Internet service providers (ISPs) continue to promise ever-faster internet speeds and top of the pile at the moment is Virgin Media, which is offering 100Mbit/s and planning 200Mbit/s and 400Mbit/s services too.

To find out what a 100Mbit/s broadband connection is actually like to use in real-life, we took a trip to a Virgin Media laboratory, deep in the basement of a large flat complex in Pimlico, London, to test out a series of services running over this speed.

The block is one of the company's long-standing fibre rollout locations, with every one of the 1,058 apartments in the complex hooked on fibre since 1999 when the firm, then NTL, was offering a whopping 10Mbit/s.

At the time, most customers' throughput on this connection was 10K-20Kbit/s a month, the firm said.

Now, though, the demand for connectivity and higher speeds is growing all the time, and as such Virgin is bullish that its 100Mbit/s can meet this desire for ever-increasing numbers of internet connected devices.

"It's all about constant connectivity. Users want to be able to add as many devices to their networks as possible without having to worry about whether or not it's going to impact the network," said Dale Barnes, Virgin Media's director of advanced technologies and innovation.

"Many people, including some on our 200Mbit/s trials, say they prefer working from home as their network speeds are better than those they get in their offices for running certain services."

This includes online gaming, video-conferencing and IP CCTV systems (such as for security purposes and home health monitoring) and large-file transfers. Indeed, we saw a massive 500MB file downloaded in less than one minute on the 100Mbit/s network.

The firm also showed off its Tivo TV service that uses its own separate 10Mbit/s modem to connect to the firm's fibre network so users can access applications for sites like Twitter, eBay and YouTube to use the internet through the TV.

At the laboratory there is also a piece of a telegraph pole the firm used during a trial running fibre to homes in Woolhampton as a memento of the work and to remind the team what is possible as it considers ways to help close the digital divide.

"The use of telegraph poles is certainly a good opportunity to deliver fibre and we are glad there are discussions going on over how to use this technology so now it's a case of waiting to see how the industry works out if this could work," Barnes explained.

Below are a few photos of the service in action.

A 100Mbit/s connection also comes with upload speeds of 10Mbit/s

Speeds of this level enable the use of home videoconferencing and IP CCTV systems.

The firm's new TiVo service allows users to search for content on YouTube.

A piece of the telegraph pole used at the firm's Woolhampton trial of running fibre over telegraph poles.

Author: Dan Worth

09 Feb 2011