Edinburgh and Liverpool have become the latest cities to gain access to Liberty Global’s gigabit broadband network, bringing the total number of European households with access to 1 Gbps broadband speeds to 11.7 million.
The two cities are the latest in a growing list of GIGACities delivered by Virgin Media’s UK network, alongside Southampton, Manchester, Reading, Birmingham and Coventry. Edinburgh marks Scotland’s first GIGACity, bringing speeds 17 times faster than the Scottish capital’s average broadband speeds, all delivered through Virgin Media’s newest and most powerful router, the Hub 4.
Virgin Media’s gigabit network (with advertised speeds of 1104Mbps) now covers 18% of its footprint, or almost one in five Virgin Media premises. The major speed increases in Liverpool and Edinburgh are part of Virgin Media’s plan to bring gigabit speeds to more than 15 million homes across its entire network by the end of 2021, well ahead of the UK government’s target of delivering gigabit-capable broadband nationwide by 2025.
Liberty Global is set to launch even more GIGACities in the coming months as it continues to boost high-speed internet access across Europe. Elsewhere amongst its operating companies, Telenet and UPC Switzerland started delivering gigabit speeds to customers throughout their entire networks last year, while UPC Poland has so far connected more than 60 cities to its gigabit service.