400Mb fibre broadband plans from Virgin Media

Virgin Media are looking to increase broadband speeds to 400Mb.

By the end of the year Virgin Media (www.virginmedia.com)  plan to be offering 100Mb fibre broadband to it’s customers, this is double the current headline speed that they currently have available of 50Mb of which there are around 70,000 customers signed up to it. They are also already doing trials and test on 200Mb broadband but it seems that they have even faster targets that they want to strive to be able to offer. Virgin Media already have a new modem lined up to be available by the end of the year that is able to deal with 400Mb broadband.

Virgin are already in front of BT when it comes to offering the fastest broadband speeds, and with BT’s own fibre broadband network only going to be offering 40Mb to most people Virgin are making sure that they keep their noses well out in front in the fast lane.

BT’s fibre broadband network is only offering fibre broadband to the cabinet (FTTC) and then from there it will rely on copper wires to take the broadband that final distance to the house and as such BT are offering headline speeds of40Mb for their fibre broadband, however Virgin offer their fibre broadband direct to the house and as such are able to offer faster speeds as their whole connection is done with fibre.
Only a few selected places, mainly new build locations are where BT will be installing fibre directly to the house but for the majority of people it will just be FTTC.

Virgin Media currently only cover around half of the UK but are looking at extending this with the use of using existing telephone cables to help reach other parts of the country with it’s fibre broadband, an estimated 1 million homes around the country in more rural areas could be reached from doing this.