Virgin Media's CEO, Neil Berkett, has revealed that the operators cable based ISP services will be able to offer broadband speeds of up to 150Mbps by 2012. Virgin Media has long claimed that their current network could handle 100Mbps+, though it had previously sighted a lack of demand as the reason for not launching such an option.

Meanwhile BT's £1.5bn plan to rollout similar fibre optic based broadband to as many as 10 million homes by 2012 will initially only be able to reach speeds of up to 100Mbps in a smaller number of locations via Fibre to the Home (FTTH). Most existing premises will instead get a form of FTTC and related VDSL2, which offers 40Mbps to 60Mbps at best.

Virgin claims that its network could even handle up to 200Mbps, although demand for such performance remains uncertain. Elsewhere the operator is currently in the process of completing its up to 50Mbps broadband rollout, which will be completed by this summer and cover a significant swathe of the country:


BT has promised that future enhancements could see some FTTH enabled areas reaching speeds of up to 1000Mbps, but not for a fair few years. Certainly such speeds would not be achieved on a mass scale, FTTH requires a fibre optic cable to be taken directly to the home and that could cost up to £20bn. BT could never afford that.

Interestingly many of the first 29 exchanges targeted by BT's initial fibre optic/FTTC focused broadband rollout (news), which will reach up to 500,000 homes and businesses, are in areas already covered by Virgin Media. It's perhaps not unusual for competitive city environments, but could limit the benefits compared with covering fresh areas (no Virgin Media).

Virgin Media's CEO also suggested that he expects speeds to start improving again next year, which could be taken as a hint to look out for their 100Mbps packages to surface. It will be interesting to see how much demand there is for that, especially given the hefty price tag it would need to incur.