Virgin claims 150Mbps speeds soon
April 9, 2009 at 4:34 pm
Things are heating up between BT and Virgin in the battle to provide the country with super-fast broadband. After BT announced the first stage of its fibre optic network just last week, Virgin was quick to react by claiming that it will be providing its customers with speeds of up to 150Mbps two years before BT can get anywhere close to these speeds.
Virgin is already offering speeds of 50Mbps to its highest-paying customers in some areas of the UK. But the company has claimed that this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to super-fast speeds, and that speeds of 200Mbps will be possible in the near future.
BT has stated that the first UK cities will begin to benefit from its FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) fibre optic broadband network early next year, with the completion of the network in 2012. It has said that speeds of between 40 and 60Mbps can be expected.
But Neil Berkett, the chief executive of Virgin Media, said that by the time BT has its operation up and running, Virgin will be providing a minimum speed of 100Mpbs. Indeed, he also said that it was possible to introduce these speeds quicker, but that there is not much financial incentive to do so at the moment.
However, he added that sometime in the coming years “there will be a natural point where we upgrade from 10, 20 and 50Mpbs to something more.” Virgin has also hinted at the possibility of letting other providers use its network to provide their own services in the future.
