Virgin Media will launch 50 megabits per second broadband across its network next year, it has confirmed.
It has recently been trialing the service and, at a technology conference with ministers this week, announced it had proved successful and would be expanded.
A Virgin spokesman confirmed today: "We’ll never know exactly what demand there’ll be for super-fast broadband until it’s in people’s homes and workplaces up and down the UK.
“What we do know is that our cable network has a unique potential to revolutionise consumers’ experience and we’re convinced that 2008 is the moment to take the lead with the commercial launch of a 50 megabit product.”
Virgin’s acting chief executive Neil Berkett has recently indicated the company should focus on fast broadband as its strength over rivals.
Will they increase the uplink? That is their biggest weakness vs DSL at the moment I think as the difference between them is much worse. Also there’s the old biggie, how much?
Short term, I wish they had something between their 4M and 20M both in speed and cost. About 8M to 10M would be a nice spot I think. But I think as long as they charge their current prices they need to keep a big enough speed difference to get people on the 20M service.
I’m currently on 4mb free for a year, (well a free upgrade fom the 2mb) as I complained that I still cannot get digital in my area, they keep removing channels from analogue and then have the cheek to put the price up!
If they do up the 4mb to 10mb, I might just jump from the 2mb price to the 4mb price, but then it depends on whether they bump up the 2mb line to 4mb…
Try and get to http://www.nthellworld.co.uk/ from a Virgin media connection (just as an example)
Ogame is broken too.
Both of these work perfectly if I VPN into work and browse.
Virgin should forget about the willy waving of maximum possible speeds that cannot be sustained and work on improving the average rate.
