Deep dive: Virgin Media Ireland’s fibre switch-up enabling 5Gbps and faster launches

Virgin Media Ireland is to offer 5Gbps fibre broadband connectivity to its customers nationally within the coming months, in a local first, as it seeks greater differentiation in an increasingly competitive market, and its internal transformation drive continues.

The upgrade on existing Virgin Media connections does not depend on new customer premises equipment, reflecting its place in a strategy that is geared towards making 10Gbps available in the future.

While the service will initially only be available on Virgin Media’s own fibre infrastructure, there are expectations that it will expand to its fibre network partners SIRO and National Broadband Ireland (NBI) in the future.

Speaking to TelcoTitans, Paul Higgins, Virgin Media’s Vice‑President of Consumer, said “over the course of the next number of weeks and months, we’ll work with our off‑net partners, and that service will be provided as they release those services to all their retail customers. But I think what we’ve shown is that there is a desire, there is a need, and there is a want [for 5Gbps services]”.

Pricing information is not available yet, with Higgins stressing that “customers will be the first to know”, but it appears likely to enter at a new level at the top of the pricing tier (above its 2Gbps proposition, which is currently around €55‑per-month, rising to €90 after a year), rather than as a free upgrade for customers on the current fastest service.

Higher speed driven by customer demand, not a ‘tech bubble’

The 5Gbps launch follows on from the 2023 unveiling of a 2Gbps service that saw considerable demand said to reflect substantial interest in connected home services in the country, according to Higgins. “Sometimes, you might ask yourself ‘are we in a tech bubble talking to ourselves?’”, he said, “but in this instance, it definitely is one that resonates massively with consumers”.

Interest in the new top‑tier offering appears promising, with 70% of respondents to a survey agreeing or strongly agreeing that the 5Gbps is relevant to their needs.

Higgins suggested this not only demonstrates public enthusiasm but also reflects consumer expectations for services from the operator. “Virgin Media has always been seen as ‘the speed leader’, and I think people expect this of us”, Higgins said. “I don’t think it’s a ‘nice-to-have’. I think it’s a ‘must-have’ because consumers expect us to take the lead in this type of innovation”.

“ I think our job is to keep up with consumers the way consumers are living their lives, no matter what that is. We have to keep in lockstep with them, and speed is one way we do that. Experience is another way we do that, and clearly reliability is another. ”

Higgins.

Higgins placed the need for ever‑faster speeds within the context of the rapidly changing technology landscape, highlighting how expectations among customers are continually evolving. “Five years ago, lag was ‘the movie’s buffering’. In five years’ time, lag will be something like ‘the AI translator’s not real-time’”, he said. “That idea of connectivity and what it meant five years ago, and what it’s going to mean in five years’ time, is fascinating and I think this really sets us on the road for that”.

Ireland setting the pace for the Liberty Global fibre switch

Virgin Media is playing a pacesetting role in the wider shift towards fibre within Liberty.

Accompanying the 5Gbps launch, the European regional communications provider highlighted that the new service is a byproduct of a €200m investment in the transformation of the Irish network that has been underway since 2021.

Speaking during the earnings call for year ending 31 December 2024 (FY24) last week, Group CEO Mike Fries highlighted this “small operation with largely stable results” as being “furthest along on the fibre transformation” among Liberty’s operating businesses, with around half of households upgraded and 50,000 fibre customers on the network. Significantly, this includes accesses for wholesale customers Sky and Vodafone.

Ireland’s progress on the transformation is expected to mean that capital expenditure levels come down from current heightened levels during 2026, which is subsequently expected to “drive meaningful free cash flow over the long run”, according to Fries. In FY24, Virgin Media’s overall capex fell to €157m, from €161m a year earlier, but the investment in new build and upgrades increased substantially, from €57m to €75m.

Higgins further underlined the significance of the coming conclusion of the higher capex era for the service provider’s plans — “as the heavy lifting of fibre build and transformation diminishes, then our ability to ramp up and deliver these products and services nationally at scale rises. That’s a huge opportunity for us”, he said.

The technology overhaul at the foundations of new offering has been considerable, and fast, according to Higgins.

“ The transformation we’ve undertaken to really move our business towards something that’s got a huge lifespan of stability, of robust systems, next-generation products; that’s no small undertaking, and not many people choose to do all of that in such a short space of time. ”

Higgins.

The benefits of doing so are considerable, according to Higgins, based on the accelerated timeframe for providing new services to customers and delivering vital differentiation. “I think it was 100% the right decision”, he said.

Virgin Media’s wholesale shift to full fibre

Virgin Media traditionally offered DOCSIS cable connectivity, but opted to switch to full fibre in 2021, and specifically to an XGS‑PON set‑up.

In line with nowadays typical Group strategy, it also embraced a NetCo-ServCo configuration and is now offering wholesale access to its own infrastructure in a move described as “one of the first non-regulatory wholesale decisions to be made within the Liberty Global Family” by John Walsh, Director of Technology Transformation at the operator.

While strategically critical for growth at the business, this transformation has been no easy task. “You have a very different network architecture, very different model, [and] access network structure”, Walsh noted in summer 2024, when presenting on the project at TM Forum’s DTW Ignite event.

Walsh detailed the scale of the task involved in creating systems that enable the connection of different networks, even when using broadly the same technology and ensuring there is an underpinning infrastructure that can manage services.

The decision to become a wholesaler added a further layer of complexity: “there’s a whole other set of SLAs, regulations, everything that goes with that, with our clients and partners that were going to procure those wholesale services from us”, Walsh said.

Critical to managing this foundational overhaul, according to Walsh, was Virgin Media’s work with key partners including Cerillion, Nokia, Pega, Prodapt, ServiceNow and particularly Ciena’s Blue Planet business.

Walsh explained that he saw the programme as an opportunity to maximise the value of the Virgin Media investment — not just to “deliver those services to the best quality possible”, but also “use it to modernise our IT infrastructure and… really nail a few of our bigger problems: historical issues”.

Emphasising the enthusiasm within the business for the XGS‑PON adoption programme, Walsh explained “we had to bring that next-generation XGS-PON deployment to life… we wanted to deliver an IT architecture and an OSS architecture that stood up to that and to deliver that as fast as we could”.

“ It was really important for us to deliver a unified cross-platform, so whether it’s on‑net to our own customers, off-net to our own customers again but on a different network, or whether it’s our wholesale partners, we wanted one unified platform at that OSS level to deliver all those requirements. ”

Walsh.

Walsh discussed how using Blue Planet’s platform as the base had enabled this transformation and, alongside integrator Prodapt, Virgin Media has now developed a cloud‑native ecosystem with an open, adaptable and scalable architecture that accelerates service delivery and time-to-market for products and services, such as the latest 5Gbps retail and wholesale broadband offering.

Foundations with strength in depth

For Walsh, a significant element of the new architecture is its comprehensive nature and depth.

From a base of multi-domain service orchestration — which enables connections with equipment from multiple vendors, and which was described by Walsh as “the bread and butter” — Virgin Media is unlocking additional value as the new architecture moves up the chain, through simplified inventory, service order management, and particularly order orchestration.

The Blue Planet orchestration model being used is built on the Camunda open source orchestration platform, which means Virgin Media is able to bring in other flows and products based on Camunda and use them as part of its orchestration set up. “That’s really big for us”, said Walsh.

Significantly, too, the new architecture opens up opportunities for further innovation as software‑defined network models become more prevalent, particularly on mobile, where standalone 5G and potentially IoT propositions could be developed. “All of these products, all of these projects, are all very well accommodated by this architecture, so we’re excited about that”, said Walsh.

Standards compliance means it’s not just the fibre that’s fast

At the order orchestration level, TM Forum’s Open Digital Architecture standards significantly come into play, enabling flexibility for Virgin Media in adapting its set‑up and introducing new partners into the architecture.

Walsh highlighted that the range of partners working on the project were compliant with ODA standards, which brought “real benefits” in terms of speed of deployment and cost.

The impact on speed of transformation can be seen in Walsh’s assertion that the integration of the multiple platforms that was at the heart of the programme took twelve months from design to customer trial, and was then fully operational a year later with both internal customers and partner networks. “That’s just impossible without compliance standardisation to the ODA architecture”, he said.

The financial impact is also significant.

As Walsh pointed out, “time is money”, and a degree of “navel-gazing” on design and architecture could be avoided, with all parties working within the same framework. This made a material financial difference, he said. “It sounds so simple, but it just costs a lot of money if you’re not compliant to those standards”, he added.

Presenting alongside Walsh, Kailem Andersen, Blue Planet’s Vice‑President & General Manager for Global Products & Delivery, agreed on the value of an industry backing standards on architecture and APIs and the impact a collective of like‑minded vendors had on the Virgin Media transformation. The approach, he believed, summed up best practice for undertaking a transformation project of this scale.

“ The ecosystem in this scenario was product-centric companies — product- and software-first mentality — who embraced openness and programmability so that the systems integrator can take this and then be able to roll it out and deploy it. So by having vendors that work together with a similar philosophy is absolutely foundational in delivering a next-generation architecture and approach like this. ”

Andersen.