500 jobs to be created as Virgin Media unveils €200 million plan

BY DJ Kamal Mustafa
November 4, 2021
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Virgin Media Ireland has announced a €200 million national fiber network upgrade rollout that means new 500 jobs are to be created.

The firm’s huge investment will mean a fiber upgrade for more than one million homes and businesses across the country.

This huge boost will be enabling home broadband speeds that are 10 times faster than the current peak home speeds available of 1Gbps.

All Virgin customers will have speeds of up to 10Gbps available after the rollout which Paul Higgins, Vice President of Virgin Media Ireland told IrishMirror.ie will take three years to complete.

The firm also said that the rollout will create 500 jobs and will result in wholesale opportunities by opening up third-party access to the Virgin Media network.

The broadband network to full-fiber rollout will commence in early 2022.

The company has already successfully piloted a fiber upgrade of 500 premises.

This resulted in Virgin delivering speeds of up to 10Gbps (Gigabits per second), 10 times what is currently the top speed available to home users, which is 1Gbps.

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

Tony Hanway, CEO of Virgin Media, enthused: “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-fiber to more than one million Irish homes and businesses over the next three years.”

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

Minister Ryan added: “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.”