Posted: 15th Jul, 2009 By: MarkJ
Cable giant Virgin Media UK has today announced the completion of its national Next Generation up to 50Mbps (DOCSIS3 based) broadband service rollout. The service presently has no comparison, at least in terms of comparable scale, and is now capable of reaching over 12 million homes. As if that wasn't enough they've also cut the price to just £28 per month when taken with a phone line or £38 as a standalone option.
The 50Mbps service also continues to be free of traffic management, though Virgin Media has in the past signalled that such a stance may not last forever. Still, not to be outdone by BT's future service, Virgin Media has also announced that it intends to trial faster upload speeds of up to 10Mbps.
Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media, said:
"As the first company to bring broadband to the UK ten years ago, the completion of our next-generation network marks another pioneering moment for internet access in the UK. We are delighted with the performance and reliability of our 50Mb service, and with the customer feedback. Now the roll-out is days from being complete, we're ready to take 50Mb to the next stage of development and reinforce our leading position in the broadband market."
In addition to trialling the technical capabilities of the DOCSIS 3.0 Cable Modem network, VM's 10Mbps upstream trial will explore the demand for higher upstream speeds for bandwidth hungry families, on services such as video conferencing, multiplayer gaming and home working.
This week the company will also launch the "
Freedom" netbook, its first ever branded laptop. The bespoke laptop, available in black or Virgin red, has been optimised for 50Mbps speeds and will be packaged with top of the line software. Both new and existing customers will be able to get the laptop at no additional charge when they take selected great value bundled packages.
On top of all this it's worth remembering that Virgin Media is currently piloting a real-world style deployment of 200Mbps speeds in Ashford, Kent. Quite how much demand there would be for that kind of speed is still uncertain, but it's a good way to remind BT just how far they have to go in order to catch-up.