Virgin Media gives its broadband a speed injection

Virgin Media has announced it is offering a free upgrade to all its customers who use 10Mb, up to 20Mb and up to 50Mb services which will boost upload speeds.

This will be an upgrade which isn't tied to the resigning of contracts, but one that will be available to all.

Virgin Media is calling this an 'adrenaline shot' to its fibre optic network, with Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media, explaining: "We're once again pushing the boundaries of UK broadband with a true next generation broadband service that vastly outperforms struggling DSL-based services.

"With the huge growth in social networks these new upload speeds will help Virgin Media customers share their most precious moments and keep up with what friends and families are up to, whether it's uploading to YouTube or even hosting a live videochat to show off baby's first steps in high-definition."

Traffic management

Virgin Media has also announced that to go alongside its upload increase, it will be rolling out a new traffic management system at peak times, which is meant to "improve the performance that over 95 per cent of customers receive."

It does note, however, that: "For customers on its premium up to 50Mb service, this temporary slowdown will only operate on upload speeds and an extremely heavy user will see this reduce from up to 5Mb to up to 1.75Mb."

This is a slight boost from 1.5MBps which is what happens with the current system.

Virgin Media is hoping its new traffic management system will reduce problems with streaming hi-def content and online TV, at the expense of non time-sensitive web use like P2P traffic.

If you're gagging to find out more, then thankfully Virgin has created a dedicated site to help you out with all the uploading details you could want.