Virgin Media has said it will double cable broadband speeds in the UK for free over the next 18 months

The speed boost will begin in February 2012, but take up to 18 months for the upgrade programme to be complete. Upload and ‘fair usage’ limits will be “increased in proportion” to the new headline download speeds.

The move is designed to ensure Virgin Media remains top of the broadband speed tables ahead of UK incumbent BT, which has been pushing its own fibre-optic service branded ‘Infinity’. This currently tops out at 40Mbs but  BT has announced plans to take this up to 100Mbps.

Virgin Media chief executive officer, Neil Berkett said in a statement that “the internet has become an integral part of our social, work and family lives, so we think our customers are going to love this.”

“As people are increasingly doing more online, and getting connected to the internet with lots of different devices, having a fast, reliable broadband service should not be a luxury. We want to make sure that consumers have access to the best value broadband service and that means a superfast connection.”

The move was also welcomed by the UK government and British Prime Minister David Cameron commented: “I welcome this announcement from Virgin Media; it will provide a great boost for the economy and change the way many households, consumers and businesses use the internet. Rolling out superfast broadband across the country is a critical part of our plan to upgrade the UK’s infrastructure and build a new and smarter economy.”

Virgin Media has launched a marketing campaign to promote the speed boost with 100m world record holder Us ain Bolt with the slogan ‘’Keep Up’ with Virgin Media’. However, the company will need to improve its marketing communications after an email gaff to many of its customers over the weekend promised an increase from 100Mb connections to 120Mb, when they were not actually 100Mb customers at all. A second email quickly followed apologising for the error but stating that, “rest assured current Virgin Media cable Broadband customers will be receiving some good news about their Broadband in the next 2 weeks.”

The Broadband MEA conference is taking place on the 25-27th March 2012, at the Westin Mina Seyahi Beach Resort and Marina, Dubai, UAE. Go to the website now to register your interest.

Virgin Media is keeping up its efforts to offer the fastest broadband speeds in the UK

UK cable operator Virgin Media has successfully trialed broadband speeds of 1.5 Gbps in East London using DOCSIS 3.0 technology from Cisco.

Virgin Media achieved the new speeds using Cisco’s (3G60) Broadband Processing Engine, a high-density, cost-effective line card for its flagship uBR10K Universal Broadband Router and Cable Modem Termination System (CMTS).

An important component of Cisco’s complete DOCSIS 3.0 solution, the 3G60 line card enables cable television operators to offer IP video services, and together with the Cisco Universal Broadband Router supports the full set of DOCSIS 3.0 features at scale, including IPv6, and supports advanced features such as dynamic bandwidth sharing.

During a recent demo at the NCTA show in Chicago, Comcast CEO Brian Roberts downloaded an entire season of the TV show 30 Rock (23 full episodes) in about a minute and a half over a real-world production network with 1 Gbps broadband download speeds, using a Cisco CMTS and 3G60 solution.

Virgin Media provides broadband, TV, mobile and fixed telephony services across the UK, and thanks to a multi-billion pound investment in its cable network now offers ultrafast broadband connections to over half of all UK homes, with speeds of up to 100 Mbps currently available to customers. The company has also recently launched a new advanced interactive television service based on TiVo technology.

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Virgin Media in the UK has completed a broadband trial offering 1.5Gbps

Virgin Media, the UK cable broadband operator, announced that it has completed a successful trial delivering speeds of 1.5Gpbs over its existing cable infrastructure. The trial was conducted on a single road in London called Old Street, part of an area that has been dubbed the ‘Silicon Roundabout’ by members of the local tech community known as the ‘TechHub’.

The demontration was just a showcase and will not be a consumer reality anytime soon, but the speeds were achieved by bonding together multiple downstream and upstream channels of Virgin’s DOCSIS 3.0 cable network. Virgin Media’s consumer cable offering currently tops out at 100Mbps, and it recently announced that this was now accessible by 25 per cent of the UK’s population.

The 1.5Gbps speeds are some 240 times the UK’s average broadband speed, which a report from UK regulator Ofcom revealed at being 6.2Mbps during November and December 2010.

To celebrate its high speed achievement the cable company held an event at the TechHub, which was attended by UK Communications Minister Ed Vaizey.

“It is fantastic to see the fastest internet speeds in the world over cable being trialled here in the UK, Vaizey said at the event. “This exciting development will help attract new companies and entrepreneurs to the area, bringing new jobs and growth to this part of the capital. Last year the Prime Minister set out our ambition for London’s East End to become a world-leading technology city to rival Silicon Valley. Developments like Virgin Media’s will help make this ambition a reality.”

Virgin Media was recently told by the UK’s Advertising Standards Authority not to run 10 adverts again after upholding complaints from rivals over the accuracy of claims in the ads. In one ad Virgin claimed that its service was twice as fast as that of rival BT’s but the ASA agreed that this did not take into accounts BT’s faster Infinity service. BT Infinity and Virgin Media’s service are hybrid optical networks – fibre optic to a local cabinet with coaxial and copper from there to the premises.

A UK startup called Hyperoptic recently announced that it would be launching a 1Gbps fibre-to-the-premises service in the UK from September, but has not revealed any details on pricing.

Hong Kong based PCCW's UK subsiadiary could be the first to launch LTE infrastructure in the UK, using refarmed Wimax spectrum

The UK’s incumbent mobile networks could be beaten to the LTE punch by Hong Kong based telecoms company PCCW, according to a report in the Financial Times. The operator is looking to build out an LTE network as early as 2012, the report states, via its British subsidiary UK Broadband. The network would then be made available on a wholesale basis for MVNOs.

“It is the company’s intention to launch a 4G service. We are currently working with our vendors to finalise the equipment offering on our spectrum. And we are finalising our network planning and our business plans,” Nicholas James, chief executive of UK Broadband told the Financial Times.

Last year PCCW picked up all the UK’s Wimax spectrum licenses after a £12.5m cash purchase of Freedom4, operated by the Daisy Group, and plans to use the 3.5GHz and 3.6GHz frequencies for LTE.

The reports states that UK Broadband has been in discussion with Virgin Media, the UK’s largest MVNO. It would be something of a surprise should Virgin launch LTE in the UK first, ahead of networks such as Vodafone, O2, Everything Everywhere and 3. The latter is part of the Hutchison Whampoa conglomerate that is owned by the Li Ka-Shing, the father of PCCW’s owner Richard Li.

The incumbent networks will be able to launch their LTE networks once they have acquired spectrum, with the UK auctions scheduled for early 2013. Recently, O2 was publically critical of Ofcom’s spectrum floor auction limitations, stating that it believed it was illegal under European law.

Virgin's 100Mbps broadband is now in reach of four million UK homes

Virgin Media, the UK’s predominantly cable-based broadband network operator, said that its 100Mbps fibre optic service is now available to four million homes in the country.

The company has connected 100 towns in the UK, and plans to make the service available to its entire network, with a reach of 13 million people, by mid-2012. Virgin Media charges £35 a month for the service when taken with a Virgin phone line, and £45 a month as a stand-alone product.

Virgin Media’s 100Mb service is based on Fibre-to-the-cabinet and offers a 10Mbps upload. It rivals BT’s Infinity service, though this is limited to 40Mbps with upload speeds of 10Mbps. Virgin Media said that all 100Mb subscribers are given a wireless router capable of handling up to 400Mbps wired services, and that it was currently trialling a 200Mbps service.

Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media said in a statement “As data consumption rises and consumers grow increasingly reliant on their broadband service, only Virgin Media’s unique network is primed to cater for the UK’s impending data explosion. With four million homes now able to ‘get in the fast lane’ with our 100Mb service, the UK is racing up the broadband league tables and we’re delighted to be playing the leading role in boosting the UK’s digital infrastructure.”

According to Informa WBIS statistics, Virgin Media is the second largest ISP in the UK with over 4.3 million customers, behind BT with 5.8 million and just ahead of TalkTalk, that has just under 4.2 million.

BT offers free broadband upgrade

UK fixed line incumbent BT is to double the headline broadband speeds for millions of consumers and businesses with a free upgrade, the company announced this week.

As part of the upgrade to BT’s 21CN platform, faster speeds will initially be available from 549 telephone exchanges in the UK, serving more than 10 million homes and businesses.

BT Retail broadband customers already get speeds of up to 8Mbps, and the upgrade plan will see consumers and business in certain areas receive speeds of up to 20Mbps at no extra cost.

The carrier said that around 60,000 consumers are already getting faster speeds through a BT trial and the upgrade to ADSL 2+ will be available to other homes in the summer.

BT is also setting out to push rich media internet services by giving away a ‘broadband accelerator,’ which claims to improve performance around the home by eliminating electrical interference in telephone extension wiring.

In a separate move, BT Retail is also trialling up to 40Mbps fibre-based broadband in Whitchurch, South Wales and Muswell Hill, London this summer.

The move should allow BT to better compete with cable-based rival Virgin Media, which rolled out 50Mbps connectivity to consumers late last year.

With faster speeds, the idea is that customers will be able to do such things as interactive gaming, download online video quickly and watch HDTV, simultaneously, via multiple devices (PC and TV) in the home.

This is according to analysts at Frost & Sullivan, which warned Thursday that the reduction in consumption is changing the adoption and acceptance of new services.

Towards the end of last year service providers have shown evidence of trimming down, with Vodafone and Telecom Italia announcing mid term cost reductions of £1bn and Eur2bn respectively, while BT and Virgin Media announced job cuts of 10,000 and 2,200 respectively.

According to Saverio Romeo, Frost & Sullivan industry analyst, “The telecommunications sector will likely be hit by the recession in two main ways. First, due to the lack of credit in the global economy, investments will fall in the beginning of 2009. Particularly, investments related to incredibly costly projects such as acquisitions, will feel this drop intensely. Second, consumption will fall as people move away from wants and focus on their needs. This will reduce the uptake of innovative services.”

Romeo believes that the key to surviving the credit crunch is being able to design lower cost and disruptive business models as an effective way to attract consumers. Here the analyst highlights the combination of existing technologies with new business models to create low cost products and services, such as the combination of mobile content with forms of marketing and advertising.

But in order to develop these more attractive packages, service providers will need to partner with players of different expertise, Romeo said.

Frost & Sullivan notes that from a public sector perspective, national governments view the telecommunications sector as a critical route to overcome the economic crisis, with the European Economic Recovery Plan placing a huge amount of importance on broadband infrastructure and sustainable telecommunications. The European Union has committed to an immediate investment of Eur200bn to implement ‘public-friendly’ legislation as well as development of high speed internet for all with the aim of achieving 100 per cent broadband coverage across the EU by the end of 2010.

Yet even so, the operators are following a strategy of pulling the purse strings tight through cut costs, reduced investments and reigned in cash flows, as well as looking to identify opportunities to build out of the recession. “We believe that innovation should remain at the core of economic and industrial policies. We also believe that the same networks that are spreading the crisis can also be the ones to promote innovation in a collaborative and open manner; stimulating economic growth,” said Romeo.

Virgin Media is the first ISP in the UK to offer a “super fast” residential broadband service of 50Mbps.

Using FTTC (fibre-to-the-cabinet) technology and then a high-speed copper link to the home, the service is not cheap: it is £51 per month, although this can be reduced to £35 if Virgin Media’s broadband users opt for a Virgin phone line, which costs £11 per month.

Virgin Media has been conducting trials of the service during summer 2008 and is aiming to roll out the 50Mbps service across its cable network - which covers around half the UK – over the next six months. If all goes to plan, the broadband service should reach 12.6 million UK households by summer 2009.

Virgin Media has said it has already invested £1.5bn in laying fibre as far as the street.

With faster speeds, the idea is that customers will be able to do such things as interactive gaming, download online video quickly and watch HDTV, simultaneously, via multiple devices (PC and TV) in the home.

“This service will transform the way people interact and entertain themselves online,” Virgin Media chief executive Neil Berkett said in a statement.

Virgin Media’s consumer broadband service is, on average, nine times faster than what is available in the UK today.

UK service providers have started a price war over mobile broadband, after one carrier claimed that 10 per cent of users are mis-sold packages.

On Friday, Telefonica’s UK operation, O2 UK, announced that research it had carried out revealed that one in ten mobile broadband users feel they were mis-sold on what it offered.

The main quibbles are the cost of the service, with nearly a third of users complaining that the ongoing cost was higher than expected. Around 20 per cent felt misled by coverage claims, and half wanted wifi included as standard.

As a result, O2 has overhauled its own mobile broadband packages, and has launched a more accurate coverage checker, and included a 50 day ‘Happiness Guarantee’ as standard. Also, international roaming will no longer be automatically enabled for all O2 mobile broadband customers, in a bid to prevent bill shock when overseas.

The carrier is reducing the price of its core Mobile Broadband tariffs, with the 3GB package now costing £15 per month, with customers purchasing an 18 month or 24 month contract receiving a free USB modem, which costs £99.99 on a rolling monthly contract.

For heavy users, O2 is introducing a 10GB package for £30 per month on a two year tariff.

O2 also offers all its customers unlimited wifi through any of the 6,100 hotspots it has access to through a partnership with The Cloud.

By way of a response, UK quad play operator, Virgin Media, made its own Mobile Broadband offering more attractive on Monday. For existing and new subscribers to its XL and L fixed broadband packages, customers will be able to get mobile broadband for £5 per month. Subscribers to Virgin Media’s other packages will need to pay £10.

Virgin’s mobile network piggybacks on T-Mobile UK’s network, and the new package offers 1GB of data per month on a 12 month contract. Usage over the allowance is charged at £0.0146 per MB. The USB modem, in dongle form, costs £25.

Virgin Media only launched its first ever Mobile Broadband offer last month, adding another string to a bow, which already includes cable broadband, fixed line telephony, IPTV, and mobile services.

Meanwhile, for enterprise users, 3 Business, the new small business division of mobile operator 3 UK, on Monday launches two new offers to give small businesses more cost effective access to mobile broadband.

The bundles, called Broadband 5GB and Broadband 15 GB, increase in bundle data allowance from 3GB and 7GB to 5GB and 15GB respectively. 3 Business also allows any small business buying an 18 or 24 month mobile broadband or voice package to buy a second mobile broadband plan at half price. Existing customers will get 50 per cent off line rental for the new plan.

The new packages are also designed to be used in conjunction with the recently launched D100 mobile broadband router, which allows multiple users to share a single mobile broadband connection when used in conjunction with a dongle.

UK-based cable carrier Virgin Media showed how convergence is done on Wednesday as it unveiled its first ever Mobile Broadband offer.

The new service adds another string to Virgin’s bow, which already includes cable broadband, fixed line telephony, IPTV, and mobile services via the Virgin Mobile MVNO.

Mobile Broadband from Virgin Media is available on an 18 month contract and comes with a free USB dongle and a 3GB monthly data cap for £15 per month. Outside the allowance, data is charged at £15 per GB and Virgin reckons speeds of up to 3.6Mbps are achievable.

Virgin’s offering puts it on a par with 3 UK, which made waves with its own mobile broadband offerings.

Speaking of which, another member of the 3 Group, 3 Italy, is giving web giant Yahoo a leg up into the mobile market. This week the duo launched Yahoo! Internet Key, which is a co-branded USB stick, giving access to 3′s mobile network.

Under this deal, Yahoo is offering 10GB of traffic for Eur19 per month and speeds of up to 7.2Mbps. The dongle is free on a 23 month contract.