Some 4,000 extra homes in the small County Down (Northern Ireland) town of Donaghadee have just become the latest to benefit from the expansion of Virgin Media’s (VMO2) new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) based gigabit broadband and TV network, which can offer top download speeds of up to 1130Mbps to local residents.
The work forms part of their ongoing Project Lightning build, which has so far extended their network to cover over 2.7 million extra UK premises. The operator’s original network was deployed using Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) technology, but this expansion harnesses FTTP via Radio Frequency Over Glass (RFoG) – both methods make use of the DOCSIS standard to harness the same consumer hardware.
At the same time, VMO2 are also rolling out their latest DOCSIS 3.1 network upgrade across the UK, which by the end of 2021 aims to have made download speeds of 1Gbps+ possible across their network of around 15.5 million premises. Outside those areas, you can currently expect average speeds of up to c.630Mbps from their existing EuroDOCSIS 3.0 based packages (via their top Ultimate Oomph TV bundle).
Prices for their top 1Gig package start from £62 per month on an 18-month contract term, with a guaranteed price freeze for at least 24 months.