Virgin Media Ireland announces national fibre network upgrade

'Full fibre' network to deliver speeds up to 10Gb/s

Life

Tony Hanway, Virgin Media

In association with Virgin Media Ireland

Virgin Media Ireland has announced plans to upgrade their broadband network to full fibre, commencing in early 2022. The company also revealed it has already successfully piloted a fibre upgrade of 500 premises, delivering speeds of up to 10Gb/s, with the plan now to extend to 1 million premises nationwide. The project is expected to take three years to complete. 

Virgin Media’s broadband network already provides Ireland’s fastest broadband, offering 1Gb/s speeds. This new €200 million investment will bolster Virgin Media’s long-term network strategy, providing customers with far greater speeds and choice, fuel future Irish connectivity needs and underpin digital innovation for consumers, businesses, and communities nationwide.  

In addition, Virgin Media has signalled an intention to provide wholesale access to third party service providers. 

The €200 million fibre investment is backed by Liberty Global, Virgin Media Ireland’s parent company. 

Tony Hanway, CEO of Virgin Media, said: “At Virgin Media we’re committed to innovating for our customers and investing in Ireland’s long-term digital future. We’re now accelerating the evolution of our network by building out full fibre to more than one million Irish homes and businesses over the next three years.”

Minister for the Environment, Climate & Communications Eamon Ryan said: “I welcome the announcement by Virgin Media that it will undertake a full national fibre upgrade, which will see the further delivery of very high speed broadband to homes and businesses.

“Continued investments by commercial operators such as this bring benefits for consumers. Together with the Government’s investment under the National Broadband Plan, this will place Ireland at the forefront of EU countries in terms of Gigabit connectivity.”