By Natasha Lomas, 8 May 2009 13:14
NEWS
Broadband speed freaks take note: cable broadband purveyor Virgin Media has upped the ante by announcing a trial of 200Mbps broadband - four times faster than its current fastest fat pipe service.
The company said it will use the trial to assess the commercial viability of deploying a 200Mbps service in the UK - and to investigate the kind of applications consumers could use regularly in such a speedy future.
Around 100 'pilot customers' will eventually be involved in the trial, which started last week in Ashford, Kent and will run for at least six months. The ISP claims it is the fastest implementation of DOCSIS3 technology (Data Over Cable Service Interface Specification) in the world - faster even than cable services in Japan and the US which have 160Mbps and 101Mbps respectively.
Possible next-gen broadband apps could include HD and 3D TV entertainment services, remote delivery of IT support to home users, videoconferencing and home surveillance, according to the ISP.
At the end of last year Virgin launched its current fastest 50Mbps service - still the fastest consumer broadband service available in the UK. However BT has been making noise on the speed front - pledging to roll out fibre to 10 million homes by 2012, enabling speeds of up to 100Mbps and opening up the possibility that Virgin could be lose its headline-speed crown.
Ian Fogg, principal analyst at Forrester Research, told silicon.com that while he doesn't believe Virgin will be offering a commercial 200Mbps service anytime soon the company is nevertheless firing "a shot across the bows" of DSL providers to let them know it has more to offer.
"Virgin Media is clearly positioning around the speed of its broadband service and they're looking to make hay while the speeds of their rivals using DSL are limited by the copper telephone line," said Fogg.
"Virgin Media are shaking up the UK broadband market. They're looking to increase [consumer] dissatisfaction with speed."
But the analyst said the trial is not just about posturing: "There's a genuine piece of work to be done here," he said, adding: "It's all very well testing something in the lab but actually giving even a small number of consumers this service into their homes will deliver different information, different feedback."
One area where the trial could well shine a light in Fogg's view are on "bottlenecks" lurking elsewhere in the network.
"You get a point where the web servers, the general speed of the internet becomes the bottleneck - not the connection into someone's house. And I would expect that 200Mbps would reveal those bottlenecks elsewhere," he said.
"How fast a particular service is depends on all sorts of things - the speed of the web server to deliver the webpage, the speed of the connection of that web server onto the internet, the connection across the internet, the connection through that internet service provider's network and then there's the connection into the houseÂ… and of course there's the connection inside the house."
Fogg added that wi-fi routers can't currently support 200Mbps - so wireless home networks would also constrain users' speed dreams.
Comments
There are 7 comments. Join the discussion
1. anonymous
Virgin miss the point again
1.Upload speed needs to increase
2.Fixed not sticky IPs need to be offered
3.consecutive numbering in IP range needs to be offered
But none of the above will happen because this will impact leased line business, but they would pick up customers (SME) or branch office, home workers that would even it out.
2. anonymous
200Mbps? How about being use my current 10Mbps 24 hours a day without throttling Virgin?
3. Julian Nicholls
I'm sure it's lovely to have 200Mbps broadband, but when are they going to offer me even 3Mbps, or in fact, in the case of Virgin, anything at all?
I am beyond the chosen reach of all the cable companies, but living off a main road, not a dirt track. My BT line gives me a fairly stable 2Mbps, so I don't really have cause to complain.
However, it is annoying when the companies trumpet their ever-increasing best speeds without ever mentioning the people who they don't even bother with.
4. Matt H
I'd like to know will Virgin also be increasing the cost to the consumer for super super fast broadband? I currently pay £25 a month for (alledgedly) 10Mbps, however I never actually manage to get 10Mpbs, but I notice that my bill doesn't fluctuate accordingly with the speed!
200Mbps is brilliant, but sort out the basics first ey Virgin? Give us all what we're all already paying for, then maybe I'll be interested in the future developments.
5. anonymous
Virgin keep boasting of speed upgrades, but the real question is when are they going to extend their fibre network to so called "non cabled areas"? that is where the real money is, and the potential to steal customers from BT and Sky.
6. Chris Beaumont
I echo the comments about Virgin throttling their connections. I get 10mbps for about the first gigabyte of download a day, then 2mbps from thereon in.
7. Guy Reynolds
Well I now get a sustained 10Mbps, but only after badgering Virgin into upgrading my cable modem to one that can actually handle 10Mbps as opposed to one that could only handle 6Mbps in short bursts and went into reset mode on large files or streamed data.
It is all very well Virgin trumpeting these increased speeds but if they don't automatically upgrade legacy client side hardware to equipment that is capable of handling the service then there is absolutly no point.