Virgin Media cranks up mobile broadband speed

Uploading videos will be much quicker with this new service

Mobile workers received a boost today as Virgin Media announced the launch of a new high-speed mobile broadband service that it claims can offer speeds of up to 7.2Mbit/s.

The speed doubles Virgin's previous mobile broadband offering of 3.6Mbit/s and uses High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA) technology on T-Mobile's 3G network, giving it coverage of around 85 per cent.

However, a spokesman for Virgin said that while 7.2Mbit/s was the top end speed the dongle could offer it was not the speed that users would generally get.

"We're cautious about over-promising and saying 7.2Mbit/s is the speed users will always be able to obtain, as things like the geographic environment, distance from cell towers and other factors can all impact on access speeds," he added.

Upload speeds have also been improved, with High Speed Upload Packet Access (HSUPA) offering 2Mbit/s upload speeds rather than the previous 384Kbit/s.

Virgin said the ability to reach 2Mbit/s for uploading would be useful for tasks such as uploading to sites like YouTube or Twitpic remotely.

"While mobile broadband is still in its early life-cycle, the fact we are offering speeds of 7.2Mbit/s means we are on the cusp of this technology and are looking at further improvements we can offer," Virgin's spokesman added.

The service comes on a range of contracts and data limits of either 1GB or 3GB per month.