Virgin Media begins testing 1.5Gb broadband - World's fastest.

Lord-Jaffa · 21 Apr 2011 at 18:18

I wish they would cable up exisiting areas first, they could connect thousands of homes very easily, which would be more beneficial than 1.5gb!

Brumboy · 21 Apr 2011 at 21:37

Why don't they spend the money and time and get Virgin Cable to all the area's that can't get it right now. A friend lives about a mile from me and can get 50MB Virgin Media broadband and I'm stuck with 5.5MB ADSL2+ broadband! So not far!

But still, that's insane, being able to download HD films in less than a minute? A dream for the people with good home cinema systems!

Maybe one day I can get Virgin Media broadband..

pieterclassens · 22 Apr 2011 at 15:58

I love my 50mb VM BB. I'm all for Superfast BB!

BUT .........

At what point does Superfast become Supersilly?

Just wondering.

Cheers,

PC

Dist · 22 Apr 2011 at 16:11

I think this will be great if these new broadband speeds means new uses. For example with super fast broadband like that I would want all my TV channels to be accessible over IP, to all devices in my house. I want the upload speed to allow me to back up all of my data securely to the cloud. These are the sort of new things that can be done with a super fast connection that is just not that plausable with the current connections.

apple_man77 · 22 Apr 2011 at 16:24

I live in a 13 house cul - de - sac and can't get VM even though I get a weekly leaflet through the door telling me the great benefits of VM!!

The street at the top of ours is able to receive VM which is pretty annoying. I would really like to go with VM as I've only seen and heard good things about them from friends and family, discounting what people say on forums.

So spending the money on improving there coverage ok the country would be much better for me. What every day person needs more than 50mb/s??

Rainmaker · 22 Apr 2011 at 17:05

apple_man77 said:
What every day person needs more than 50mb/s??

While I feel your pain in not having access to it (we moved house to an area specifically to have access to VM lol), your rhetorical question is a little disingenuous. Who needs more than 512K? Who needs more than dial-up?

Once the capability is there, products and services naturally evolve to utilise it.

apple_man77 · 22 Apr 2011 at 17:16

I do agree with you totally, but surely getting a 95% + service would be better than giving a 20% share super fast BB?

Rainmaker · 22 Apr 2011 at 17:22

apple_man77 said:
I do agree with you totally, but surely getting a 95% + service would be better than giving a 20% share super fast BB?

Unfortunately VM are a company not a social action group. But I do agree with your sentiment entirely. EDIT: To clarify I'm saying it's easy to milk money out of existing infrastructure compared to paying to lay more. That's how the companies went belly up to start with in the old NTL/Telewest days. Laying cable costs a LOT of money.

Robert · 22 Apr 2011 at 17:28

Have a perfectly awesome 50mbit connection here and whilst I understand that people have issues with Virgin - not everybody does.

I also understand that Virgin aren't about to upgrade their network to give everyone full uncontested speeds.

Every telco has issues...I'm just amazed that some of you think otherwise.

Add to the fact that this is a test...you know?

ChrisJSY · 22 Apr 2011 at 23:41

Hardly world's fastest.

Robert · 23 Apr 2011 at 09:30

ChrisJSY said:
Hardly world's fastest.

I'm guessing in the specific context of the article it probably is...though not if you're looking at a 40Gb backhaul or something.

ChrisJSY · 23 Apr 2011 at 12:48

Robert said:
I'm guessing in the specific context of the article it probably is...though not if you're looking at a 40Gb backhaul or something.

I apologise, but it's hard for me to see where they are really going with the article, if it's directed at residential users or business. Business wise, no... sitting on a 100Gb line, 1Gb at the switch(1 day left

) and my hard-drive can't even write quick enough.

It's at the point where it's hard to find locations that can use the full potential, even then the average user won't be able to handle data at anything higher, let alone another half a Gb in bandwidth

Saltank · 23 Apr 2011 at 14:18

I could sure use 150Mbit upload for Carbonite online back up

DarkBahamut · 23 Apr 2011 at 23:03

ChrisJSY said:
I apologise, but it's hard for me to see where they are really going with the article, if it's directed at residential users or business. Business wise, no... sitting on a 100Gb line, 1Gb at the switch(1 day left ) and my hard-drive can't even write quick enough.

It's at the point where it's hard to find locations that can use the full potential, even then the average user won't be able to handle data at anything higher, let alone another half a Gb in bandwidth

I'd assume it's direct at home users? They do say 'Worlds fastest cable connection' which probably is true. Your works 100Gbit line won't be on a cable network with coax termination?

Of course 1.5Gbit wouldn't be all that useful now, but then again i remember using my 512Kbps cable connection 11 years ago and looking at T1 connections of 1.5Mbit down/up and wondering who on earth would need a connection that fast

.

heezay · 23 Apr 2011 at 23:26

Probably has no relevance, but does the fact of the government are providing 18 million of government investment to organisations and instituions to support growth and innovation in the technology area for R&D have anything to do with this? As they have stated the importance where UK has fallen behind to create competitivness? Not sure if Virgin would be part of this technology advancement project??

Dokinator · 23 Apr 2011 at 23:34

Can give it to me for free if they want, hint hint XD

adaswani · 24 Apr 2011 at 02:46

I can't even get virgin fiber optics because its against some regulation to drill through more then 4 floors of flats in central London

Zarf · 24 Apr 2011 at 03:55

heezay said:
Probably has no relevance, but does the fact of the government are providing 18 million of government investment to organisations and instituions to support growth and innovation in the technology area for R&D have anything to do with this? As they have stated the importance where UK has fallen behind to create competitivness? Not sure if Virgin would be part of this technology advancement project??

They'd probably have been doing it anyway, It's going to be targeted at businesses and should let them undercut the leased line competition significantly. Plenty of places are crying out for leased line speeds without the need to pay for 1:1 contention monthly rates. Plus lots of places will already be on the Co-Ax network which saves weeks of time and tens of thousands in install costs.

Gunslinger · 24 Apr 2011 at 13:46

Ziddy1232 said:
http://pressoffice.virginmedia.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=205406&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1552055&highlight=

In my opinion, they should perfect the services they have now rather than testing new ones.

agreed ! - speed is useless if crippled by "traffic shaping/management" it just goes to show how hypocritical they are, they whine about heavy users, whilst trying to brag aboutt he fastest connection ever

well, a fast connection is useless if you can only use it for an hour a day before your throttled

They'd probably have been doing it anyway, It's going to be targeted at businesses and should let them undercut the leased line competition significantly.

and we the home users would suffer even more capping and crippling because they have to give priority to the business users, because their network can only cope with so much !

Tute · 24 Apr 2011 at 15:17

Can OFCOM not stop them doing this until they clear up the problems with the current customers?

My Mum is on 10MBit and that's fine but a friend of mine in Plymouth is on 20MBit and it's just a joke - he can use MSN but Steam won't connect, downloads are in the BYTES/sec, and VM have been "investigating" for a good 6-8 MONTHS now.