Virgin Media to launch 50MB broadband

[DBloke]

Christ
Thats fast for the UK
Most ive seen in my area are 8meg

http://www.gamesindustry.biz/content_page.php?aid=32493

Virgin Media has announced that UK trials of 50MB broadband services in Ashford, Folkestone and Dover have been successful, and that the company will now begin to offer it to a wider customer base by the end of 2008.
Additionally the company will upgrade existing customers on its 'L' package for free, more than doubling their basic broadband line speed.
"We're moving everybody from the 4MB service to the 10MB service from February onwards, and this will help us to achieve better results that competing ADSL options," a spokesperson told GamesIndustry.biz.
ADSL lines currently have a general limit of 8MB and that base speed can degrade based on a customer's distance from the local exchange, while the technology used by Virgin Media could potentially yield speeds of up to 150MB – although the company has no plans to trial those kinds of speeds at this point.
The increasing speeds of broadband connections has led to a boom in online gaming services, enabling the growth of huge subscriber bases for games such as World of Warcraft and other MMOs.
Virgin Media's new 50MB service is also aimed at enabling a more widespread use of IPTV, and the existing trial demonstrated the potential for offering high definition television programmes across an internet connection, rather than via cable or satellite.
Internet service providers have come under attack from some users claiming that speeds advertised are not always delivered, but Virgin Media denies claims that its users are affected by these problems.
"We do have a traffic management system set up, but it only runs for five hours per day, and only affects around 3 per cent of our users.
"We don't restrict speeds for anybody based on specific activities, such as peer-to-peer network usage, and there are no speed caps."
The spokesperson also pointed out that some web sites that purport to measure the speed of a user's internet connection often aren't able to reflect the true performance of the line, and can often lead to confusion on the part of consumers.

Berin in mind most companys say they offer fast speeds and yet tend to give lower speeds (my mums one of these it says 2mb but shes getin dail up speed when it works)

 

[FRuMMaGe]

Nice.

Very nice.

 

[Clarke]

Mb not MB.

 

[Gaz]

there 24mb service sucks as it is, doubt anyone would actually get 50Mb

 

[anthonybest1]

i'm with VM and i have 10Mb and i will be getting 50Mb

 

[261311]

I believe OC-768 has a speed of something like 40Gb/s but it's not retail, way too expensive.

Cool article, something of that speed probably won't be affordable though, maybe a thing where you save for a month or so and order that, do all your downloading/ heavy surfing and go back to your old provider.