broadband news

Virgin Media launches fastest-ever UK broadband

Virgin Media has officially launched its 50Mbps service to the public.

The new 50 Mbps service will cost £51 a month, although this is reduced to £35 if users also take a Virgin Phone line for an additional £11 a month.

The revolutionary speed puts all other broadband providers in the shade, and almost doubles the speed of its closest competitor Be Broadband, which currently offers 24Mb.

The broadband speed refers to how quickly data can be downloaded from the web.

The service will see broadband surfers downloading entire TV programmes in around a minute, music albums in as little as 11 seconds, and complete movies in the time it takes to brew a cup of tea - around 3.5 minutes.

Virgin will steadily roll out the service throughout 2009. Warrington will be the first area to benefit as it reportedly has the highest density of Virgin broadband subscribers.

The Virgin Media network, however, passes only half the UK's homes, and the company lacks the billions of pounds needed to install its fibre-optic cable across the rest of the country. As a result, many householders will have to rely on BT to provide them with broadband.

BT has, however, announced it will be running trials of a fibre-based broadband service in 15,000 homes across London and Cardiff next summer. Although not quite matching Virgin, the service, soaking up £1.5billion investment, is reported to be able to offer broadband speeds of up to 40Mb per second.

15/12/2008
Author: CompareBroadbandUK staff writer

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