Get ready for a serious competitor to that poxy free broadband deal. Virgin Media just took the wraps off its 50Mb service, capable of downloading movies in minutes and albums in just seconds. Best of all, it’s available right now.
Showing off the service in central London this morning, Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett described the service as “a step change in how we access the internet,” underlining that “this is not something happening tomorrow. This is happening today.”
The service, comes bundled with an N-wireless router, which looks gorgeous by the way, and is capable of downloading a 1GB DVD-quality movie in just three minutes, downloads albums in seconds, and boasts latency times at half that of DSL, a real boon for gamers.
But it doesn’t stop there. Berkett revealed there’s already a 100Mb service in the works, and that because of its fibre optic network Virgin is now years ahead of rival ISPs.
“This is a revolution,” he explained, “and Virgin Media will lead it. It’s interesting that within weeks of us talking about 50Mb our competition announced that, in 3-4 years, they would be in a position to compete.
“We’ve taken the risk. We’ve spent our money. We look forward to the competition spending their money, but customers will drive this revolution. They’ll make sure that in a few year’s time 50Mb will not be enough.”
Berkett also revealed it’s not just new 50Mb customers that’ll see the benefit or Virgin’s beefed-up network, stating that the new capacity meant it could overhaul speeds for all customers.
“This is the beginning of a complete upgrade for customers, to the effect that you’re either on Virgin Media or you’re in the slow lane,” he said.
Virgin’s 50Mb service is now available to 1.5 million homes across the UK. By the end of the month it’ll have reached 40% of Virgin’s network, and by the middle of 2009 all 12.5 million customers will be able to subscribe.
Out now | From £35 per month | Virgin Media
It’s Mb you retards
Thanks John, and Merry Christmas to you too!
Fibre City have been doing 100Mb for a wehile now.
http://www.fibrecity.eu/latest-news.htm
Virgin are one of the fastest, and i think it’s great that they are now offering 50Mb (whether customers will actually get these speeds is a whole other argument) but one thing is it is creating greater competition, and will hopefully encourage other ISP to get their networks going onto faster speeds.