constituency in streets in High Barnet, East Barnet and Friern Barnet.

This news will be much appreciated by the many households that have complained for so long about slow broadband speeds.

“Virgin Media’s network can provide far faster speeds than British Telecom, and the fact that Virgin Media can offer an alternative might put even more pressure on BT to update those telephone cabinets that cannot supply fibre connections.”

A recent survey showed that there are 2,649 homes in Mrs Villiers’ constituency that do not have a superfast internet speed of more than 24 megabits per second.  

Virgin Media announced in July that it is to invest a further £3 billion in extending its ultrafast network.  

Work has already started in London: 90,000 premises have been covered so far; a further 38,000 will have access by early 2017; and this will have risen to a total of 400,000 homes and businesses by the end of 2018, including 40,000 in the Borough of Barnet.

Virgin Media claims to offer the fastest widely available speeds in the UK of up to 200 megabits per second for consumers and 300 megabits per second for businesses.

Currently the Virgin Media network covers 2.8 million premises in London and householders wishing to register their interest in a connection should visit www.virginmedia.com/cablemystreet