Virgin Media Ireland’s Paul Farrell warns that reliable networks and strong customer support are crucial as the company brings its speeds up to 500Mbps.

In recent weeks Virgin Media told existing customers that it was offering a new 500Mbps service to almost 1m homes across its network in towns and cities across Ireland.

Virgin Media has been quietly working away on its own £3bn plan called Project Lightning to bring 17m premises in the UK and Ireland into the 1Gbps sphere and beyond – or GigaWorld, as it calls it.

Last June, the company revealed it had passed 900,000 premises across Ireland with its fibre broadband network and was aiming at passing 1m premises.

“We’re still on target to reach 1m homes and we were tracking up to 930,000 by the end of Q1, so full steam ahead,” Farrell said.

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Words by John Kennedy