Virgin Media to Unleash Fastest Broadband Ever: 50Mbps

By Neil Hawkins Senior Staff Writer Wednesday, 20 August 2008

Fastest Broadband Deal Ever On Its Way The current UK Top Five fastest broadband deals: Be | 24Mbps £18 O2 Broadband | 20Mbps £20 Virgin Media | 20Mbps: £26* Sky | 16Mbps £27 UKOnline |16Mbps £24.99 * Introduction price Compare Fast Broadband Compare fastest broadband deals Virgin Media Reviews Compare all Virgin Media broadband deals and read reviews of each Related Broadbands News See our other recent related news stories: Fast Broadband Fast broadband is alive and well, but how do you get it? This guide helps you find the best fast broadband deals in the UK. Fastest Broadband Fastest broadband in the UK? Use this useful guide to discover the fastest broadband deals and what you should consider before signing up to them. Best broadband deals for fast broadband Who offers the best broadband deals for really fast broadband? Neil Hawkins examines the contenders and answers the question of just who does offer the fastest broadband deal.

LAST week we reported on Virgin Media’s prediction that they’ll have the fastest broadband by 2012 with speeds reaching 200Mbps, blowing their rivals out of the water.

Whilst those speeds currently remain mere pipe dreams for most of us, more details have emerged this week as Virgin Media prepares to launch its 50Mbps fast broadband product nationwide towards the end of the year.

Speedy Gonzalez

So, what can we expect from Virgin Media’s new 50Mbps fast broadband product and is it any good?

The headline speed of 50Mbps is awesome if you are a heavy downloader or want to use your fast broadband connection to stream online media throughout the house.

However the news on the grapevine is that the Virgin Media upload speed will be 1.5Mbps which is a bit disappointing considering the huge amount of bandwidth available on the download side.

This may put off some potential users but perhaps some early feedback will cause Virgin Media to rethink their proposed not so fast upload speeds.

Traffic Troubles

Of more concern were early mutterings that Virgin Media would apply traffic management to its new fast broadband connections.

A spokesman from Virgin Media denied this and commented that “we've yet to determine if there will be traffic management on this service and if so, at what levels these might be.”

Virgin Media created controversy amongst users when it altered its traffic management policy earlier this year.

Customers who exceeded what many saw as a puny peak time download allowance had their connection speeds cut by up to 50% for up to five hours.

We seriously hope that this will not be the case when this product rolls out later on in the year; after all, what good is the UK’s fastest broadband connection if you can’t use it?

The Future’s Bright, The Future’s Red?

So, is Virgin Media set to take over the UK broadband market?

This package will certainly be tempting for those using the current 20Mbps product and with Virgin’s cable network supposedly able to deliver the headline speed at all times the temptation is increased further still.

The news that Virgin Media is on the brink of rolling out its latest product nationwide will be a blow to BT whose newest fast broadband offering is half the speed at ‘up to’ 24Mbps and behind schedule.

That said, it will take real commitment from Virgin Media to ensure the service is top-notch and constantly running at full speed in order to keep customers happy.

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