Virgin's 1.5Gbp internet trial now delivering the world's fastest broadband to parts of London.
You might remember back in April, when Virgin Media announced plans to test 1.5Gbps internet in London’s "Silicon Roundabout" hub in the Old Street area. Well, the company this week announced that it is now successfully delivering internet speeds up to 240 times faster than the national average to trialists in London.
When Virgin Media launched the project the company said the cost of implementing the service would be minimal, as it planned to use fibre optic cabling infrastructure already in place and providing service to customers. The company confirmed speeds of 150Mbps up and 1.5Gbps down, and explains that DOCSIS 3.0, the current standard used throughout its network, allows for the bonding of multiple downstream and upstream channels together. On Monday, Virgin Media announced that its trial was successfully delivering 1.5Gbps down and 150Mbps up using the same infrastructure and technology as Virgin Media uses to provide residential customers with speeds of up to 100Mb.
"As people are simultaneously connecting more gadgets to the internet and doing more online than ever before, we wanted to explore what our unique fibre optic network is capable of," said Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media. "At speeds of up to 1.5Gb, Virgin Media is delivering some of the fastest broadband in the world and, thanks to our ongoing investment, we're able to anticipate and lead the way in meeting growing demand for bandwidth as future services and applications come online."
Among those benefiting from the trial are members of TechHub, a community and workspace for technology entrepreneurs in the Old Street area. Elizabeth Varley, co-founder and CEO at TechHub, said that the community is enjoying the superfast broadband speeds.
"TechHub members are having great fun with the super speeds and are looking forward to trying out new ideas and applications. Superfast broadband is critical to continued innovation across the UK and Virgin Media's 1.5Gb trial is a great opportunity to explore the future potential."
they could do 10 households for the bandwith of 1
or 10million houses for the bandwith of 1million
the main problem is that the actual virgin gear that links you to the internet is very expensive to upgrade and this is why its slow to upgrade
Now Virgin have a 30mbit service as an upgrade\replacement to their 20mbit service I took that offer and things are even better for the same price (yes, I do get the speed I pay for unlike BT's 'up-to' nonsense).
When it comes to their 50,100 and new trialled speeds, I for one have the belief that if you are willing to pay for the privilege Virgin are more than capable of providing the services to match which can't be said for many ISPs be they cable or ADSL.