This article is more than 1 year old

Virgin Media swallows 215,000 new fibre customers in Blighty

UK broadband biz posts unexciting results

Revenue at Virgin Media rose 1 per cent to £1,227m for its fourth quarter results, with the firm having also signed up 215,000 more users to its £3bn Project Lighting network expansion.

Earnings before interest, tax, depreciation and amortization rose 8 per cent to £583m in its preliminary results today. Virgin Media now has 464,000 customers signed up to its fibre network, which promises to connect an extra 4 million homes and businesses to "ultrafast" speeds by 2020.

During 2016, Virgin Media - which is owned by Liberty Global - said it had spent £377m in total as part of its network expansion, which includes build costs of approximately £290m related to the 465,000 premises added.

Tom Mockridge, Virgin Media chief exec, had previously warned that uncertainty over Brexit could hamper further network investment.

Virgin Media’s network currently covers around 14 million UK premises and they expect to add a total of “up to” 800,000 extra homes and businesses to their coverage in 2017.

Mockridge said: “2016 was an important year for Virgin Media. We re-launched Virgin TV, transformed Virgin Mobile, ramped up our Project Lightning network expansion and signed more businesses. We look forward to building on this in 2017.”

Virgin also says it's pushing ahead with the integration of Arqiva WiFi following its acquisition, which it will relaunch under the Virgin Media brand in February 2017.

Like all the major broadband providers, Virgin Media hiked up its prices this year, increasing its basic package by £3.49 a month. ®

More about

TIP US OFF

Send us news


Other stories you might like