Virgin Media trumps BT with 150-Mbps broadband in the UK

The UK broadband market has heated up with internet service provider Virgin Media, owned by Sir Richard Branson, saying that it will offer UK customers broadband speeds of 100 to 150Mbps in two years even as its larger rival BT announced this week that it would offer speeds of 60Mbps by 2010.

Making the statement on BBC news, Virgin Media's chief executive Neil Berkett said "We have an opportunity with our network to provide significantly higher speeds."

This week BT announced that it will provide the next generation super-fast broadband access with speeds of 60Mbps from early 2010 to 500,000 homes and businesses in six cities in the UK. (See: British Telecom to give UK customers 60 Mbps broadband speed)

But Virgin Media is currently way ahead of BT as it offers its UK customer's broadband speeds of 50Mbps while BT's offers only 24Mbps and BT's announcement of offering 60Mbps speed in 2010 is only marginally more than what Virgin Media is currently offering.

Using fibre optic technology, Internet Service Provider in the UK, i3 is already providing speeds of 140Mbps.

Using the fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) network technology, which is the same technology being used by BT to upgrade its speed, Berkett said Virgin Media was capable of rolling out speeds up to 200Mbps, but bringing out higher speeds was a 'matter of timing' as the market is not conducive to absorb it and the company would not get its return on investment.

But at the same time, he said that he would not be surprised if Virgin Media rolled out faster speeds next year. Claiming that with nearly half of all homes in the UK using its broadband services, Virgin Media, in theory can give downstream speeds of 200 Mbps.

Currently, Virgin Media does not give rival Internet Service Providers to use its network for resale as wholesaling is not on their agenda at the moment, but it is open to the idea of wholesaling its network to other ISPs.

Berkett said "Who knows, by the time BT have rolled out their next generation network we may be in position to explore wholesale."

But as UK broadband service providers vie for a market share in the UK, communications watchdog Ofcom has said that although many Britons can afford the internet, they are not convinced of its benefits.

Research conducted on customer satisfaction by Think Broadband, UK's largest independent broadband news and information company, revealed that the service provided by ISP's was very poor with 8 out of 11 being rated by customers as 'unsatisfactory.'

While smaller ISP's were rated on top, bigger ones like BT, AOL and Tiscali were at the bottom half of the rating.