Virgin Media Boost Some Upload Speeds Ahead of 500Mbps Launch

A growing number of Virgin Media’s UK cable broadband ISP subscribers, primarily those on their 350Mbps tier, are today reporting that their upload speeds have been given a boost to 35Mbps (Max Traffic Rate of 38.5Mbps). This is the same upstream rate as we’re expecting their imminent 500Mbps plan to launch alongside.

Back in February Virgin Media revealed that they’d be boosting their top download speeds from 350Mbps (20Mbps upload) to 500Mbps (35Mbps upload) during April/May 2019 (here), albeit using their existing Hub 3.0 router and DOCSIS 3.0 (EuroDOCSIS) network rather than the latest DOCSIS 3.1 standard (Gigabit speed 3.1 is due to follow in two cities later this year).

Since then some sources have indicated to us that the new 500Mbps plan may tentatively go live on 29th April 2019 (Monday) alongside a new “V.VIP” bundle, which may give subscribers more control over their premium TV channel choices and the ability to “boost” the package with a mobile SIM. But this has yet to be confirmed and officially it’s a no comment from Virgin Media.

On top of that one of those sources indicated that Virgin Media was also planning to increase their upload speeds “very soon.” Shortly after this we began to see posts on Virgin’s Community Forum and Twitter from customers noting that their upstream speeds had jumped to 35Mbps (note: sample image is from a WiFi test, hence the slower download rate than 350Mbps).

We think the aim here is to achieve a 10:1 ratio of downstream to upstream performance, which may eventually extend across all packages. However at present Virgin Media only seems to be deploying this for some of those on the 350Mbps plan (the necessary channel bonding isn’t yet ready everywhere, it seems) and others remain stuck on 20Mbps.

We have asked Virgin Media to comment on this and are awaiting their reply.