Virgin’s Vivid broadband boost to 200Mbps

Virgin Media broadband customers are set for a major speed boost after the company announced it would be upping its network to the fastest speeds yet. Though given FTTC has competed alongside Virgin Media for some five years or more it may not always be an easy sale.

In addition to bumping up the speed of its fastest packages, Virgin Media will also now refer to all broadband speeds of over 100Mbps as “Vivid” to cut through the super-fast/ultrafast confusion in terminology.

Virgin Media broadband customers can upgrade from existing speeds of up to 50Mbps, 100Mbps and 152Mbps to 70Mbps, Vivid 150Mbps and Vivid 200Mbps.

Customers will now be invited to opt in to an upgrade starting from 1 October 2015.

“A typical home now has multiple devices, like tablets, smartphones and games consoles, accessing the internet at any one time so large households, like families or groups of students, need faster speeds”.

The firm also took the opportunity to gloat that those on the top-end 200Mbps package will be able to download a two-hour film in just over three minutes, or an album in just three seconds.

Virgin Media claims that thanks to its DOCSIS 3 technology, it will make available and deploy the superior speeds in record time, with 90 per cent of customers being able to upgrade by the end of 2015.

Data usage on the Virgin Media network is now growing at a rate of 60% every year and if the trend continues data usage will be 10,000% higher by 2025.

Whatever you want to call it, the new services promise speeds far in excess of what you can now get from an ISP using BT’s Openreach network to resell superfast services.