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- guardian.co.uk, Friday August 8 2008 00.01 BST
- The Guardian, Friday August 8 2008
Virgin Media could be offering customers broadband at up to 200Mb per second by 2012, roughly 40 times faster than the average speed currently enjoyed by British web surfers, according to the cable company's chief executive, Neil Berkett.
Dramatically increasing the speed available over its network would also give Virgin Media a lead over bitter rival BT, which is spending £1.5bn on improving its network so it can offer 40Mb to 60Mb per second to 10m British homes in time for the London Olympic.
Berkett's prediction came as Virgin Media announced it lost a total of 19,500 customers over the three months to end June. Analysts were cheered, however, by the company's success in generating a profit before financial charges of £333m, up from £315m last year, and persuading 53% of its 4.7 million customers to sign up to a so-called "triple play" of television, broadband and home phone. Virgin Media added a net 54,600 broadband users during the three months, well below the 200,000 secured by BSkyB and the 103,000 that BT gained in the same period. But Berkett said the vast majority of those new customers signed up for its fastest broadband service, currently at 20Mb and Virgin Media wants to get even faster to differentiate itself from the competition. It is already rolling out 50Mb and, with plans to switch off its analogue TV service in the next two years, which will free up capacity, speeds will increase.
"BT are talking about 40Mb in 2012; we have got 50Mb now and by 2012 we would have the technical capability of delivering up to 200 Mb per second. We are leading next generation access in this country," he said. Such a service would be faster than anything available in the most advanced internet access markets of Japan and Korea and well above the current average UK speed which Ofcom estimates at 4.6Mb.
Faster speeds may also help kickstart a residential broadband market that has slowed as homeowners rein in spending and opt for cheaper broadband services.
