UK based broadband provider Virgin Media has successfully trialled cable broadband speeds of up to 1.5Gb, which is touted to be 240 times faster than the national average.
Users around London’s Old Street, an area known as ‘Silicon Roundabout’, including by members at TechHub, a community and workspace for technology entrepreneurs are getting broadband speeds of up to 1.5Gb by using Virgin Media’s cable network.
The 1.5Gb download and 150Mb upload trial uses the same infrastructure and technology as Virgin Media uses to provide residential customers with speeds of up to 100Mb, already being rolled out to over half of all UK homes.
Virgin Media executive director of broadband Jon James said as people are simultaneously connecting more gadgets to the internet and doing more online than ever before, we wanted to explore what our unique fibre optic network is capable of.
"At speeds of up to 1.5Gb, Virgin Media is delivering some of the fastest broadband in the world and, thanks to our ongoing investment, we’re able to anticipate and lead the way in meeting growing demand for bandwidth as future services and applications come online," James said.
TechHub co-founder and CEO Elizabeth Varley said superfast broadband is critical to continued innovation across the UK and Virgin Media’s 1.5Gb trial is a great opportunity to explore the future potential.
Other businesses taking part in Virgin Media’s 1.5Gb trial include BespokeBanter.com, an online media outfit, and soproductions.tv, a video production company.
These superfast speeds are possible because of the £13 billion of private investment made by Virgin Media which means that every cable home is connected to a state-of-the-art fibre optic network by a high-grade coaxial line.
The DOCSIS2 technology used throughout Virgin Media’s network provides a future-proofed platform with theoretically near infinite capacity.
DOCSIS 3.0, the current standard used throughout Virgin Media’s network, also incorporates support for Internet Protocol version 6 (IPv6).
