Virgin Media seems to be doing its best to push the UK forward in the broadband league tables, by making its entry level service be the Large 10Mbps product. Existing 2Meg customers are to upgraded from their M to the L service with the upgrades starting in May 2009.
The lowest priced service from Virgin Media on its cable network is the L product, which is £15 a month for the first six months rising to the standard price of £20 a month thereafter. If you take a telephone line from Virgin Media for £11 a month the cost of the broadband is £5 a month for three months and then £14 a month.
"Our entry-level broadband product is now twice the speed of comparable services and, with our new 10-20-50 range, we clearly offer the highest quality broadband service in the UK. The migration of millions of 2Mb customers to 10Mb is only possible because of the power of our next generation network and is just one example of how we are creating exciting propositions for consumers which provide transformational experiences and go way beyond their expectations. Coupled with our recently launched 50Mb service, we are proactively developing the UK’s broadband market, driving consumer expectations and the demand for high speed broadband services."
Neil Berkett, chief executive of Virgin Media
Critics of the Virgin Media service will be quick to mention the traffic management currently in place, which unlike some large providers Virgin Media do not hide. For existing 2Meg customers, the upgrade to 10Meg means that even if they do trigger the management system after downloading 2.4GB the limited speed is actually 2.5Mbps, i.e. faster than their current product.
The entry level product for Virgin Media is by far its most popular product as many people don't want to spend large amounts of money on their broadband connection, so the upgrade is likely to have a noticeable effect on things like the average UK broadband speed.
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so what happens to the 4Mbit service I pay for? o.0