Virgin Media Business UK Launch New 300Mbps Broadband Package

As first confirmed last year, cable operator Virgin Media Business (Liberty Global) has this morning announced the official launch of their new ultrafast 300Mbps broadband package for small businesses, although residential customers may have to wait a little longer to match it.

The announcement is being flanked by some new research from YouGov, which interviewed 1,103 senior decision makers in British small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in order to claim that the average employee loses 15 minutes a day to slow Internet speeds and that 57% of SMEs believe the Internet is critical to their business.

Other Research Highlights

· Slow internet speeds tied with customer service queries as the biggest distractions from senior decision makers’ main tasks at work (33%).

· Over a third of small and medium sized businesses (34%) think a faster internet connection would accelerate their growth overall

· Online activities are high on the strategic agenda for 2016, with a quarter prioritising online advertising and 23% prioritising building their social media presence in order for their company to grow over the next 12 months.

Readers of ISPreview.co.uk will of course already know that a 300Mbps package was coming for businesses in early 2016 as it was revealed in slides during last year’s Broadband World Forum event in London (here). We also note that the upload speed is 15Mbps for the 100, 200 and 300Mbps products.

The news was somewhat bitter-sweet as domestic consumers had been expecting that they’d be getting access to a similar product, although in the end home users were left with 200Mbps (here). Mind you 200Mbps is hardly slow and indeed VM might still have a few issues to iron out with actually delivering that performance (here).

Peter Kelly, Managing Director of VMB, said:

“Small businesses are the lifeblood of the UK’s economy but need the right tools and technology to thrive. Our ultrafast broadband speeds are setting a new benchmark for business broadband and enabling businesses to reach their full digital potential by doing more, faster.“

Once again it’s vital to distinguish this new 300Mbps package from VMB’s other leased line and big business focused products, which can already deliver much faster speeds. The new tier would instead slot in alongside VMB’s existing “Fibre Business Broadband” products that are aimed at smaller businesses, which previously only went up to 152Mbps (12Mbps upload) for £35-40 +vat per month (related products).

By comparison the new top-end 300Mbps service costs £80 per month and VMB has taken the opportunity to revamp their packages around the new speed. Generally speaking business packages get a Service Level Agreement (SLA) and superior traffic prioritisation to domestic customers, as well as state IP address and some other things.

At this point some of you might be wondering when domestic customers will finally see a 300Mbps service from Virgin Media. Officially there’s no confirmation, although it’s looking less and less likely to happen in the first half of 2016 and may come much later.