Rumours of an expansion of the Virgin Media service to the Isle of Wight have been put to bed, as the telecommunications giant confirms it has no plans to hop across the Solent. In recent weeks rumours have been circulating that Virgin Media were about to begin a massive rollout of their full fibre network across the Island, which would bring about significant disruption – a practical repeat of fibre works completed in the area in recent years. The whispers have grown so strong that it had been suggested work was due to begin in February or March, and that teams had been recruited for the groundwork. An estimated duration of 10-12 years has also been suggested. Island Echo approached Virgin Media for a statement earlier this week, with the company confirming that nobody across multiple internal teams is aware of any expansion plans on the Isle of Wight. The Island rumour mill continues…
VIRGIN MEDIA NOT COMING TO THE ISLE OF WIGHT DESPITE RUMOURS
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They’ll just buy WightFibre, or whatever they’re called now. It’s not an Island firm anyway….
All of their engineers, customer service and all other departments are island based, to call it anything other than an an island firm is ignorant.
Brilliant service would never go to any other anyway..
Idiot. WightFibre Headquarters is in Cowes.
Who would want to buy wightfibre?
The name checks out – ignorant until the bitter end.
yes it is.. yes its owned by a company in nottingham it’s like british gas ..no more but owned by french..
Am I the only one who has had enough of the current Wightfibre
works, yet alone another Company causes more havoc on our
Roads.
Stop living in the past. It’s called progression. Get back under your rock
If you call that progession you are deluded.
I call it taking the p*ss
what a goon ..
Agreed. They’ve gone about it the wrong way. The people digging up roads and pavements aren’t island based – some can’t even string an English sentence together! Cheap labour. The state roads and pavements have been left in is appalling – island roads (council tax payer) now paying to mix their mess, for WightFibre’s sole benefit. The sooner they’re bought out the better. They will be going on the market as soon as they’ve finished their full fibre project; they’ve made a loss year after year being propped up by government funding and NatWest. Their own prices aren’t sustainable for a business. And the island based call centre – ha, don’t make me laugh! They may well be but the left hand doesn’t know what the right hand is doing there.
“Can’t even string an English sentence together!” That clearly does not exclude many of those posting here, presumably island based.
You do realise foreign people are allowed to live and work on the Isle of Wight, right? I know for a fact that all their customer care team are based in Cowes – I live next door to one of them.
Wightfibre has the Island already sown up. Why would another company want to spend millions trying to copy them?
Because they have a monopoly in the FTTH market, which simply shouldn’t be allowed. It’s not copying – openreach started laying fibre optic long before wight fibre (or wight cable) existed.
I think you’re probably a misinformed ex Openreach engineer, looking at the repeated misinformation you’re posting.
We’ve come a long way from twisted pair, old boy.
Virgin Media would never be able to recover the cost of installing island wide fibre, within the current lifespan if their end to end technology.
There are currently only 3 operational telecoms subsea cables linking mainland UK and the Island, all owned by OpenReach, who would never either have the capacity nor the business sense to allow Virgin Media to use them. If that was to happen, VM would need to spend £12mil+ laying their own subsea cables, assuming they have suitable infrastructure available at the landing sites.
Where do you think WightFibre has got the money from?
10 to 12 years… What a joke. Japan would have this done in 2 weeks. But what with island roads being in charge 12 years is optimistic.
Digging up roads and laying cables be it optical or any other medium is so primitive in wireless days. Surely better to have higher frequencies using wireless technology
You clearly haven’t worked in the wireless industry. Trees, ground elevation and weather are some of the biggest reasons this can’t be achieved.
As almost every home and street has electricity and the wiring carrying such then surely it is not beyond reason that those wires could not have uhf digital signals passed down them rather than dig a mud trench to every single gate in the UK.
Yer, if I were 30 years younger I would be moving there or South Korea. Nothing for the younger generation in the UK.
And another load of dribble for people to gossip about lol.
Anyone with more than one braincell would be able to work out that VM coming to the Island is a non starter..
Right!? Virgin can hardly be bothered to repair their faulty O2 masts over here, let alone roll out a whole FTTP network
I would have thought O2 would be repairing O2 masts… no ?
Good been with wight fibre must be nearly 20 years now brilliant service..
Here we go again. Total shambles.
What does pop-up Bob have to say about this ?
Nothing as his family member is on the board !!
Your warped and myopic views bare no relation to the problem that red jet are experiencing, i am sure your views ally closely to corbyn and look how good he would have been for the country
Your warped and myopic comment bears no resemblance to reality. Corbyn never led the country, so who knows whether he would have been good, bad or indifferent? Pure speculation for the sake of putting down the ‘lefties’ and supporting the totalitarian right.
Cowes chain ferry is more reliable.
All these ferries are a joke, time for a tunnel.
You know perfectly well that there will never be a tunnel or a bridge because it makes no economic sense.
Nor did / does HS2,..
but the Tory government still insists the projected £66+++ BILLION cost, (just for phase one), represents good value for money. (just so a few people can save a few minutes on their journey to work)
..LOL
And would cost at least half a billion and where is that coming from!! and take if started now.. decades to ever get built..so no there never ever will be a bridge or tunnel.
Why are we not surprised!! It’s expected now that at least once a week one of their knackered old jets or car ferries doesn’t run for some reason or another. INVEST. INVEST, INVEST in new and reliable vessels and give us poor souls the proper service we deserve.
Thats good then just as people need to get to work some one needs to sacked over this people could lose their jobs over crap like this..also no compensation..ankers the lot of em.
Yeah, but just like Wightlink, Red Funnel is a private company running (or not) a ferry service, with the sole purpose of making money.
They have no obligation, what-so-ever, to provide any service at all,.. and therefore cannot be held accountable for not providing a service.
(as long as the ‘greed driven’ CONservatives are in power, it will never change)
Red funnel charges its customers enough ,its time they bought some new ferries
Only 5/6 years old built on the Island, not a good record.
Please tell me the red jet is back on tomorrow morning!
If you wish apon a star it just might happen…
The owners of red funnel are a joke. They do not understand that you have to invest in preventative maintenance to ensure their fleet stays afloat, they do not give two hoots about their customers. I work in shipping with a fleet of 30 ships and we have had less off hire in the last 10 years than they have in the last 10 months. My wife pays £3000 a year for her ticket and they unable to run a reliable service whilst recording millions in profit which they line their pockets with instead of reinvesting. Absolute SCUM
If they parked the two dodgy aircraft carriers end to end across the Solent, you could probably drive on one side and off the other. Just a thought……..
How does it start?.
Once upon a time there was a ferry company that ran out of tall stories
They have a new book titled BULLSHIT got 50 volumes of it..last years of reading.
There is a petition at 38degree.com for a regulator for Solent ferry firms. Please sign it? We need to stop this fiasco!