Broadband speeds of 150Mbps looked at by Virgin Media

It has been announced that speeds of 100 to 150Mbps will be offer as much as two years before a rival fibre network can be built by its rivals BT.

Neil Berkett, the chief executive of Virgin Media recently said “We have an opportunity with our network to provide significantly higher speeds.”

Early 2010 was the date set for the first cities in the UK to get a fibre network from BT with 2012 being given as the date for its completion.

With BT pledging that speeds from this network to reach speed of 40 to 60Mbps Virgin are already offering its customer broadband speeds that top 50Mbps.

The capability of the fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) network from Virgin Media offered support of as much as 200Mbps but Mr Berkett said that it was a “function of timing” to roll out these higher speeds.

Mr Berkett added “When we look at the market I don’t see us getting the returns right now for 100 or 150Mbps. As we work with application providers, and content providers… there will be a natural point where we upgrade from 10, 20 and 50Mbps to something more. If BT were to meet the time frame they have suggested – of finishing by 2012 – I would see us as having much, much faster upstream speed, running at a minimum of 100Mbps downstream and possibly more. You can see a real opportunity there.”

The beginning of the rollout of the super fast broadband speed by Virgin next year is something Mr Berkett said would be no great surprise.

In the next 9 to 12 months BT has said that 29 of it exchanges throughout the country will see the deployment of FTTC technology. Speeds of up to 40Mbps or possibly even 60Mbps will be offered to 500 000 businesses and homes by this network.

Access to this fibre networks will be opened up to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) on a wholesale basis who will then be able to offer their customers various broadband packages in areas like Cardiff, Greater Manchester, London, Glasgow, Belfast and Edinburgh.