Virgin Media, the telecommunications company that recently signed a deal with BT to use the EE network for mobile services, has suspended four staff members and launched an investigation after admitting to overstating installation figures for the rollout of "Project Lightning," the expansion program for its superfast broadband network in the UK and Ireland.
Virgin Media"s parent company, Liberty Global, admits that Virgin Media had wrongly stated that it had connected 465,000 premises in the UK and Ireland as part of the project. A review has indicated that the actual figure is 314,000 and that Virgin"s reported figure included locations where installation work was "essentially complete." These locations were expected to be fully connected within the first three months of 2017, but Liberty stated in February that work had not progressed as "originally understood."
Liberty subsequently carried out a review that found that the completion status of some premises had been "misrepresented," with a further 9,000 premises also having been classified as connected when this was not the case. As a result, four Virgin employees have been suspended, and could face disciplinary action.
Virgin"s Project Lightning was launched in 2015, with the aim of providing an extra four million homes and businesses with broadband speeds of up to 300Mbps. The company has since moved to speed up the rollout of Project Lightning, including appointing a new managing director, Robert Evans, to take over the scheme.
Source: BBC News