Virgin Media O2 announce new plan to extend FTTP to 23 million
Virgin Media and O2 (VMO2) have confirmed a plan to extend their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network to cover around 23 million UK premises by 2027 - seven million more than their original plan.
The announcement comes from the Joint Venture as they published their combined results for Q4 2021.
The results said: “As this extends the company’s total gigabit reach to ~23m premises once completed, it provides [VMO2] with a clear incremental growth opportunity by offering services to a wider pool of customers and higher cross and upsell due to the increased overlap of fixed and mobile services.”
The extension of the full fibre network will cover premises in new greenfield areas and according to ISP review, achieve this build by 2027, they would need to build at a rate of 1.4 million per year or 350,000 premises per quarter. This is significantly higher than the current building rate which is approximately 125,000 per quarter to achieve the goal of providing the FTTP network to more than 500,000 premises in 2022.
Lutz Schüler, CEO of Virgin Media O2, said: “In a historic year for our business, which saw the completion of the UK’s largest ever telecoms merger, we stayed focused and finished 2021 on a high.
“We saw sustained subscriber growth across fixed and mobile as the demand for fast, reliable connectivity remains, and delivered an increase in profitability while investing more than £2bn in our network, services and future growth drivers.
“As part of our mission to upgrade the UK, we expanded our 5G coverage, completed our gigabit rollout as promised, and we now plan to extend our footprint to ~23 million premises through a new fibre venture being set up by our shareholders.
“We’ve started this year by being the only big four mobile network to not reintroduce EU roaming charges. This challenger spirit runs deep across the organisation, and we have every intention of building on this energy and maintaining the momentum we’ve built up.”
