The wholesale arm of Virgin Media O2 Business convened more than 100 partners in London on 7 July, using the occasion to confirm its XGS-PON-enabled Ethernet over FTTP service is on track for full market launch before the end of 2026.
The Early Adopter Phase for the XGS-PON product runs through the end of summer, letting Virgin Media Business Wholesale test the end-to-end ordering process and gather feedback from selected partners before opening the service more broadly. That timeline is the clearest signal yet on when the fibre-delivered Ethernet proposition, which sits on VMB’s own national network, will be generally available.
The event, held at the Honourable Artillery Company’s Armoury House and themed around ‘Partnership at Scale’, framed AI-driven data demand as the central market pressure partners now face. Sessions covered service performance, high-capacity infrastructure requirements, and how wholesale carriers and their reseller partners can align more effectively as traffic volumes grow.
Diego Tedesco, Executive Director, said competition and technological change had made partnership alignment more important than ever. “Competition is as intense as it’s ever been, technology keeps evolving and customer expectations continue to rise. That means the ability to work together with trust, clarity and shared purpose has become more important than ever.”
External speakers included Will Rhodes, Head of EMEA Partners at networking vendor Ciena, who addressed how partners can position themselves to capture AI-related network growth. Mandy Hickson, one of the RAF’s first female fast jet pilots, delivered a session on leadership and performance under pressure.
Virgin Media Business Wholesale owns and operates one of the UK’s largest national fibre networks, supplying carriers, altnets, mobile operators, hyperscalers and data centre operators. The company’s Project Spark investment programme is intended to expand capacity and resilience on that infrastructure.
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