Virgin Media to offer 20MB broadband from May

Dave Walker Broadband
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Virgin Media will push broadband speeds up to 20Mb/ps on its flagship XL cable broadband service from May, that’s double the current 10Mbp/s limit.

That makes it the fastest (widely available) home internet connection in the UK. What does it mean in real terms? Well, a standard MP3 music track can be downloaded in around two seconds. The one downside is a price increase – £37 per month instead of the current £35 rate, with unlimited downloads and online security.

Ernie Cormier, chief commercial officer of Virgin Media, said: “We want to make entertainment and communications the simple and exciting world it should be, but our technology also means we can offer an ultra-fast broadband service that our competitors can’t match”.

Virgin Media website

Dave Walker
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7 comments

  • I have this so called 20Mbts, but for some reason it never reaches that 20Mbts, it usualy averages around 10Mbts but it’s still fast

  • He is a very clever man Richard Branson. Waited until everything was installed and then bought the furture. With Broadband speeds on the rise and the new IBM technology to run speeds of 160Gig/s (YES 160GIG) which uses fibre optic and uses light speed.I am just glad i am staying with Virgin….SKY on the other hand does hold the vast majority of HDTV but lets wait and see what Virgin have instore for us.

  • I had a Virgin engineer round yesterday to install a box in another room. I asked him about the rollout for 20Mb abd he said I’d be getting it at the beginning of May (I live in NW Kent) and that Virgin would be pushing out 50 Mb by the end of the year. Can’t wait!

  • Virin Media are not an exclusive cable broadband provider, since the merger of telewest and virgin they now offer both adsl and cable. As far as I’m aware there isn’t a single standard dsl line that will consistently hold a 16mb connection. Virgin cable customers are quite simply first in the line to get such speeds because of the technology behind it. As a matter of fact, DSL is a dead future technology IMO, it isn’t capable of providing the demands of modern consumers in the future, but it is a wide spread network, that’s about the only thing in it’s favour.

  • That’s all good, ie. the 20Mb (as i’m on XL any way) but why does it rely on the phone line as Virgin/ntl use fiber optic from the main exchange anyway and it has nothing to do with the phone line as it runs through the main cable line? not to be simple but???????

    Craig

  • virgin 20meg bb uses coax cable as used in cable tv, not the phone line, they are also testing 50meg BB as well at the minute!!!

  • wow! 20mb broadband!!! that is going to be amazing but the problems are that i currently have 16mb sky broadband at only £10 a months wwhich is much cheaper but only a little slower! if the the 20mb broadband went down in price to about £20 a months then that would be great and i konw loads of people that would then get it. aniother problem with the fast broadband is that the phone line won’t let the internet so fast so virgin will have to also offer a phone line that can take upto 20mb broadband speed. thanks for reading this. bye

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