0 communities to benefit from Virgin Media broadband and entertainment boost

Virgin Media has today unveiled the next 30 communities, voted for by local residents and businesses, to benefit from an ultrafast broadband and entertainment boost.

The 30 communities, which will see fibre broadband delivered directly to premises, form the next stage of Virgin Media's Supercharging Local Communities' initiative, and are expected to be connected by spring 2017.

Launched earlier this year, the initiative is part of Virgin Media's £3bn Project Lightning network expansion. Local residents and businesses were urged to vote for their community to be one of the first to benefit from the scheme and bring the fastest widely available broadband speeds to their area. The voting was paused temporarily at the end of April to announce the first ten communities which received the most votes.

Since then homes and businesses across the country have been campaigning locally for Virgin Media to connect their street, with over 5,000 votes cast between 29 February and 30 June via the Cable My Street website.

The next 30 communities are confirmed as follows, in order of the votes cast:

Windlesham (Surrey)

Sutton Courtenay (Oxfordshire)

Balsall Common (West Midlands)

Chineham & Old Basing (Hampshire)

Oakley (Hampshire)

Farnham Common (Buckinghamshire)

Wargrave (Berkshire)

Lickey, Catshill, Marlbrook & Barnt Green (Worcestershire)

Cullingworth (West Yorkshire)

Shrivenham (Oxfordshire)

Baddesley Ensor (Warwickshire)

Harden (West Yorkshire)

Broughton Astley (Leicestershire)

Grimethorpe (South Yorkshire)

Wigginton & Haxby (North Yorkshire)

Copmanthorpe (North Yorkshire)

Grassmoor (Derbyshire)

Pontyclun (Rhondda)

Darfield (South Yorkshire)

Talke & Talke Pits (Staffordshire)

Cudworth (South Yorkshire)

Duffield (Derbyshire)

Shafton (South Yorkshire)

Denham (Buckinghamshire)

Llanharry (Rhondda)

Marcham (Oxfordshire)

North Leigh (Oxfordshire)

Repton (Derbyshire)

North Cornelly (Bridgend)

Watchfield (Oxfordshire)

Residents and businesses who take the Virgin Media service in these communities will be connected with fibre broadband run directly to their property offering ultrafast, future-proof connectivity. Virgin Media has committed to connecting fibre to the premise (FTTP) to at least a quarter of the 4 million additional homes and businesses being added to the Virgin Media network as part of its Project Lightning' expansion plans.

Paul Buttery, Chief Operating Officer at Virgin Media, said: By bringing fibre to the parishes and smaller communities, it shows that ultrafast broadband and top-notch TV isn't just for big cities. We have been overwhelmed by the response from the local communities and as a result we have decided to speed up our network expansion plans, to connect the next 30 villages by spring 2017. But we won't stop there we urge more people to come forward and tell us where we should expand to next.

Ultrafast broadband up to 300Mbps

For residents, Virgin Media's Vivid 200 broadband offers the fastest widely available broadband with download speeds of up to 200Mbps. This is more than two and a half times faster than the top widely available speeds from BT, TalkTalk and Sky meaning that a whole household can stream movies, music and more all at the same time.

For businesses, Virgin Media Business now offers ultrafast connectivity, with speeds of up to 300Mbps almost four times faster than its main competitors' widely available top speeds. This enables businesses to reach their potential by delivering better services and greater capacity.

New, faster build method

This FTTP expansion uses an innovative way of bringing ultrafast broadband to people's homes with minimal disruption. The approach, called narrow-trenching, reduces the width of the trench used to lay optical fibre cables from around 40cm to just 10cm and enables engineers to cover up to 100m in a day, making it more than twice as fast as current methods.

As network expansion continues across the country, Virgin Media calls for more people to register interest at: www.virginmedia.com/cablemystreet

Ends

LINK:	http://about.virginmedia.com/press-release/9532/30-communities-to-bene...
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