Richard Branson’s Virgin Media is to one-up its main rival BT by launching an unlimited fibre broadband service with speeds of up to 152Mbps next year.
The company announced the new service today along with plans to boost the speed of its current fibre customers. Plans look to already be in place too, with emails landing today to advise of future upgrades from 60Mbps to 100Mbps. The email reads:
“Right now you have our up to 60Mb broadband. That’s really fast, but between May and October 2014 you’ll be able to upgrade to super speedy up to 100Mb broadband at no extra monthly cost.”
Not every customer will get the same speed increase, though Virgin has confirmed that the minimum jump will be by 20Mb, so it’s definitely not bad for a free upgrade. The company will write to each of its customers in time to let them know what the deal is with their speed update.
On the other side of the coin, Virgin has decided to up its cable bills by an average of 6.7%, again a move that’s come about as part of the company’s annual price review. Faster speeds are clearly a sweetener for the company as nobody likes price hikes, but everyone loves faster internet so it’s swings and roundabouts.
“Our top speed will be twice as fast as BT and all the others reliant on their old copper telephony infrastructure as we extend our lead as Britain’s ultrafast broadband provider” said Tom Mockridge, CEO of Virgin Media.
The company also confirmed that after extensive testing it will be bringing an official Netflix app to its TiVo set top boxes.