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Virgin Media refuses to provide wholesale broadband

Virgin Media has no intention of wholesaling network capacity to other ISPs, the company said on Thursday.Speaking at a Westminster eForum on broadband, Virgin broadband chief Duncan Higgins said his company selling wholesale capacity "wouldn't actually add a single superfast broadband home" to the UK, because BT already offers wholesale access.
Written by David Meyer, Contributor

Virgin Media has no intention of wholesaling network capacity to other ISPs, the company said on Thursday.

Speaking at a Westminster eForum on broadband, Virgin broadband chief Duncan Higgins said his company selling wholesale capacity "wouldn't actually add a single superfast broadband home" to the UK, because BT already offers wholesale access.

Higgins also said that "everywhere BT is rolling out superfast broadband is where Virgin has already [been]", eliciting a repeated exclamation from BT strategy chief Liv Garfield that "that's not true".

The Virgin broadband chief had been responding to a question from Trefor Davies of business ISP Timico, who seemed unhappy that small ISPs cannot get wholesale access from anyone other than BT — there are only two major networks in the UK that extend across most of the country: BT's and Virgin's.

"It doesn't change the competitive context because BT's already solving that problem," Higgins insisted.

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