Jordan O'BrienVirgin Media customers in the UK can now access blisteringly fast speeds of up to 200Mbps, which is being rolled out to an estimated 4.6m customers.
With this new speed, installers will be able to get more out of a home broadband connection; facilitating 4K video streaming and more bandwidth-demanding applications.
This is the third time Virgin Media has given its existing customers a speed boost in the last five years; quadrupling speeds since 2010 from 50Mbps to 200Mbps.
Virgin Media says that with the new connection, users will be able to download an entire two hour HD movie in three minutes two seconds and a full music album in just three seconds.
With these new broadband speeds comes a new brand name, as Virgin Media has renamed its ultrafast broadband to ‘Vivid’.
Customers will be able to choose from three different Vivid speeds; 70Mbps, 150Mbps or 200Mbps, with customers being upgraded automatically from 50Mbps, 100Mbps and 152Mbps, respectively.
Virgin Media’s competitors in the ultrafast broadband space have failed to keep up with its pace of innovation; after all, BT’s widely available Infinity broadband supports speeds of up to 76Mbps.
Despite the current lack of speed, BT’s broadband is also seeing significant investment, with the company promising to boost speeds to 300Mbps by 2020 for 10m of its customers.
That’s similar to the current trajectory Virgin Media is on, with the company already having been testing 300Mbps speeds for over a year.
BT’s network is significantly bigger than Virgin Media’s however, although that is changing.
Virgin Media is investing £3bn to get more homes in the UK connected to its fibre network, with roll outs already affecting Nottingham, Manchester and Leeds, with more places to follow in the coming months.
“Our message is simple: if you want to be certain that you are signing up to true ultrafast broadband speeds of 100Mbps and above, Vivid from Virgin Media is the new standard,” says Gregor McNeil, managing director of consumer at Virgin Media.
“The speed of a customer’s broadband connection matters; when you have more you can do more.”
Virgin Media’s new speeds will begin rolling out on October 1 at no extra cost to existing customers.