All the latest UK technology news, reviews and analysis
|
|
|
23 Jun 2010
Virgin Media is to launch a modem and router at the end of the year that it claims will be able to handle speeds of up to 400Mbit/s.
No further details on the product were announced, but Virgin Media's director of broadband, Jon James, said that the move underlined the growing network capabilities of the firm's infrastructure and its continued push to improve services.
"We want to be ready for the evolution of network speeds in the coming years as we roll out ever-improving services, including our 100Mbit/s service due at the end of the year and trials of 200Mbit/s ongoing," he said.
James claimed that Virgin Media now has 70,000 subscribers for its 50Mbit/ product, and talked up new services including consumer telepresence, cloud computing for the storage of media files on Virgin's network and home working.
He also defended the network's robustness, saying that most issues that would arise for home workers would be about the applications being hosted on the network, rather than the network itself.
"Networks are very robust these days and Virgin has never had a more reliable network than now," he said.
James added that Virgin backed the government's digital agenda initiatives, and that "messages from the government are incredibly supportive" regarding its stance on the creation of new networks.
However, he attacked BT's investment in ADSL2, claiming that it does not offer a viable solution to rising network issues and that BT's claims of offering speeds of up to 20Mbit/s are misleading.
"BT runs all its services on a single cable, and the moment someone starts using more than one service on the network the speeds decrease. With more devices set to become part of home set-ups, its networks will increasingly suffer," he said.
Latest stories from Communications
Related articles
Related jobs
Poll
Are you confident that the UK's IT infrastructure is secure from attack in the wake of the Flame malware revelations?
Orange and Intel talk us through the ins and outs of their San Diego smartphone
Connect with V3.co.uk
Social networking is almost ubiquitous. This white paper examines the benefits and risks and it looks at the different ways companies can reconcile them
The importance of understanding your infrastructure
My client, a leading international name in Manufacturing...
My client is looking for an Automated Engineer/Developer...
*** Java Architect - IT Services/Consultancy - London...
Skills: C#, WCF, ASP.Net, Real Time Systems, MVC, SQL...
Keep up to date with the latest products, services and technologies from the world's leading IT companies. IThound.com brings you over 2,000 white papers, case studies and analyst reports.
Do you agree?
50meg VM
Well i have to say, unlike the other messages slagging off VM i am actually a happy customer, my download speeds are allways maxed out at around 48mbit. There is no fair usage policy that im away and once downloaded 150gb in 1 month with ease. The only issue i have with the service is that sometimes during downloading it will cut out for 15 seconds a couple of times, but thats on downloading a 6gb download so cant really complain. I agree with the comment about speed though, i was on the 20mb package before moving and getting the new 50mb package and am wondering why i bothered really i could probably wait the extra time for my downloads.
Posted by: Carl 25 Jun 2010
Virgin Media
Their customer service is non existant. Avoid this ISP like the plague...
Posted by: intelligent life form 24 Jun 2010
just marketing hype?
i'm a 50 megabit subscriber & in reality i rarely get above 10 or 15. More frustrating than that are the very high levels of Jitter & ping latency on their line. It means for example that HiDef streaming or VOIP are as glitchy & stuttery as they would be on a much lower speed. Conclusion ? all very well to hype the potential maximum line speed when in reality the quality is poor & the maximum rarely if ever achieved in practice
Posted by: bob 24 Jun 2010
400Mpbs could be great for mobile too
Recently Vodafone declared that data used over their new femto-cell for in building mobile coverage which uses a persons home broadband connection would still count as mobile data. Seemed a bizarre move as they plan to charge their customers the same for mobile data using another company's cheaper network. Consider how much cheaper landline data would become if companies like Virgin can get up to 400Mbps. Now if Virgin start offering femtocells too, and don't try to charge a premium for the cheaper landline data, the prospect of a Virgin Mobile contract would suddenly be very appealing. When we see Virgin strike a deal with Apple to offer iPhone contracts it'll be cards on table time.
Posted by: AdieB 24 Jun 2010
Virgin Media - Cyberspace, just different galaxy
Why do VM continue to believe that all its customer wants are faster download speeds, on any one day (peak hours) you are hard pushed to hit your maximum line capable speed and if you do..they hit you with 'throttling' so life goes on at a fraction of the speed that we the customer are actually paying for! The future of the internet is without a doubt 'Cloud' based storage, so please VM sort out the 'UPLOAD' speeds before you continue raving on about download speeds. As for their claim of 'robust' network infrastructure, this has to be a joke..where is that Beadle man? Have you ever tried to even connect to their backup and storage service alone actually upload anything to it! We need faster upload speeds and an 'Unlimited' package that truly means 'unlimited'..no fair usage policy!
Posted by: Lee Stephens 23 Jun 2010
400Mbits!
we all know the lines are far more capable of triple that!! virgin will continue to bleed the customers dry until they meet targets then up it again.
Posted by: Chris Spackett 23 Jun 2010