Virgin Media plans broadband upgrade

Virgin Media has announced a major upgrade of its broadband service, which will start next month and should be completed by late summer.

Customers on the company’s ‘L’ tariff will receive a free upgrade from 4 to 10 Mbps, which will allow customers to download a music album in under a minute, or a complete TV show in 5 minutes. Upload speeds will increase to 512kb.

The upgrade seems to be part of a strategy to compete against BT’s forthcoming 21CN network and the national roll-out of ADSL2+, offering services at up to 24Mbps.

Virgin Media also plans to extend its top-of-the-range 50Mbit/s service, offering it to customers who currently have a 20Mbit/s connection. Virgin has trialled the 50 Mbit/s service in Kent.

The company announced the upgrade immediately prior to a Government symposium on Superfast Broadband.

Virgin Media claims that cable systems provide a superior perform to other broadband systems because connection speeds are not limited by customers’ distance from the exchange.