Virgin Media Launches Commercail 152 Mbps Service in U.K.

Virgin Media launched commercial 152 Mbps Internet access service to 150,000 Manchester homes and businesses in the United Kingdom, after having invested £75 million.

As part of the new construction, Virgin Media coverage of Manchester has increased to  450,000 premises.

Part of “Project Lightning”, Virgin plans to upgrade internet access speeds for four million locations over the next five years.

The upgrade is part of a strategy to maintain absolute leadership, in terms of delivered bandwidth, over all other fixed network providers in the U.K. market, something U.S. cable operators also are doing.

Comcast, the largest U.S. Internet service provider, is upgrading all 21 million of its locations to symmetrical gigabit service, with completion early in 2016.

In addition, Comcast also is prepared to offer 2 Gbps service to about 85 percent of those 21 million locations.