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Virgin Media preps 100Mb broadband launch, extends 200Mb trial
Manoj Solanki, Friday February 26, 2010 - 8:50 AMVirgin Media has announced that it will begin rollout of a new 100Mb broadband service in the UK by the end of 2010.
As well as the new flagship 100Mb broadband service, Virgin Media will be extending its 200Mb trial (currently running in Kent) to Coventry.
The 100Mb service and faster broadband trial is made possible through the use of the Docsis 3.0 standard that its cable network uses. Docsis 3.0 is in use from cable operators in various other countries. Comcast and other operators in the U.S. for example already offer a 100Mb fibre-based broadband service.
BT of course is in the process of rolling out its own fibre-optic network through FTTC (Fibre-To-The-Cabinet) technology, called Infinity, which is due to become available to 40% of homes and businesses in the UK, and should offer speeds of around 40Mb.
Currently BT Infinity is only available to a small number of exchanges in the UK. BT Openreach, who are directly responsible for delivering high-speed Next-Generation Access (NGA), are also trialling FTTP (Fibre-To-The-Premises) technology, which is similar to Virgin Media’s cable network structure in that it goes very close to a customer’s premises (rather than a street cabinet), and could potentially offer higher speeds of up to 100Mb.
Virgin Media also published its fourth quarter results, where it reported a 6 percent growth in consumer revenue. The majority of its 3.8 million cable broadband customers are on a minimum 10Mb broadband service, with 45 percent more on 20Mb or higher, reflecting the demand for higher speeds said the company.
It also believes that other fibre network investments (meaning from BT probably) will not match Virgin Media’s own network capabilities in the current market.
In a statement, CEO Neil Berkett said: “Despite other operators’ embryonic investment in fibre, Virgin Media’s cable network will, for the foreseeable future, provide an unparalleled platform for delivering successive generations of new and innovative services.”
6 Comments »
Good Luck Virgin Media! You can’t manage to give your 50 meg customers more than 20 megs, so how you can manage to provide 100 megs is beyond me. Your service is poor and your call centres unable to help with enquiries. Your prices are excessive and customers have no guarantee that they will even get a service. You really need to improve your existing packages before rolling out the big guns. I’ve had an ongoing issue with my installation since day one and in a couple of months it will be one year – and it’s still not resolved. Please improve your fault line and stop sending level one techs for a level two problem – since they can’t fix it they just close the job, leaving it unresolved. You need to take better care of your customers first.
Comment by disgruntled — February 26, 2010 #
Sufering from very slow spead (in Country area)
is it not about time that we are only charged for spead provided
Also if service providers were only allowed to increase top speads to only 10 or 20 times the lowest speads they would be forced to provide a better service at the lower end faster than they intend
Comment by Dennis — February 26, 2010 #
Had 50 meg installed last week for £1 extra a month from 20 meg I have had great service and getting 52 meg download at times, never bel0w 49 meg after trying several speedtest sites.
I am flying so unless they give me 100 meg for free I wont need it, even HD on youtube is instant.
Comment by Dean — April 11, 2010 #
The first two comments sound about right. I left Virgin years ago due to frustration with both service dropping, normally shortly after the engineer leaves after a callout and customer service.
I’m happier on ADSL and have never had a problem. I still have Virgin TV (or should I just say, same old Telewest), but fortunately there never seems to be too much that goes wrong with this, but customer service is still a nightmare.
@Dean – You must be a Virgin employee! Noone is that happy, even if it works. Try ringing customer services …
Comment by Peter — June 21, 2010 #
Had 50Mb for over a year, 1 service interruption, 50Mb 95% of the time. Happy people have no stories, would never never never never never EVER have ADSL unless I had 0 choice
Comment by Badvock — October 5, 2010 #
I have Virgin 50M broadband, and it consistently delivers the advertised speed. Not without any issues at any time, but definitely better than the ADSL services I have had in London, Norwich, Newbury and Bridport with various ISPs in the past 10 years.
I also had NTL in the last millenium (in Hertfordshire) and that worked well too.
Customer service if things go wrong is awful, though fortunately this doesnt happen often.
For the record I am not and have never worked for VIrgin. They even turned me down for a senior network role !
Comment by Norfolk User — November 3, 2010 #