It was all going so well for Virgin Media. At the turn of the year, Mike Fries, the chief executive of the cable giant’s hard-charging US parent company Liberty Global, faced Wall Street and City analysts in Las Vegas. He sang the praises of Project Lightning, the £3bn UK network expansion programme that is the cornerstone of its growth plan.

“2016 was a first full year of that build and it’s going great,” said Fries, a jet-setting 54-year-old known for his $112m (£87m) pay packet and his passions for heli-skiing and rock music. “I mean from our perspective, it is going extremely well.”

Project Lightning is the biggest investment in Britain’s internet infrastructure for a decade, a debt-fuelled expansion of Virgin Media’s network to cover an extra four million homes by 2020. It came as a boost to ministers and regulators struggling to nudge the telecoms industry into major investment in upgrades.

The scheme is also viewed as a challenge to rivals BT, Sky and TalkTalk, who all rely on BT’s Openreach network. In areas where the superior internet speeds offered by cable are available, about two out of five broadband customers are willing to pay the higher price.