Test Valley hits the target

When your home is ready you can call in on 0345 454 1111 or go online @ www.virginmedia.com. In some instances, we may need one of our reps to arrange a home visit. This is so they can assess how to carry out the installation and cabling. They'll also give you a handy rundown of all the services we offer and which would be best for you.

Some homes require a non-standard installation. This can be because of things like a long driveway, or an installation that's difficult. If this applies to you, our rep may arrange for an engineer to come and take a look before they get started.

When we started our work, we asked residents to pay a £300 network installation fee. This was to offset some of the increased costs in bringing Virgin Media to your area.

But thanks to the generosity of local land owners not charging us to cross their land (as well as some other cost savings), we realised we didn't need this fee! All residents that previously paid the £300 have been fully refunded.

In order to get our services, you'll need to enter into a service contract with us (with a minimum term). This will be subject to our terms and conditions of service. You can review our current residential customer terms and conditions of service here. 

No problem. You don’t have to make your mind up to take our services until the build is complete. If you decide not to then you don’t need to pay the network installation fee.

We’re intending to cable all the proposed areas of the Test and Dun Valleys but the build area is indicative only at this early stage and it may need to change. It’s dependent on the challenges we face with the network build, for example, Local Authority permits, weather, condition of footways and highways, in addition to restrictions to build due to wildlife and tree protection orders.

We will need to carry out a survey before laying cable to your premises. We cannot promise to build to every street and every premise in the area.  There can be exceptional circumstances when a survey shows we are, for instance, unable to lay cable over certain land or other obstacles can create difficulties.

You may need to sign a Wayleave form which is basically an access agreement which gives us your consent to run a cable across private land as part of the network build. If you do, we’ll pop one in the post, so keep an eye out. If you’re the sole owner of the road, that should be all you’ll need to do.  If someone else owns it, or there are multiple owners, we may need everyone to sign a Wayleave form. There may also be other scenarios which require a Wayleave but we’ll let you know if this is the case.

We can’t give a specific date as there’s still a lot to do, but Register your details and we’ll be in touch when your home can get our services.

Now that the target’s been met, planning has started and we’ll be working with the local authority to build our network to the Test and Dun Valley areas. The  network build will take time and unfortunately it’s not possible to give a definite date for when services will be available.

The time to build our network is dependent on a number of factors - these include, but are not limited to - work by other utilities or the local authority, weather conditions, conditions of existing footways or roads and other technical difficulties.  

If you’ve signed up for updates, we’ll let you know when the build is underway, when it’s complete and when you’re able to get our services.

The scheme was initially set up in response to a campaign by local Test and Dun Valley residents who wanted better broadband. When they found out that their area wasn’t in our expansion plans due to the challenging geographical location, they started a campaign to convince us how strongly people felt; they were willing to contribute towards the overall cost of the Virgin Media network build in the area in order to get our broadband.

We were looking for a minimum of 25% sign-ups from households across the proposed build area in order to proceed to build and the deadline for achieving the target was reached on 31 July 2017. Only residential household registrations would be included towards the target and only one registration per household was permitted.  Registrations from businesses were excluded from the count.

We were overwhelmed with the response from residents to sign up to the scheme. The final percentages of residential households who signed up in each village was as follows: