Scheme to offer free Hub 5 upgrades. Status?

Thanks, helpful suggestions. I remember watching that thread at the time. Neither techniques work for me nor my friend, who has been going round in circles with support for her ancient hub 3 and I was somewhat hoping this scheme might coincidentally come to her rescue. I've worked round my hub3 problems (I'm a fairly recent new customer) because I happened to have a router in a cupboard (TP-link) so putting the hub3 in modem mode sorted that out without me having to tear hair out getting support or obtaining extender pods. Anyway, I was just interested to see if that press release ended up going anywhere with an actual concrete rollout involving offering thousands of people upgrades. Congratulations to that one forum member who actually did get one! 

Whilst some users have reported Wi-Fi and DHCP issues after the LG-RDK_11.6.2-2410.1 update there is zero evidence of widespread failures from public sources. Personally I've had none. And it's hard to believe that VM would have announced this upgrade to the hub 5 in October 2025 if it were bug-ridden.

My hub is not working ok, nor is the hub of my friend on whose behalf I asked the question. They are both "broke" and both would benefit from being "fixed". 

According to support there's nothing wrong with my hub (i.e. it is not "broken" broken). It just appears to be naturally (when operating "normally") fairly rubbish at giving reasonable WiFi coverage to my modestly sized house. A house that has previously been well covered by the default hubs provided by at first BT and more recently Sky. 

I am tech savvy so at this moment my house is being given good WiFi connectivity by the TP-Link router I happened to have in a cupboard, and the hub3 is in modem mode doing a good job of giving me the advertised upload/download speeds.

My friend is not so fortunate, is going round in circles trying to get support to help her with her very ancient hub3 that appears to be getting worse (but according to support is "working fine") and currently waiting for extender pods to arrive (which never seem to arrive). 

Hence me being curious, on her behalf, as to whether she's got any realistic prospect of Virgin actually shipping her a hub5 so she can have a chance of seeing if her currently "broke" something becomes a "fixed" something.

Yes, I expected something like this to be the case, and it's implied in the Press Release. My question was more about asking if Virgin Media are prepared to mention whether the roll-out is happening at any scale at the moment, or any clues such as "we are on track to complete offering upgrades by end of Summer of 2026" or "vast majority by end of 2026" or somesuch suitably vague hint of hope.

I've worked in large corporations selling to the general public before and Press Releases would often be accompanied with scripts/answers to obvious questions that the press release is likely to elicit, and given to PR/customer operations/forum admins so they're equipped to cope with obvious follow-ons. But I suppose this approach of "remain totally silent and act as if the press release never happened" is also a choice.

It seems unless and until Gareth Lister chooses to descend from his VM Director's Palace and once again bestow enlightening words of wisdom upon us mere mortals, that your reply may just as well be marked as the solution!

I'll let my friend know to "wait your turn".

I have absolutely zero "upgrade upgrade upgrade" mentality.

I wouldn't give my hub any thought whatsoever, and never have with any previous internet provider. Except, that from day one my hub 3 WiFi range was woeful. Comically bad. So that on its own forced me to think about it. Then, not long after becoming a customer Virgin Media chose for themselves to put out a press release in which Virgin Media decided for themselves to extoll the virtues of upgrading hubs. Not me. I didn't go looking for "upgrade upgrade upgrade", Virgin Media came to us telling us to want "upgrade".

I couldn't care less what model hub I have as long as it does at least a good a job as the one provided by my previous provider.

If Virgin Media don't want customers wondering where their upgrades are then it might be a good idea for Virgin Media not to put out press releases telling everyone that upgrading your hub is a good idea and something that they are looking forward to do for us. All as part of their voluntary idea.

It's not the fault of the customer for then being curious about it.

Re: the comment "retiring them when they are working normally is simply not good business" - sounds like something you might want to raise with Gareth Lister, Virgin Media's Director of Connectivity, the Virgin employee whose idea this appears to have been.

Hub 3 and hub 4 have the Puma chipset which causes regular crashes. Both awful. It also doesn't help that the fastest Virgin Media connection speeds exceed 1gbps (Mine is 1.23gbps) and the Hub 5 is the only device which has 2.5gbps ethernet connectivity, therefore this Hub is the only device that allows you to use your device at the speed of your connection with modem mode. It's not about having the latest shiny gadget, it's about having a device that actually works. (ish - the Hub 5 is also a bag of spanners thanks to Virgin Media's rogue firmware). Virgin Media restrict 3rd party devices directly connecting to their network - it's not like you can go buy an alternative (unlike Germany where they changed the law to allow customers to do use their own cable modem/routers). 

The wifi will not be any better the newer hubs and is not  the reason you should want one as VM really don't care about your wifi.

You should look to get your own 3rd party wifi router and use hub in modem mode like this one.

TP-Link Archer BE3600 Router WiFi 7 BE3600Mbps, WiFi Router, 2.5G Ports, USB 3.0 Port, Maximized Coverage, VPN Router, Internet Booster Routers, WiFi Booster, HomeShield Security, Easy Setup,EasyMesh : Amazon.co.uk: Computers & Accessories

I understand your feelings. I'm only paying for the lowest speed and think its a bit comical that the WiFi in the hub is rubbish. If I was paying for 1GB and getting bad WiFI I'd be very unhappy. In my case I've got a TP-Link router which has very good WiFi and is vastly better for me than having extenders/pods. So I've effectively paid to solve the problem (but not Virgin). But I don't blame anyone who feels that Virgin really should be moving faster. It's 2026! Trying to persuade people that decent WiFi can only be solved by paying much more per month for faster download speed is very shady practice in my view.

If this scheme is actively under way in any meaningful sense then Virgin are doing a good job of keeping that top secret. Customer Services haven't been given scripts about it and the mods here are tight lipped.

A thread from a couple of days ago showed that (at least one) hub2 customers are only just now getting emails offering an upgrade (in that case to hub4). That scheme (upgrade all hub1 & hub2) was announced in April 2025. Is it possible they are holding back on the hub3/4->hub5 scheme until the hub1/2 upgrade scheme is more complete?

If I lived in a huge or problematic house then I'd be more forgiving. But I don't. And I know that bog standard routers from Sky and BT are have much better WiFi than hub3.