Virgin Media network expansion

KOR101

Virgin Media digs in for fibre battle as major network expansion beckons

The under-pressure firm is investing in an extra 200,000 homes to revitalise stalled growth among its TV and broadband customer base in Ireland. Chief executive Tony Hanway spoke to our technology editor



What do you do when your TV subscriber base is sliding and your broadband customer base has plateaued?
If you're Tony Hanway, you start building again.
The Virgin Media Ireland boss has been overseeing a major network expansion in Ireland for the past 12 months and is now gearing up for more. When finished, Virgin aims to extend its service to an additional 200,000 new homes and businesses, a 25pc bump on its previous footprint.
"We cover 50pc of the country at the moment," says Hanway from a low-key office in a north Dublin business park. "I don't see why that shouldn't get to 60pc or 70pc. We'll expand to almost a million homes in the next two years."

Those in satellite towns benefiting from the expansion - places such as Enniscorthy, Gorey and Drogheda - will regard it as a bonus.
But, in truth, Hanway has to do something. In Ireland, Virgin has lost a third of its TV customers in recent years. This is largely down to competition from new entrants to the TV market, particularly Saorview, Eir, Vodafone and Netflix.

Meanwhile, its broadband business, once peerless and still dominant in the residential areas that Virgin serves, is also showing signs of teetering for the same competitive reasons. Arch-rival Sky has raced to a 7pc market share in just three years, thanks to the strength of its TV business and 'bundling' offers. Eir and Vodafone, meanwhile, are building their own Death Stars of broadband connectivity - fibre-to-the-home services capable of blowing most rivals away, including large chunks of Virgin's cable infrastructure. (The two telecoms firms, however, have said they will avoid direct competition with Virgin on fibre services in the short term.)
This competition has led to a halt in Virgin's broadband subscriber growth. So now, the entity formerly known as UPC, NTL and Cablelink must figure out a way of returning to growth across its platforms.

In one area, it is seeing progress. According to its most recent accounts, its Irish revenue grew 20pc last year (to around €350m, based on nine-month figures) with more money eked out of each customer.
Hanway believes that a turning point is at hand.

"We grew last year in revenue terms," he says. "So I'm happy with our financial performance. This business is definitely not going backwards. But we're in a very competitive market. One of the biggest drivers of growth will always be network expansion. We haven't been growing the network aggressively until last year, the same as everyone else. The reason for that was that Ireland was in freefall. There were very few new houses built and businesses weren't expanding. Even still, last year we connected 40,000 homes, which was double the amount of the year before. And next year we go up by 50pc again."
That would take Virgin within touching distance of a million Irish homes and businesses, a big extension and a substantial statement of intent. It would see the company expand to cover large regional towns as well as outer-lying city 'exurbs' such as the Fingal regions of Balbriggan, Skerries and Lusk.

But that's the limit, he says.
"At that stage, we'll have reached a logical place where it wouldn't make sense economically to go beyond that. We're never going to be a rural connectivity provider. We can't be that kind of operator with our technology. In any case, the National Broadband Plan is going to address that area and we're not part of it."

Still, he says: "that's still an extra 200,000 homes we'll connect".
One additional ballast for the company is its recently-acquired status as a mobile operator. It now has over 20,000 mobile customers, the "vast majority" of which are existing Virgin customers taking advantage of bundling offers. That number is still a small fraction of what established mobile operators have (Vodafone and Three have over 3.5 million mobile customers between them). But it gives Virgin a 'quadplay' defence against rival quadplay merchants, Eir and Vodafone. It also gives the company a quadplay offence against Sky, which has no mobile offering.

Nevertheless, Virgin's legacy, from the days of Cablelink and NTL through UPC and its current incarnation as Virgin Media, has always included a strong television offering. In this market, Virgin has felt the effect of fierce competition.
A quick look at the company's TV subscriber figures is sobering.
In 2010, the company had 495,000 TV customers in a network footprint of 621,000 homes able to receive its service. By late last year, that had shrunk to 312,000 customers out of 850,000 potential homes. In other words, its TV penetration has fallen from 80pc to 30pc in six years.

In the same period, Sky has increased its TV customer base from 500,000 to 700,000.
While stark, this hasn't inflicted a terminal wound on the company, partially because it has more than doubled its broadband business over the same period.
"Look, Sky's core business is TV and ours is broadband," says Hanway. "We have three times more broadband customers than they do. And even when people have changed their TV habits, they're often streaming more and using connectivity on our broadband network. So I wouldn't call us a net loser in any migration."

But 300,000 TV customers is still a substantial base that the company presumably intends to fight for. Is there any end in sight to the haemorrhage in Virgin TV customers?
"I think so, yes," he says. "Our TV losses are definitely slowing. And I'd like to stem them altogether in 2017."
To this end, the company is doing a couple of things. On the marketing side, it is embarking on a service-wide rebranding exercise, shepherding a gaggle of products back from sub-brands such as 'Horizon' or 'Bitbuzz' to a centralised Virgin banner.

Other initiatives include a global deal with Netflix to give the online streaming service its own channel within Virgin's TV interface.
But the most interesting shift may be yet to come. Virgin Media's parent company, Liberty Global, has started to buy up TV companies in a bid to control more of its own programming.
It appears to have learned a few valuable lessons from Sky, HBO and Netflix, who gain subscribers largely by producing their own exclusive content such as Game Of Thrones, House Of Cards or Premier League football.

"It's no big secret that we've been buying TV stations," said Hanway. "Liberty Global now has a lot of TV assets. It's a general move that platforms and content are seen to be coming together. It's true convergence. Increasingly on our own service in TV3, we have shows that are initiated by us, paid for us and unique to our services."
A few factors are driving this, he says.
"The cost of content is escalating wildly. So your choice is whether or not to pay a much higher amount just become a player yourself. Often you find that it might be cheaper to actually commission yourself. And that's the challenge that's facing us and others. Do you keep getting bidded up by 18pc or 20pc per year? At what stage do you think to yourself that you could actually do it yourself and even start driving sales yourself?"

Virgin has already shown that there's a line beyond which it won't go when it comes to meeting others' escalating content costs. It saw Eir pull the Setanta (now Eir Sport) channel from Virgin Media when Hanway refused to pay a higher content fee. The move meant that Virgin TV customers don't get access to certain football and rugby games anymore. It was a bruising PR episode for both companies. But Hanway believes that some of Virgin's TV future lies in commissioning its own content instead of being totally dependent on others'.
"Look at one of the big successes of last year, Gogglebox," he says. "That was produced by All3Media, which is partially owned by Liberty Global. It was commissioned by us here, localised to an Irish audience and then broadcast to our free-to-air channel with some exclusive elements on Virgin Media. That's a great example of where the ecosystem is coming together.
"If you think about our staff now, we have 300 people in TV." We already have significant content experience in our group, people with a TV background. So there's an increasing blur between a telco guy and a TV guy. We're now a connected entertainment business, which covers both things. It's not just going to plumb in connectivity, it's also going to provide content as well."

Hanway does not believe that TV is suffering a steep decline at the hands of cord-cutting. "An awful lot of people are writing off TV," he says. "But TV's not dead, it's evolving. People talked about Netflix killing TV and said that there was going to be a huge problem for us. But we've announced a worldwide partnership with Netflix and it's integrated into our system. At a more basic level, people aren't watching less TV. They're just watching it in different ways. Maybe some of it now is on a handset, a tablet or a laptop. But they're still watching TV just as much as they always have - three-to-four hours a day."
Hanway can be bolstered by the fact that Virgin Media's billionaire Irish-American owner, John Malone, is a long-term investor in his businesses and doesn't quit easily. There looks little chance that Virgin Media is about to shy away from a TV, broadband and mobile business in Ireland. The Irish wing of the company is part of a €3.5bn upgrade investment program across Ireland and the UK.
Will this mean that Virgin could ultimately become a bidder for sports rights or embark on more ambitious TV series creation in the same way as HBO, Sky or Netflix?
Whatever happens 2017 will be a fascinating year to watch the company in Ireland.


http://www.independent.ie/business/technology/virgin-media-digs-in-for-fibre-battle-as-major-network-expansion-beckons-35378463.html

ED E

NB: There've been issues regarding copyright in quoting an entire article. Favorable to quote the meat and link for the rest.


About time. This is the first time they've really had competition since moving from 30 to 50Mb.

ThisRegard

[tinfoil hat] I found it interesting to hear a while back they were now providing Netflix on their boxes after only months previously causing so much trouble with Netflix streams over their broadband. It's almost like hey guys, you might lose lots of customers if this continues, why not jump on board with us.[/tinfoil hat]

jeffk

Love to see the upload speed increased if possible

tv221

Was with Chorus/upc for 15 years, loved the service as never had problem. As previously stated I moved to new house up the road which was separated by 10 metres of grass from fully serviced area in fully serviced town. 20 from 22 houses had been customers before move and wanted to continue. About €40k worth of business a year, that would have been stable as at end of fibre line. So currently they decided they didn't want €200k worth of business over the last few years.
But hey they might arrive at the same time as SIRO and Eir. Cmon

ED E

tv221 wrote: »

Was with Chorus/upc for 15 years, loved the service as never had problem. As previously stated I moved to new house up the road which was separated by 10 metres of grass from fully serviced area in fully serviced town. 20 from 22 houses had been customers before move and wanted to continue. About €40k worth of business a year, that would have been stable as at end of fibre line. So currently they decided they didn't want €200k worth of business over the last few years.
But hey they might arrive at the same time as SIRO and Eir. Cmon

A lot of cases like yours have an access refusal by a neigbour to blame.

KOR101

tv221 wrote: »

Was with Chorus/upc for 15 years, loved the service as never had problem. As previously stated I moved to new house up the road which was separated by 10 metres of grass from fully serviced area in fully serviced town. 20 from 22 houses had been customers before move and wanted to continue. About €40k worth of business a year, that would have been stable as at end of fibre line. So currently they decided they didn't want €200k worth of business over the last few years.
But hey they might arrive at the same time as SIRO and Eir. Cmon

They were in my estate 8 months ago pulling rope through ducts. I was told it would be available in 6 weeks. The rope is actually pulled into the box on the side of my house, but not a sign of them since.

But all of the operators seem to work in mysterious ways when it comes to rollout scheduling.

domeld

They were doing some work in Gorey, also i saw article in one of the Gorey newspapers about expansion few months ago. Also they will be available in Wexford.

tsue921i8wljb3

domeld wrote: »

They were doing some work in Gorey, also i saw article in one of the Gorey newspapers about expansion few months ago. Also they will be available in Wexford.

Dundalk also later this year.

http://talkofthetown.ie/virgin-media-coming-to-dundalk-later-this-year/

quad_red

Aw man, would love to see VM in Skerries!

KOR101

quad_red wrote: »

Aw man, would love to see VM in Skerries!

Read the article in the first post. Skerries is in their plans.

quad_red

KOR101 wrote: »

Read the article in the first post. Skerries is in their plans.

I know! Sorry if my post was unclear. I meant that I was looking forward to it.

Maybe I'll once again have the broadband speeds I enjoyed in 2004 in the city centre. 13 years later and still waiting....

KOR101

quad_red wrote: »

I know! Sorry if my post was unclear. I meant that I was looking forward to it.

Maybe I'll once again have the broadband speeds I enjoyed in 2004 in the city centre. 13 years later and still waiting....

In my case, VM are already in the apartment blocks in the estate, and TV ducts were put in to every house in the estate, but not used. So, I'd say easy expansions like mine would be their first move.

Praetorian

I got a Virgin Flyer in yesterday talking about "free installation of the rich speed fiber optic cable for broadband, tv and phone to your home" I missed the guy but he left an actavo business card. "Cable" was never available in my estate. I'm cautiously optimistic

Who's ducting are they putting this through?

boobycharlton

Losing so much TV customers because their TV service is sub-par and has always been as far as I can remember. Their first digital boxes were rubbish to use compared to Sky Digital, their PVR's were rubbish to use compared to Sky + and Horizon was/is a turd that no amount of re-branding will fix. Throw in the fiasco of losing channels like BT/Setanta too. They'll continue to lose customers until they sort it with easy to use software on reliable hardware.

If Virgin get it right with next TV box they could recover some ground from Sky, as Sky Q seems to be very temperamental and not easy to use compared to Sky's previous efforts.

Danny Boy

Praetorian wrote: »

I got a Virgin Flyer in yesterday talking about "free installation of the rich speed fiber optic cable for broadband, tv and phone to your home" I missed the guy but he left an actavo business card. "Cable" was never available in my estate. I'm cautiously optimistic

Who's ducting are they putting this through?

Do you have siro?

KOR101

Praetorian wrote: »

Who's ducting are they putting this through?

My estate was built between 2002 and 2004. I assumed TV ducts were standard for new estates. It's a good question. Is OpenEir entitled to use the ducts in my estate as well as VM? Anyone?

KOR101

Praetorian wrote: »

I got a Virgin Flyer in yesterday

I hope they are not obeying my 'No Junk Mail' sign.

Praetorian

Danny Boy wrote: »

Do you have siro?

No I have Vodafone, vdsl, lucky enough to have the full 100mbit.

It would be great to be able to get the standard top end 360 x 36 mbit Virgin package, but if they are doing a pure fiber connection perhaps they will offer even higher end packages. I'll report back on here as soon as I get in contact with actavo / virgin rep.

Praetorian

So it will be cables hung along the fascia of the houses in my estate, installation around the end of the quarter.

Now that they don't have MMDS as a fallback, they pretty much have to expand their cable rollout.

Lfcfan2017

Any sign of it being available in Monasterevin any time soon?

quad_red

Praetorian wrote: »

So it will be cables hung along the fascia of the houses in my estate, installation around the end of the quarter.

Hi Praetorian, how do you know this?

And where are you based (if you don't mind me asking).

Praetorian

I live in Balbriggan. The rep attached his actavo business card to the back of the Virgin flyer. So I asked him. He's friendly and helpful and answered my questions.

Rattlehead_ie

domeld wrote: »

They were doing some work in Gorey, also i saw article in one of the Gorey newspapers about expansion few months ago. Also they will be available in Wexford.

Do you have any link or further info on this? I'm curious to see any sort of competition to Eirs network here in Gorey.

ct5amr2ig1nfhp

Does Mr. Hanway not realize that the VM tv service is dreadful? He must have his head in the sand.

The horizon service and media box was/is complete garbage.

They cannot compete with Sky and were forced to offer Netflix as a bundle only because they are losing so many TV customers.

And their new TV box being released soon. Mother of jaysus... :rolleyes:

KOR101

Virgin Media plans 120 new jobs in Limerick
Company will also expand its broadband offering in mid-west region

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/virgin-media-plans-120-new-jobs-in-limerick-1.2962285

Gonzo

would be nice if they resold Eir's FTTH with cheaper price and improved fair usage policy.

satguy

Gonzo wrote: »

would be nice if they resold Eir's FTTH with cheaper price and improved fair usage policy.

What is Eir's FUP now ? 300mb still ?

ct5amr2ig1nfhp

I hope you mean 300GB.

satguy wrote: »

What is Eir's FUP now ? 300mb still ?

ItHurtsWhenIP

Nevaeh Tasty Aircraft wrote: »

satguy wrote: »

What is Eir's FUP now ? 300mb still ?

I hope you mean 300GB.

And 300GB was the Vodafone limit (I think it's been increased since) - eir have a 1TB limit.

satguy

Nevaeh Tasty Aircraft wrote: »

I hope you mean 300GB.

Yes,, me and my fat fingers..

marno21

KOR101 wrote: »

Virgin Media plans 120 new jobs in Limerick
Company will also expand its broadband offering in mid-west region

http://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/virgin-media-plans-120-new-jobs-in-limerick-1.2962285

Did they publish any specifics on where the expansion in the mid west would be?

satguy wrote: »

Yes,, me and my fat fingers..

They must be some fingers if they can hit g instead of m

marno21

marno21 wrote: »

Did they publish any specifics on where the expansion in the mid west would be?



They must be some fingers if they can hit g instead of m

Could they be bringing CS back from the Philippines?

lucernarian

Another thread mentions their rollout in various parts of Drogheda. Expanding their reach in Balbriggan was also reported I think.

It seems to be fairly comprehensive as they're doing it the hard way with all-underground access.

redfacedbear

domeld wrote: »

They were doing some work in Gorey, also i saw article in one of the Gorey newspapers about expansion few months ago. Also they will be available in Wexford.

Rattlehead_ie wrote: »

Do you have any link or further info on this? I'm curious to see any sort of competition to Eirs network here in Gorey.

I've noticed a couple of men in VM Hi-Vis around Wexford Town - both on the Main St and up near Clonard Church.

Late to the party in Wexford as both OpenEir and Siro have FTTH up and running through large parts of the town. Will be interesting to see if they make much of an impression.

Gonzo

redfacedbear wrote: »

I've noticed a couple of men in VM Hi-Vis around Wexford Town - both on the Main St and up near Clonard Church.

Late to the party in Wexford as both OpenEir and Siro have FTTH up and running through large parts of the town. Will be interesting to see if they make much of an impression.

it most likely will as Virgin Media is significantly cheaper than the FTTH providers and still more speed than most people need.

marno21

And they can also use their TV service as a bargaining tool. Especially with the Sky isuses recently.

redfacedbear

marno21 wrote: »

And they can also use their TV service as a bargaining tool. Especially with the Sky isuses recently.

I've found Yellowbellies to be remarkably resistant to the concept of pay tv. I'm a blow-in from a town that always had cable and the concept of paying for the service. Here in Wexford they could get Welsh spillover and, to my eyes anyway, plenty of people resent having to stump for the service as a result.

Time will tell.

digiman

Gonzo wrote: »

it most likely will as Virgin Media is significantly cheaper than the FTTH providers and still more speed than most people need.

Is it though? €55/pm for 240Mb or €60/pm for 360Mb? I think the 350Mb FTTH product with Vodafone is €55/pm

jca

redfacedbear wrote: »

I've found Yellowbellies to be remarkably resistant to the concept of pay tv. I'm a blow-in from a town that always had cable and the concept of paying for the service. Here in Wexford they could get Welsh spillover and, to my eyes anyway, plenty of people resent having to stump for the service as a result.

Time will tell.

Exactly. If I could get freeview I wouldn't pay either.

Gonzo

jca wrote: »

Exactly. If I could get freeview I wouldn't pay either.

That's why Sky and Virgin do so well in Ireland. With FreeView offering over 40 channels throughout the UK they are well served by free to air quality television. Sadly Saorview is very barren and a massive disappointment with only RTE, TV3 and TG4 which is extremely limiting to say the least.

There is free to air satellite but not everyone can stick up a satellite dish if they are renting or live in an apartment.

Gonzo

digiman wrote: »

Is it though? €55/pm for 240Mb or €60/pm for 360Mb? I think the 350Mb FTTH product with Vodafone is €55/pm

just checked and Vodafone's 350meg offering is 55 euros, however this is only available in very select areas.

For 55 euros Eir customers can get 150meg broadband only FTTH, but you wouldn't go for this if Virgin is in same area offering higher speeds for a similar price.

9726_9726

Gonzo wrote: »

just checked and Vodafone's 350meg offering is 55 euros, however this is only available in very select areas.

For 55 euros Eir customers can get 150meg broadband only FTTH, but you wouldn't go for this if Virgin is in same area offering higher speeds for a similar price.

I might, because Eir's peering is better and you get native IPv4. Plus I wouldn't notice the difference between 150M and 360M.

domeld

Hi,

KN on behalf of Virgin Media is putting cables in Gorey.
I must say im impressed with speed.
As far as i know they done 2 estates (i think main cable only). I received letter saying that they will be digging shortly on my estate.

redfacedbear

Extensive work going on in the Clonard area of Wexford on this, several estates being worked on at the same time.

Does anybody know if these new builds are fully fibre or are the copying the fibre/co-ax hybrid network they have in older areas?

HFC surely. I've only ever seen pure fibre in some business deployments.

jca

redfacedbear wrote: »

Extensive work going on in the Clonard area of Wexford on this, several estates being worked on at the same time.

Does anybody know if these new builds are fully fibre or are the copying the fibre/co-ax hybrid network they have in older areas?

I'm on a new build here in Enniscorthy and it's fibre to the new cabinet at the entrance to my estate and co-ax from there to the house. I'm lucky as the amplifier is right outside my front door, the install guy had to put a reducer on my connector in the house as the signal was too strong. It has been 110% reliable with fantastic speeds especially on a wired connection. It takes longer to copy films etc to a usb key than it does to download them:D I kid you not..

domeld

jca wrote: »

I'm on a new build here in Enniscorthy and it's fibre to the new cabinet at the entrance to my estate and co-ax from there to the house. I'm lucky as the amplifier is right outside my front door, the install guy had to put a reducer on my connector in the house as the signal was too strong. It has been 110% reliable with fantastic speeds especially on a wired connection. It takes longer to copy films etc to a usb key than it does to download them:D I kid you not..

How long took them to go live after duct was installed etc?
Is still possible to get ipv4 ip address from them and bridge their modem?

jca

domeld wrote: »

How long took them to go live after duct was installed etc?
Is still possible to get ipv4 ip address from them and bridge their modem?

Where I live the old underground system was still in place so it didn't take them long to rewire the estate, less than a week. As soon as they left all services were available on the VM address checker. I'm on a bridged modem at the moment, I contacted VM through here and they moved me to ipv4 and disabled horizon free WiFi too.

flexcon

I lived in Cork city for a few years, and all my neighbors had Virgin media connections - except myself.

Next door neighbor refused a cable to go on their roof into our terrace. The following month, Eircom launched FTTC and got 70MBPS. Haven't needed more since.

I did think eircom has really killed off Liberty from expanding as eircom clearly has the economy of scale to rollout faster, and now with the FTTC on board too.

I am surprised they are expanding their network, but maybe they had to as most people don't need their 360 network and were loosing customers to the likes of SKY with their bundles, now that those bundles come with fibre broadband.