BSkyB paying Virgin Media $74 million for a network makeover
Customers with Sky Broadband might find their provider's capacity crawling northward toward the end of the year. The broadcaster is paying Virgin Media's business arm £49 million ($74 million) for some of Richard Branson Liberty Global's deliciously fast fiber infrastructure. While there's no mention of BT, we wouldn't be surprised if this technological makeover was prompted by its corporate rival's recent assault on Sky's sporty golden goose.
Show full PR text
BSkyB in £49M fibre deal with Virgin Media Business
BSkyB has reached an agreement with Virgin Media Business for backhaul network capacity in a deal worth over £49m. Virgin Media Business' network will connect around a third of Sky's unbundled local exchanges with Sky's own wholly owned nationwide broadband network.
The five year contract with the business arm of Virgin Media will see the core of the network in place by the end of 2013. Each of the connections will be superfast, delivering speeds of up to 10 Gbps through Virgin Media Business' High Capacity Services product.
Mohamed Hammady, director of Sky Network Services at BSkyB, said: "As we see traffic on our network grow significantly year-on-year, this agreement provides us with the capacity we need to keep innovating for customers and as such are committed to maintaining our high-capacity network."
Tony Grace, managing director, Virgin Media Business said: "High capacity connectivity is vital in today's digitally driven world. Whilst we're concentrating on developing better services for the public in our consumer division, we also believe that our high capacity network is ideally placed to provide the underlying infrastructure that can help other providers with their backhaul capacity needs."
