With the support of parent Liberty Global, Virgin Media is extending its fibre network to an additional four million UK homes and businesses over the next five years, as the battle is set to intensify between providers of mobile, telephony, broadband and pay-TV packages.

The cable operator, which offers all four elements of the quadplay package, earmarked £3 billion of additional private investment for the rollout, which it claimed is the largest investment in the UK’s internet infrastructure for more than a decade.

The announcements in the quadplay market are coming thick and fast right now. EE, which is in the process of being acquired by Virgin Media’s arch rival BT, announced a new £1.5 billion investment plan between now and 2017.

And Vodafone is set to reveal plans for a consumer broadband launch in the Spring, followed by a cloud-based TV service later in the year.

Separately, Vodafone was last year linked to a possible bid for Liberty Global, as it seeks to add to its cable assets across Europe.

Virgin Media said its additional fibre rollout in the UK will offer broadband speeds of 152 Mb/s, which it said is at least twice the fastest speed available from its rivals. And the new investment will directly create 6,000 new jobs. The rollout is called Project Lightning.

The additional network deployment will increase the number of homes and businesses to which Virgin Media can offer services by almost a third, an increase from around half of the country today, to nearly 17 million premises by 2020.