2Gbps Virgin Media UK Broadband Plan Now Available to Order
New and existing customers of residential broadband ISP Virgin Media (VMO2), at least those covered by their new nexfibre based Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network expansion, can finally start to place an order for their new 2Gbps (200Mbps upload) package via the provider’s website.
The service officially soft launched last week (here), but initially it was not possible to place an order for the service via their website. The good news, as spotted by Thinkbroadband this afternoon, is that the new package can finally be ordered online for £84 per month. The option to add symmetrical speeds – across all speed tiers within nexfibre areas – is also available and will set you back an extra £6 per month.
The challenge for Virgin Media is that £84 isn’t going to be particularly competitive in areas covered by some of their rivals with similar or faster tiers, such as CommunityFibre, Zzoomm, Yayzi (CityFibre) and YouFibre (Netomnia). This is particularly true when it comes to symmetric speeds, which pushes the price of VMO2’s 2Gbps plan all the way up to £90 per month.
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At this point we’d normally be able to say that Virgin Media has the advantage of strong UK coverage, but that won’t be true until the package availability expands beyond their currently still very limited nexfibre base (approaching 1 million premises passed).
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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Not available to me, but if it was I would be waiting to order until after 1st April so I didn’t get an immediate 9% price increase…
According to the site the first increase is 1st Apr 2025
Available here (Sandhurst) but it’s double the price I’m currently paying for 2Gig (symmetrical)
Obviously some will jump at it because it’s 2Gig but that pricing is pretty high.
remember BT 900mbps is around £59.99 per month usually (sometimes a bit lower).
This is 2,200mbps with option for 2,200mbps upload for small extra.
Expensive compared to a lot for Altnets, but not against BT when comparing their 1,800mbps product.
anon:
BT dont have a price for their 1800meg service yet. EE sell 1.6 for 69.99 but Openreach announced a price reduction of over 25% starting 1st April on ISPs rental for the 1.8gbit service.
what a joke upload speed pathetic.
£6 per month fixes that
Yes, £6 more per month added to the already ridiculous £84 per month. I’m so glad Community Fibre is building my area, can’t wait to leave these old giant ISP’s forever.
So the real complaint isn’t upload speeds, but the cost… 🙂
Yep, can no longer say VM have bad upload speeds as a user choice option there.
Eventually, the HFC network will go to FTTP by 2028 and then be similar.
Contrast with BT: No choice.
Hang on.. SO VM dare to want £90 a month for 2Gbps up and down!? And you get unlimited usage!?
SIGN ME UP!
Oh no you can’t as I am not in a Vm area – Meanwhile I pay AAISP £90 a month for 20TB of usage on 104 down and 19 up.
Seriously… £90 is a BARGAIN!
@I love Starlink it’s really not, other companies are offering unlimited data 1Gbps up / 1Gbps down for like £30 – £90 for 2Gbps U/D seems excessive
@anonymous
“Yep, can no longer say VM have bad upload speeds as a user choice option there.”
Actually yes you can because most of their network is still HFC and stuck with 1Gbps down/100Mbps up.
and that HFC kit is being upgraded to full fibre by 2028.
The article is about NexFibre, so no we can’t moan about bad upload speeds on that as there is now an option for symmetric.
At those prices, they can jog on.
That’s for 2.2gbps package, the other speed tiers will be lower.
Wholesale prices from other ISP’s will be available in the future too.
5G+ when 5G advanced comes almost end of decade 5G homebroadband will be still the bestest and cheapest options
I left useless Virgin Media and I am with Community Fibte 3Gbps symmetrical £49 per month.
I don’t blame you as 3Gbps / 3Gbps at £49 per month is really good bargain price! Cheapest than the rest of them all are ashamed!
So am I
I left Virgin Media for the new EE because Virgin was rising their prices up and up and the reliability was awful.
200 meg upload.
TOPKEK VM
£6 per month fixes that
Not available to me – stop waste my time virgin media. Useless
I just contacted VM to switch to symmetrical, quoting the £6 per month the site shows me and even sent a screenshot. They quoted £16 saying a price increase in April, i told them there’s no way it works out at £16, they said they couldn’t help and transferred me to another person, that person didn’t even try to help, and transferred me to another person. That person said I couldn’t have it as my current contract doesn’t expire until 2025 – I literally want a 30d rolling contract add-on. I said that and they said they couldn’t help. So I’ve literally had to open a Complaint with a company who is refusing to let me pay them more money. It’s ludicrous lol
Lol. VM is always pretty useless customer support or sales. Shocking if the price is true to pay extra £16 a month for symmetrical to make it £100 per month!
Don’t blame customer services for something that is clearly a system/management issue. They haven’t thought of people mid contract wanting to upgrade nor they have enabled it in their prehistoric sales systems nor they have trained customer services on how they can sell. So all the blame in VM’s management, nothing to do with customer services.
don’t blame customer service for bad customer service
I like to see what good you do with crappy systems and no training. VM as a company sucks but that’s not the fault of low level employees.
You’re on an old rated packs and the new packs include the price increase, the issue is VM and not the customer services. Gig1 no discount is 78 but some have the out of contract price of 65 – 74 so when they want symmetrical it puts on latest prices which means you’re always paying more than £6. Someone explained this to me when I called up for my upgrade
That’s the thing though, none of the maths worked out. I’m currently on £30/month until April, and then it’s £50/month for the remaining contract. So +£6 should be £56/month. They mentioned +8.8% in April as a price increase but that only comes to £60.93. So the continuous quote from them of £66 made no sense and they weren’t able to explain it. If I was a new customer 1Gb is currently £46/month for the entire 2 years, then +£6/month for symmetric would be £52/month +8.8% would be £56.58. So I’m confused why it’s ever £66 as quote.
I appreciate if it’s VM’s sales system being outdated – but the customer service has been atrocious on multiple levels ever since joining VM and most of them don’t relate to a technical problem of their sales system, this is just the first in a long spate of issues. Getting it installed at all took more than 3 months. Now seeing that even upgrading is incredibly difficult is making me pray that Openreach or another provider installs in my area ASAP.
lol this sounds like my every experience with this company. They just offered me a better deal of £84 for 1gbit when i pay £54 now , after me saying I will buy out of my contract nadg et city fibre
Has there been any indication of what VM are planning to do for business services in XGS-PON areas? As far as I know they have no business CPE that supports FTTP, do you just get residential services in these locations with a VAT invoice and no business features? Do they refuse to connect you?
Any updates as to when existing customers on virgins hfc network will be upgraded to xgs-pon?
By 2027
By 2028
By 2029
I see a 2gb speed option, but no symmetrical speed option, any ideas why this might be?
Cos vm doesn’t want you on the symmetrical.
So is VM doing any FTTP (PON) rollout/conversion at the moment other than through nexfibre? Seems they’re not at all interested in converting their HFC and RFoG customers, and they’ve said everyone will be converted by 2028, I just don’t see how it’s going to happen.
Yes. Tons of work going on all over the place.
I don’t know the ins and outs of of technology but I know my area in Liverpool has been upgraded as far as I can tell and seen engineers have installed all the new cabinets. Inside when I looked a lot of fancy tech compared to the ancient tech in the old cabinets. I don’t think it should be too long for it to go live, fingers crossed I’m looking for new broadband from April 1st.
I am assuming DOCSIS3 areas wont get this? or will they but limited upload?
HFC will get 2.2gbps and 200mbps upload at some point.
I’ve found it hard to saturate 1gbps, multi gigabit seems only useful for large households/businesses at the moment.
Always better to have more than you need. You’re pretty much halving the amount of time sat around waiting (providing a server doesn’t have a bottleneck). 1GB takes 8s on 1Gbps – 4s on 2Gbps.
Multiple people in a household, cloud storage, streaming and downloading of purchased music and movies. Big files of GBs download/upload quicker on faster connections…
@Josh
That’s the problem, most servers I’ve found do a few hundred Mbps at best.
I think the pricing is fine for this to be fair, it means only those that need such speeds need buy it, I don’t get the infatuation with people wanting too produce high speedtest results and inevitably using services to there ends for no good reason.
As has been mentioned above, 1Gb services are often underused, I would say they are benificial for big game downloads and updates but then often they are throttled by multiple users saturating bandwidth on servers so the benefits of high bandwidth connection are then lost.
On the upload speed topic, I think the idea of charging for faster upload is again beneficial for users that need it, and hopefully they might extend this to HFC network where it permits.
An extra £6 a month for symmetrical speeds, why? there’s no need for that, they’re just price gouging at this point
On the other hand a £6 discount for asymmetrical services… 🙂
100%
Expensive I say for 2gbps im paying £35 1gbps on Hyperoptic when just my 24 month contract ends in April I will ask to price match with Community Fibre as there offering £25 for 1gbps good thing they price match.
Although Community Fibre are not built in my building yet they will still price match that’s how price match should be.
Price matching with something the customer can’t get? Doesn’t seem smart to me to be honest but it’s not my money they’re spending.
Guaranteed that Hyperoptic will be much more once you’re off their initial introductory first contract, then it’s expensive normal prices back again, clearly stated in their small print.
Good luck getting a price match, they might give you a small discount but it won’t be what you’re expecting!
2Gbps is 2000Mbps not 200. Community Fibre has a quicker turn around time and better pricing. 3Gbps is £49 a month. Virgin and BT didn’t even respond to me, Community took less than a week from initial contact to completing the installation.
Well I bet it won’t be that price after your first contract ends, then you’ll get a sudden price hike! Funny how nobody ever mentions the price increases from these altnets when they talk about their costs, introductory first contracts are cheap to get you onto their service, then once that’s over, back to the real prices!
Well, I’ve just left Virgin I was on 1gb and changed to a smaller suppliers 1gb. All I can say is that in reality this new install is much more stable and a lot faster than virgin ever supplied. It’s nice to have big headlines but I’d be curious to see if they can deliver. Even standing that aside their customer service is terrible, their increases within contract are ridiculous and their complaints system is ludicrous.
Glad to see VM finally offering symmetrical packages, even if they’re only available in NexFibre areas.
You’d think they would bring symmetrical speeds and gig2 to business connections on XGS-PON too, right?
Nah that would eat into the pricier leased line offerings.
If they don’t I’ll happily switch back to consumer come renewal. Given the 4G backup has never one automatically kicked in, I’m not really gaining much except for a static IP.
I’m unlikely to ever get an altnet offering the symmetric at low prices a lot here seem to be lucky to have access to.
£6 fixes it . £6. £6.
Yes , thanks Virgin Media public relations team.
That’s great.
For those who happen to live in Virgin Media unicorn fibre land…
Maybe Virgin should just give up and sell services via CityFibre. If Yayzi can afford to sell symmetrical 2.5Gbps for £50 per month via somebody else’s network, why are Virgin charging so much more, for less, on their own network? It’s abusive pricing because they know they’re the only option in many areas, but that fact is quickly changing.
£92 for 2gbit/2gbit City fibre are doing 2.5gbit/2.5gbit for £50 a month
Virgin are a scam company. I just asked them when nexfibre in my area they said no estimate then I asked how much to buy our of my contract they quoted me £650 ( the full 12 months remaining ) LOL Cant wait to leave and I would never ever return , every interaction with them is terrible. I was then passed to their deals team who offered me £84 a month for 1gbit , when I currently pay £54 😀
And how much does City Fibre cost after the initial first contract is done and dusted?!
No point boasting about their cheap first time deals, when they all push up prices once your first contract is over.
Few things say scam company like phoning them to ask when you’ll be able to upgrade to a higher tier service from them.
The folks on the phone have no idea when full fibre is going to be ready either as Nexfibre new build or the upgrade programme from regular cable to full fibre.
@Oldtimeuser
Yayzi on CityFibre charge £50pcm for 2.5/2/5Gbps on an 18 month contract with the price fixed for 3 years
I pay £49pcm Inc fixed ip for you fibre 2gb/2gb..£92 er no thanks.
Virgin media areas where customers have had Rfog built in the last few years maybe feeling a little disappointed. The joint venture between Nexfibre and Virgin Media seems to be prioritising XGSPON for mostly parts of the country not covered by VM. The town where I live had Rfog built around three years ago, but now a small village a few miles outside has been pencilled in for XGSPON from Nexfibre this year. Seems like Rfog areas may be near the last to change to the better and speedier XGSPON, leaving many waiting for 2G symmetric closer to the expected 2028 full changeover. Many on this site who have had bad experiences with VM, won’t be bothered at all!
Getting Tired, *Fibre Scriber Says*
The RFoG upgrade is nothing to do with Nexfibre just FYI. None of the cable network upgrades, RFoG or HFC, are on the Nexfibre lists. Only where there is substantial new build planned will you see places already with cable featured.
@XGS: FYI, I’m well aware VM built the Rfog in my local area, around three years ago, not Nexfibre. To be completely correct, sub contractors laid the micro tube, installed the toby boxes and cabinets, VM engineers worked in the cabinets. Hard knowing which firm, will do the upgrade work from Rfog to XGSPON and unless you stare into your Crystall ball, you won’t know either. The point i was trying to put across was that new builds are taking priority over upgrades, and that may disappoint customers who would like the new 2gig speed quickly, not having to wait nearer to the 2028 proposed end date. You do really love to nitpick!
Nexfibre have none of their own engineering, VMO2 are doing all the build for them either directly or via contractors.
All upgraded homes from RFoG/HFC stay with Liberty/Telefonica, all greenfield areas as of later this year once some smaller infill is finished are Nexfibre. All greenfield of any scale is Nexfibre now. In my own city there are a few places already where one street is VMO2 and the next, on the same trunk ducting, is Nexfibre build.
There are loads more premises ready for XGSPON and awaiting release on the ex-HFC/RFoG networks than there are Nexfibre premises. When the two want the same resources in the same place at the same time I’ve no idea which one takes priority. I would imagine it depends on the agreements between Nexfibre and VMO2 but both have targets they must achieve so both are on the clock.
I know the guys I’m talking to are super busy with all the projects, Nexfibre being more demanding as all new but Mustang / the ugprade programme being hectic as you like as well.
Apologies if I seemed pedantic: no way of knowing the background of the person I’m writing to.
Virgin Media are the most EXPENSIVE and SCAM company ever. I hope Virgin Media go into administration and sold off
For all the talk about how awful they are you are really, really annoyed you can’t buy this, aren’t you?
Looking at the BID there’s loads of red dots all around my area all state fibreup so I’m hoping that this is it not actually my street but surely those red dots come to me
For most the price point is off putting, even if you can afford it, unless you have devices that can handle 2.5Gb Ethernet, assuming VM provide a router with a 2.5Gb switch port? These multi gig services are over kill for most home users, who will struggle to saturate a 1Gb connection.
Yup they are overkill but that why they also offer slower speeds.
Virgin XGS-PON connections need the 5X Hub to operate which at this time still do not officially support modem mode. Therefore you can’t use your own equipment as you can with DOCIS BASED Hub3/4/5 routers. Virgin keep sending out mixed messages when a firmware update will be delivered to address this, they had promised by the end of 2023 but this did not happen and now they’ve gone silent. Can any of the nice people at ISPreview ask a Virgin rep about this? Thank.