Last month we reported that broadband ISP Virgin Media (O2) were gearing up to start making their new XGS-PON powered full fibre (FTTP) network upgrade available to homes in existing coax (cable) areas (here), which was expected to occur in March 2025. Since then we’ve observed a growing number of areas where the service and symmetric speeds of 2Gbps are now becoming available, albeit with a catch.
Just to recap. The change being referenced above is separate from nexfibre’s expansion of their Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP / XGS-PON) network into new UK areas. This has already added over 2 million premises and aims for 5m by 2026, before possibly rising to 7m thereafter. Virgin Media’s customers can already access this, but its availability is obviously limited.
Instead, we’re specifically talking about Virgin Media’s own efforts to upgrade over 16 million of their legacy Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC / DOCSIS 3.1) and Radio Frequency over Glass (RFoG FTTP) powered areas to add support for the same 10Gbps capable XGS-PON technology as nexfibre use. This is a programme they aim to complete by 2028 (aka – Project Mustang or Fibre Up).
At present we don’t know precisely how many HFC areas have completed their XGS-PON deployments (costing c.£100 per premises), but several million premises do now have both Virgin Media’s HFC + RFOG and XGS-PON networks existing side-by-side. But the fact that XGS-PON is just sitting there, doing absolutely nothing (i.e. not generating revenue), makes very little financial sense and this is now starting to change.
In our last update, we noted how several credible sources had informed ISPreview that Virgin Media was gearing up to launch new products in March 2025 (although delays are still possible), which we expected would reflect the provider’s move to start making their upgraded XGS-PON areas available to customers.
Since then we’ve received more feedback from customers, industry sources and fresh data from the Better Internet Dashboard, which when taken together appears to confirm that Virgin Media is now actively starting to make their newly upgraded XGS-PON full fibre areas available to customers in various locations (i.e. we’ve a good number of examples from previously HFC-only areas, where symmetric speed 2Gbps packages can now be taken).
The process, which appears to have started sometime around early February, is currently ramping up – it’s not yet available in all upgraded areas, although it has reached quite a few places already. But so far as we can tell from Virgin Media’s API, there may be a bit of an initial catch. At present, in the HFC locations where we’ve seen XGS-PON from Virgin Media going live, only new customers seem able to order it. So if you’ve already got or previously had HFC from Virgin Media, then it seems you can’t order it.. yet.
Naturally we did ask Virgin Media about all this and, once again, the response was one of “no comment“. At present, Virgin Media and nexfibre’s FTTP lines cover a combined total of 6.4 million UK premises, although this includes both RFOG and newer XGS-PON areas.
In addition, sources have informed us that Virgin Media may not be expecting to have migrated all of their HFC customers over to XGS-PON based FTTP lines until around 2040 (not to be confused with the 2028 date for the network upgrade itself to complete), which is perhaps to be expected given the need for an engineer visit (bulk migrations would be difficult).
Now back to waiting for Virgin Media to make an official announcement, which may or may not end up being aligned with the launch of their new NetCo wholesale solution.