Remaining customers of full fibre broadband ISP Upp (i.e. those who have not yet agreed to migrate to Virgin Media), which was last year acquired by UK network builder nexfibre from investment firm LetterOne (here), will shortly start to receive “final termination of service notices” ahead of the service ending on 1st June 2024.
The deal – as agreed in September 2023 – should help to expand the reach of nexfibre’s own gigabit-capable Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network, which is currently in the process of building its wholesale network to cover “up to” 7 million additional UK homes – staring with 5m by 2026 (i.e. those homes not currently served by Virgin Media’s own network). Virgin Media are currently the only retail ISP on this network.
Under the deal, nexfibre acquired Upp’s existing network assets, which reflects a full fibre infrastructure that covers around 175,000 premises in the East of England and includes roughly 4,000 customers. Nexfibre’s own network currently covers 1 million premises and rising fast (here), although they’ve yet to merge Upp’s network into that total. But nexfibre aren’t a retail provider, thus the customer base ended up going to Virgin Media.
Readers may recall that Virgin Media began – in January 2024 (here) – notifying Upp’s existing customers of their intention to withdraw the old service “sometime this year” (no firm date was set). At the same time they also started encouraging them to migrate to Virgin’s packages (this will require an engineer visit to replace some of the existing kit, albeit at no extra cost).
Just to be clear, Virgin Media are still harnessing Upp’s underlying network infrastructure (via new owner nexfibre) and are offering new packages that are “equivalent to their current Upp service“, which was made a lot easier with Virgin’s recent launch of symmetric speeds (here).
The latest developments
Over the past week we’ve begun to hear from a small number of Upp’s remaining customers, specifically those who have, thus far, chosen not to migrate their service to Virgin Media. The feedback notes that Virgin are now being more proactive in contacting those that remain on the old service. Such customers are at risk of disconnection if they don’t migrate before the service is closed, which we’re told is due to occur on 1st June 2024.
Some of those have also claimed that Virgin Media’s customer service staff have called them to warn that they may be liable to pay early termination charges if they don’t migrate in time, but this is not correct. Even the T&Cs update from earlier this year made clear that existing customers will be able to “cancel your services with Upp without any financial penalty by giving 30 days’ notice“.
A Spokesperson for VMO2 told ISPreview:
“Upp customers will not receive an early termination charge if they chose not to take a Virgin Media service. Every customer has been invited to join Virgin Media and notified that their Upp service will end.
We will shortly be serving final termination of service notices to remaining customers and are currently calling and door-knocking on customers we’ve yet to hear from. Upp services will end on 1 June and customers that wish to remain on the network should pre-order a service by 30 April.”
Some readers might be wondering why a few of Upp’s remaining customers are choosing not to migrate. As one of those who complained said: “I told them I was not interested in joint VM due to poor customer service in the past.” But there may be others who, for one reason or another, are genuinely not aware of the looming service termination and hence why Virgin Media are now putting in the extra effort to reduce the risk of an unexpected disconnection.