Broadband users have been offered Britain's fastest-ever connection by Virgin Media, the cable company ? but the new service could cost you up to �51 a month.This is the price for the ultra-fast, 50 megabit per second (Mb/s) connection if it is not bundled with other services. It costs �35 a month for customers who also have a Virgin phone line.
Virgin's new service will be nine times the speed of average broadband in Britain, allowing users to download video and online television faster than ever before, the company said. Be Broadband, a rival company owned by O2, currently offers a 24Mb facility, with Virgin's existing top speed being 20Mb/s.
Around 1.3m homes in parts of Scotland, the Midlands and south London will be able to sign up for the 50Mb/s service this month, Virgin said, and it will be available to all 12.6m homes on the company's fibre optic network by next summer.
Users will be able to download an entire music album in as little as 11 seconds, a TV show in a minute and a movie in as little as 3.5 minutes.
The new service may seem dizzyingly fast but in Japan and Korea 50Mb/s is standard and one German provider is testing a 200Mb/s service, said Chris Williams of Simplify Digital, an independent advice service on digital products.
Ceri Stanaway, Which? magazine's broadband expert, said: "What we always say is that if you are emailing or surfing all you really need is 2Mb/s. But speeds might become more important if people start watching more television online. It is as much about what might happen in the future as well as what you need now."
Virgin's upgraded network will mean "significant improvements" to the service received by all its broadband customers, the company said.
Source: Telegraph
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