Virgin Media is already thinking about 400Mbps services, with the arrival of a new modem by the end of the year paving the way for a whole new level of superfast broadband.
With 100Mbps arriving in the UK by the end of 2010, and 200Mbps trials continuing, Virgin Media's executive director of broadband Jon James admitted thoughts were already turning to the next step.
"The DOCSIS 3 network really gives us a dial we can turn to give more speed to customers if we think that is the right thing to do both for those customers and commercially," said James.
"We have done 50Mbps and a series of upgrades and we will continue to give Virgin Media customers free upgrades on an equipment basis because we are the speed leader and we think it's going to continue as a way we do broadband.
Faster, faster
"We are also doing 100Mbps – launching in Q4 this year – we are trialing 200Mbps but that's a very commercial trial in the sense of working out in the real life what you can do with 200 Mbps," he added.
"We know very well we can do 200Mbps and we could do 400 Mbps. We are launching a new modem by the end of the year that will be 400 Mbps capable.
"And that's a vehicle for the evolution of our speed portfolio in the next two years."
James will not put a date to either 400Mb or 200Mbps at the current time, but the capability of fibre optic networks for truly superfast broadband is clear.
The 50Mbps flagship service is apparently 'smack on plan' with the last subscription figures released showing that there are 70,000 people using it.
Upstream increases
One of the criticisms of Virgin's current top line service is the relatively small upstream capability, but the company is looking to change this.
"We're also using our upstream ratio in Q3 but we're not releasing the details now," he added.
Your comments (8) Click to add a new comment
anonymous1
June 25th 2010
8. I'm on the 200mb trial and it starts in the next 1-3 weeks and i am not an official pilot for VM and there has been nothing said about 400mbps...
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fingtoo
June 24th 2010
7. Amazing, Virgin Mobile has ALWAYS been on top of their game.
Lou
www.anon-vpn.at.tc
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tonymontana
June 24th 2010
6. @boon72 - They don't have any throttling or download limits on 50mb.
Before the recession bit quite hard I had 50Mb broadband and I'm a pretty heavy Usenet user. The service worked flawlessly for me here in Greater Manchester. With 50Mb broadband I would routinely get speeds of around 6.18MB/s on average with my Usenet providers.
I'm not sure what they are planning on doing with 100Mb broadband(I think they will introduce throttling sooner or later to 50meg, 100meg or both to be honest) but like I said if your in a area where VM broadband is of quality the 50meg broadband is the best in the country barnone.
Speeds are constant, no throttling what so ever and no download caps. I am looking forward to 100 meg this year that will put us at parity with most European nations.
I lived in Hong Kong for a while and I remember paying about £10 a month for 1Gb internet. We have some way to go but 100Mb by the end of this year and 400Mb in the next few years is a good start.
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romi
June 23rd 2010
5. The average speeds of millions of net subscribers determines advances in internet access and use. The most isolated cases of 400Mbps connections dont mean anything other than a stimulus thought of what the average net user will get in 20 years time.
The world needs true 20Mb second connection in preparation to view unlimited media content whenever a user wants, with 1080p video stream quality.
japan and korea are rolling out 1Gb internet connetion to put the progress into perspective.
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boon72
June 23rd 2010
4. what's the point of making it faster and faster when they throttle it so much, they advertise fast speeds and charge a lot for it and then throttle you down at peak times when you reach a set limit.
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zedthegreat
June 23rd 2010
3. @northerngeek - Good point. I live in a nice flat in a nice part of Edinburgh, however it was built after the initial cable rollout. This means I now have no option for a cable product so they can offer a 300000TB service and it is still no good to me! Surely an expansion of the network is a good idea? Esp in a high density environment.
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abyssunderground
June 23rd 2010
2. Trials are already underway for upstream increases.
10Mbps / 1Mbps
20Mbps / 2Mbps
50Mbps / 5Mbps
Giving a 10:1 ratio rather than the current 20:1 and 28:1
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northerngeek
June 23rd 2010
1. I'm chomping at the bit to get Virgin Media's proper service but they won't be able to expand properly until they start providing better coverage. They're neglecting the network.
I used to live in the countryside but I started a new job and live in Liverpool City Centre now... NO virgin media on my road though! It's ridiculous. There's an abundance of people living in apartments here and there's no service.
If they provided better coverage I'd switch in all of my households.
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