Virgin Media, the U.K.’s largest MSO, is adding a bit more fiber to its network diet.

The operator, now owned by Liberty Global, said it will deploy fiber-to-the-premises to at least a quarter of the 4 million additional homes and businesses tied to “Project Lightning,” an initiative introduced last year.

Virgin Media said it has already started to deploy FTTP in Cambridgeshire and Leicestershire, with work expected to start soon in  West Yorkshire, Devon and East Sussex. The MSO noted that its using “narrow trenching” and other engineering techniques to deploy FTTP in high-demand areas costs that are lower and at a pace that is more rapid than traditional fiber buildouts.

With the planned expansion, Virgin Media said it expects to have 17 million homes connected to its network by 2019. The MSO said it’s adding FTTP to the mix amid a recent finding from regulator Ofcom that the U.K. has the lowest proportion of fiber connections running directly to homes and businesses of any country that’s part of the OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development).

The MSO said its updated plan “are a significant boost to the UK’s ambitions to become a ‘fibre nation’.”

Its HFC network, which represents most of its footprint, today offers downstream speeds of up to 200 Mbps for residential customers and up to 300 Mbps for businesses.

Virgin Media said Project Lightning has already connected 250,000 new premises, and has created 2,100 jobs in the UK. This year, it expects to connect 500,000 new premises, and create another 500 jobs.

“Our £3bn investment to bring ultrafast connectivity to more parts of the UK is not just about better broadband, it’s about future-proofing the country’s network infrastructure with the best and most modern technology,” Virgin Media CEO tom Mockridge said in a statement. 

Liberty Global is testing DOCSIS 3.1 in the labs and preparing for “live trials in certain markets in early 2016,” company vice chairman and CEO Mike Fries said Wednesday on the company’s second quarter earnings call.

“We're testing [DOCSIS 3.1] right now and should begin commercial deployments next year,” Fries said, referring to an emerging CableLabs-specified platform that will bring multi-gigabit speeds to HFC networks.

He said Liberty Global is already ordering cable modem termination systems (CMTSs) with DOCSIS 3.1 capability and putting them into the field.

The rollout is ambitious, as Fries said he expects 40% of Liberty Global’s network in the U.K. and Germany will be D3.1-ready by the end of 2015, and sees 80% of its full footprint outfitted for the new platform in about three years.

Fries also shed some light on the economics of DOCSIS 3.1, estimating that the MSO should be able to deliver 1-gig speeds for about €20 (US $21.89) per home. That cost, he said, excludes the consumer premises equipment/modem.

Other MSOs are also pushing ahead, as Comcast expects to start a market trial of DOCSIS 3.1 by the fourth quarter of this year. Based on a survey of a dozen top service providers from around the globe, IHS predicts that, on average, those MSOs will pass about a third of their residential subscribers with DOCSIS 3.1-enabled headends by April 2017.

As Liberty Global preps for D3.1, it’s using DOCSIS 3.0 to deliver downstream burst up to 200 Mbps or more in 11 of its 12 European market, and has launched a 500-Meg offering in Switzerland and “the vast majority of our footprint,” the exec said.

Fries also offered an update on “Project Lightning,” a £3 billion (US$4.7 billion) Virgin Media initiative that will enable the U.K.-based operator to extend its broadband network to an addition 4 million premises over the next five years.

He said Virgin Media released 80,000 homes in the first half while laying the foundation for accelerated new build in big markets such as Manchester, where the operator is targeting 150,000 new homes, and in Leeds, where the initiative will reach another 80,000.

“This is just the beginning,” Fries said. “Lightning will launch in 10 more towns and cities in the second half and will ramp materially in 2016.” 

Virgin Media, the largest cable operator in the U.K., said Manchester will be the first city to be wired for “Project Lightning,” a £3 billion (US$4.7 billion) plan that calls on the MSO to extend its broadband network to an addition 4 million premises over the next five years.

Virgin Media, a unit of Liberty Global, said it will start by shelling out £75 million (US $118.6 million) to connect to 150,000 extra premises in the Manchester (up from about 300,000 today), and is breaking ground on the first 20,000 of them this week. Those locations will get access to a DOCSIS-powered network that currently supports downstream speeds of up to 152 Mbps, outpacing competitors such as BT, TalkTalk and Sky, the MSO said. Virgin Media estimates that the expansion in Manchester will result in about 500 new jobs.

Taking a page from the Google Fiber playbook, Virgin Media said it will prioritize expansion in Manchester and other neighboring areas and cities based on demand from consumers and communities, which can register their interest at virginmedia.com/cablemystreet.

“Our message is simple:  help us to cable your street,” Tom Mockridge, Virgin Media’s CEO, said in a statement. “If you want to switch to broadband speeds twice as fast as you can get today, simply register with Virgin Media to ‘cablemystreet’.”

"This is wonderful news for Manchester residents and businesses,” added Digital Economy Minister Ed Vaizey. “We are in the midst of a remarkable transformation of the UK's digital landscape, and Virgin Media's £3bn investment will play an important role in ensuring our cities are fully equipped to meet the challenges of the digital age in which we live."

Virgin Media announced Project Lightning in February, revealing a plan to expand its HFC network to a total of 17 million premises.

Virgin Media’s current, fastest residential DOCSIS 3.0 broadband tier tops out at 152 Mbps downstream, but noted in February that parent company Liberty Global was preparing to trial DOCSIS 3.1, a next-gen access platform designed to handle multi-gigabit speeds, “across Europe later this year.” 

Taking more aggressive aim at incumbent telco BT, Virgin Media, the U.K.’s largest cable operator, said it will shell out £3 billion (US$4.6 billion) in the coming years on a plan to expand the reach of its broadband network to millions of additional homes and small businesses.

The initiative, called “Project Lightening,” calls for Virgin Media to extend its broadband network to an additional 4 million premises over the next five years, a move that will extend that total to nearly 17 million premises and, in the MSO’s estimate, create the foundation for 6,000 new jobs and 1,000 new apprenticeships. Virgin Media has set up a web site where consumers and small businesses can register to stay apprised of the MSO’s expansion plans.

Virgin Media believes that Project Lightning will pump £8 billion (US$12.3 billion) of value into the U.K. economy, citing an analysis by Oxera, an economic consultancy. Virgin Media, which is working on the initiative in tandem with parent company Liberty Global, is billing the project as the “single largest investment in broadband digital infrastructure in the country for more than a decade.

Virgin Media’s current, fastest residential DOCSIS 3.0 broadband tier tops out at 152 Mbps downstream.  The number of virgin Media subs taking speeds of 100 Mbps or higher grew by a million during 2014, to 1.3 million, and now represents 28% of Virgin Media’s broadband sub base.

BT’s top tier, meanwhile, offers maximum downstream bursts of about 76 Mbps. The telco downplayed the increased threat by Virgin Media, telling Light Reading that its network already covers 22 million premises, and that the MSO’s expansion plan “doesn’t seem to cover rural areas or huge swathes of the UK.” 

But Virgin Media and its parent company are already thinking ahead. In the announcement about Project Lightening, Liberty Global noted that it is preparing to trial DOCSIS 3.1, a next-gen access platform designed to handle multi-gigabit speeds, “across Europe later this year.” With Virgin Media’s systems factored in, Liberty Global serve a combined footprint of 27 million homes across 14 countries.

Liberty Global is pushing in that direction amid pressure from fiber-to-the-home competition as well as a batch of telcos, including BT, that are placing bets on G.fast, an emerging platform that will bring 1-Gig capabilities to DSL networks.

“Millions of homes and businesses will soon be able to benefit for the first time from broadband speeds at least twice as fast as those available from the other major providers,” Virgin Media CEO Tom Mockingridge said, in a statement. “Consumers and business owners who want to make the switch to better broadband speeds now have an alternative; you can call on Virgin Media to ‘Cable My Street’.”   

The project also garnered a call-out from U.K. Prime Minister David Cameron: “I welcome this substantial investment from Virgin Media which is a vote of confidence in our long-term economic plan to support business and create jobs by building a superfast nation backed by world-class infrastructure. These 6,000 new jobs and apprenticeships will mean financial security and economic peace of mind for thousands more hardworking families across the country,” he said.

Virgin Media ended 2014 with 12.62 million homes passed, 3.76 million TV subs, 4.53 million Internet customers, and 4.21 million phone customers.

On the video front, Virgin Media said it added 585,000 TiVo subs in 2014, including 143,000 in the fourth quarter. By the end of 2014, 68% of Virgin Media’s TV subs, or 2.5 million of them, were on the TiVo platform