Virgin Media network expansion

Gonzo

parts of Dunshaughlin are rumoured to be in the works of being upgraded to Virgin Media. Eir's FTTH rural rollout and FTTC rollout are finished here since May, however alot of KN vans guys were around in July in the Maelduin estate laying FTTH throughout the estate and when asked by some locals they said they were laying FTTH on behalf of Virgin Media. There were also several VM red vans seeing around town during those same weeks.

To my knowledge Dunshaughlin has never had Virgin Media/UPC/NTL before so this is a completely new network for the town, how much of the town is being done remains to be seen but I've a feeling it's only the one estate for now with the 2 new estates currently starting building will follow later.

KOR101

“We’ve been vindicated in that by offering services now in Gorey, Arklow, Tullamore, Ballina, Ennis, Drogheda and Dundalk. We’ve added 100,000 homes and we’ll get close to one million homes [from 880,000 currently] in the next year to 18 months.”

Saturation point for Virgin Media would be 70 per cent coverage of homes in Ireland.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/media-and-marketing/virgin-ireland-s-top-player-ready-to-tackle-rt%C3%A9-at-sport-1.3285507

redfacedbear

They're running ads in Wexford town saying they are available. Using the address checker they seem to be live in estates on the Clonard Road and thereabouts, but not too widespread just yet.

flaneur

They’ve a LOT off odd gaps in Cork City that should be infilled very easily.

Also in many cases they’re only up against VDSL from OpenEir in the cities whereas they’re up against Siro and OpenEir FTTH in other area.

KOR101

Vodafone Ireland, which has over 2.3 million customers, said its subscriber base rose by 4,000 versus the first quarter. It now has 265,400 fixed broadband customers, up 3.4 per cent year-on-year, and making it the fastest growing broadband provider in Europe across the Vodafone group.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/vodafone-ireland-sees-organic-revenues-decline-on-new-roaming-regulations-1.3291220

flexcon

flaneur wrote: »

They’ve a LOT off odd gaps in Cork City that should be infilled very easily.

Also in many cases they’re only up against VDSL from OpenEir in the cities whereas they’re up against Siro and OpenEir FTTH in other area.

Ah man I know, I have moved 4 times in the past 6 years and in all address the services were not available for various reasons. I was in the City centre also.

Some reasons varied to " We don't have our network in your estate" to " Your neighbors won't allow a cable to come from their building"

It's a shame really.

Mgit

flexcon wrote: »

Ah man I know, I have moved 4 times in the past 6 years and in all address the services were not available for various reasons. I was in the City centre also.

Some reasons varied to " We don't have our network in your estate" to " Your neighbors won't allow a cable to come from their building"

It's a shame really.

Well that won't be an issue where they are rolling out to new areas now as they are digging footpaths and laying cables in public streets. Wayleaves won't be required

kmurph

redfacedbear wrote: »

They're running ads in Wexford town saying they are available. Using the address checker they seem to be live in estates on the Clonard Road and thereabouts, but not too widespread just yet.

All the cabling has been laid on our road for the past couple of months, but still no sign of it going live.

Johnny Derpp

boobycharlton wrote: »

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.

I should think that their underhanded tactics in regards to choking peoples bandwith and diverting traffic through mainland Europe caused a few people to jump ship too.

Hopefully this Eir1000 roll out will keep all providers on their toes.

redfacedbear

KOR101 wrote: »

Vodafone Ireland, which has over 2.3 million customers, said its subscriber base rose by 4,000 versus the first quarter. It now has 265,400 fixed broadband customers, up 3.4 per cent year-on-year, and making it the fastest growing broadband provider in Europe across the Vodafone group.

https://www.irishtimes.com/business/technology/vodafone-ireland-sees-organic-revenues-decline-on-new-roaming-regulations-1.3291220

Glad to see I'm not the only one who conflates Vodafone and Virgin - I always have to pause and think about which one I want to refer to

KOR101

redfacedbear wrote: »

Glad to see I'm not the only one who conflates Vodafone and Virgin - I always have to pause and think about which one I want to refer to

Oh dear.........

KOR101

VM are hard at it in Balbriggan...........no sooner than SIRO finished digging up my estate, VM are now at it. No doubt that they are serious about it this time, although you would have to wonder what will be left for them once SIRO sign people up.

ED E

KOR101 wrote: »

VM are hard at it in Balbriggan...........no sooner than SIRO finished digging up my estate, VM are now at it. No doubt that they are serious about it this time, although you would have to wonder what will be left for them once SIRO sign people up.

TV is a powerful player in this game, IME its still Sky>Virgin>The Rest.

digiman

ED E wrote: »

TV is a powerful player in this game, IME its still Sky>>>>>>>Virgin>The Rest.

Just fixing that up for you, although I quite like Vodafone TV and think it’s very close to Virgin but main issue would be the lacking of sky sports HD

nilescraneo

Good % of the population will just go with the biggest brand they can remember and won't give a second thought to technical stuff, that's why people will choose Sky/Virgin/Eir even if Siro is already available, like the lad from Balbriggan mentioned above.

kmurph

kmurph wrote: »

All the cabling has been laid on our road for the past couple of months, but still no sign of it going live.

Just to update my own post, finally went live on Dec 1st. Ordered it myself (360mb BB & Phone) this Wednesday and was installed Friday afternoon.

Very happy with it so far. Installers were fantastic, ran all the cabling everywhere we wanted to.

jca

kmurph wrote: »

Just to update my own post, finally went live on Dec 1st. Ordered it myself (360mb BB & Phone) this Wednesday and was installed Friday afternoon.

Very happy with it so far. Installers were fantastic, ran all the cabling everywhere we wanted to.

It's a brilliant service. Don't forget to call them next year when your contract is finished, they'll haggle to keep you. I'm starting my second year with them, 6 months half price, new 12 month contract.

KOR101

While Ireland’s National Broadband Plan descends into a tangled mess, Virgin Media is working quietly and effectively on its own regional roll-out strategy.

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/virgin-media-broadband-ireland

quad_red

Kinda crazy looking at the difference in options.

A work colleague who lives in Balbriggan is 4.6km away from us in Skerries. We have crap Eir ADSL. She has fibre Eir, SIRO and shortly Virgin to choose from.

Surely it makes sense for providers to break out into new areas before competitors to lock in customers?

Try_harder

quad_red wrote: »

Kinda crazy looking at the difference in options.

A work colleague who lives in Balbriggan is 4.6km away from us in Skerries. We have crap Eir ADSL. She has fibre Eir, SIRO and shortly Virgin to choose from.

Surely it makes sense for providers to break out into new areas before competitors to lock in customers?

It’s about population density tbf

KOR101

quad_red wrote: »

Kinda crazy looking at the difference in options.

A work colleague who lives in Balbriggan is 4.6km away from us in Skerries. We have crap Eir ADSL. She has fibre Eir, SIRO and shortly Virgin to choose from.

Surely it makes sense for providers to break out into new areas before competitors to lock in customers?

SIRO are going north to south. They started in Dundalk. Skerries next I would say. Virgin Media are already in lots of places in Balbriggan for apartments. They are probably building out from there.

Gonzo

looks like the rumours of Virgin Media coming to Dunshaughlin are true. Virgin are advertising a position for a liaison officer for the roll-out to Dunshaughlin.

https://www.fmi.ie/job/virgin-media-community-liaison-officer-required-portarlington-dunshaughlin/

I checked various address's from the different estates around the town and most of the estates now have a 'upgrade coming soon' message from Virgin Media's checker.

I reckon the vast majority of the urban section of Dunshaughlin will go live some time this year. Looks like Virgin Media will be the first to offer services of more than 100megs in the urban areas of the town.

Siro will also be building their network here but looks like Virgin have beaten them to it.

Eir's FTTH services are only available in the rural areas radiating around Dunshaughlin while the urban area just has VDSL and DSL services from Eir.

Great to see such a network of fibre being built in Dunshaughlin over the next few years.

KOR101

How much of even the UK has 1000mbit speeds at this point?

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/virgin-media-ireland-fibre-project-lightning-broadband

tsue921i8wljb3

KOR101 wrote: »

How much of even the UK has 1000mbit speeds at this point?

https://www.siliconrepublic.com/comms/virgin-media-ireland-fibre-project-lightning-broadband

Do you mean how many of Virgin UK customers are on gigabit speeds? If so there may be a small amount on trials but Virgin have not officially launched gigabit packages. However it seem that at least half of their newly passed premises will be using FTTP and obviously will be gigabit capable. It is somewhat safe to assume that it would be similar here with at least some if not all new builds using FTTP.

According to the following article Germany is the only territory where LG has launched a gigabit service.

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/05/virgin-media-uk-cable-rollout-slows-as-broadband-users-top-5-13m.html

KOR101

New high-speed broadband to be switched on in Tuam in coming weeks

https://connachttribune.ie/new-high-speed-broadband-to-be-switched-on-in-tuam-in-coming-weeks/

Falconire

KOR101 wrote: »

New high-speed broadband to be switched on in Tuam in coming weeks

https://connachttribune.ie/new-high-speed-broadband-to-be-switched-on-in-tuam-in-coming-weeks/

Tuam already has broadband from Virgin media but they were bringing in the back haul via wireless so they might have got a direct fiber into Tuam at last.


Also Virgin media is expanding the current network they have in Tuam to more areas.

Marlow

Aye .. with the backhaul they had up until now into Tuam, they had 1-1.5 Gbit/s total at the very most via licensed microwave. That didn't leave much space for expansion.

They must have brought fiber up there to fix that.

/M

KOR101

Earlier this month the head of Virgin said the group was “moderating” its building. “We have tailed off a little bit in Ireland, essentially because we had local authority governments asking us for fees that we didn’t wish to pay,” Tom Mockridge, the chief executive of Virgin Media, told analysts earlier this month.

“The increase in charges can amount to as much as 24% on top of the cost of the overall build, making our network build costs significantly higher than elsewhere,” she said. “This is not an encouraging prospect for any investor taking on the risk of investing in Ireland’s future digital infrastructure.”

The spokeswoman said the company was committed to cabling a further 100,000 new homes and business, having hit 900,000 fibre connected premises in Ireland in June. The industry is talking to local authorities to resolve the issues.

https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/ireland/high-fees-buffer-planned-virgin-media-fibre-network-roll-out-r50xkx9pd

Marlow

I well believe it. Some councils are even trying to charge a yearly "license", if you want to build a mast.

That's for masts on private land. It's just for the enjoyment of giving you the planning permission.

/M

ED E

It's an easy win for govt to accelerate the commercial side while the NBP flounders. I've heard comparison in paper fees of £10 in the UK being €6000 here and so on.

LA's don't understand that the fees paid now are a loss of much more in rates when economic drivers move away.