Your move BT
There's a nice little arms race going on between Virgin Media and BT over broadband speeds, and us consumers should be the beneficiaries.
Last month BT announced price cuts designed specifically to undercut Virgin at the higher speeds. With Virgin's top services offering ‘up to' 50 Mbps download speeds, and BT's only 40, BT has to rely on pricing and other enticements to lure end-users to its products.
Now Virgin has announced it will begin the roll-out of its 100 Mbps service by the end of this year, which will mean its flagship service offers more than double the speed of BT's best effort.
"There is nothing we can't do with our fibre optic cable network, and the upcoming launch of our flagship 100Mb service will give our customers the ultimate broadband experience," boasted Virgin Media's CEO, Neil Berkett.
"Just as we led the way by launching the UK's first ever next generation service, we want to keep giving our customers the very best broadband available, by investing in technological innovation and transforming the experience they have when they are online. The launch of Virgin Media's 100Mb service will be a historic moment and will mean the UK will be comparable to other leading broadband nations."
Virgin has put BT in an awkward spot here. At the end of last year BT was beating its chest and saying is should be able to get 40 Mbps to the majority of the population by the middle of 2012, as long as it gets a nice bit of public money to help it along. Now Virgin looks like delivering far greater bandwidth, far sooner, and without tax-payer assistance.
We look forward to seeing how BT goes about regaining the initiative after this announcement. Especially since Virgin has announced it is expanding its 200 Mbps pilot too.
