Virgin Media to roll out 100Mbps fiber broadband to 12.6 million UK homes

Virgin Media announced today that it would begin rolling out 100 megabit per second fiber broadband to 12.6 million homes in the UK.
The 100Mbps connection would be significantly faster than the average broadband connection in the UK, which sits around 4.1Mbps. Virgin’s current 3.8 million fiber broadband customers — who currently have access to speeds between 10Mbps and 50Mbps — will also be able to upgrade to the faster 100Mbps connection by 2011.
Fiber is gaining a reputation as the future of broadband access to the home. Verizon’s FiOS fiber service clocked 2.9 million subscribers in the U.S. as of January 2010, and Google recently announced its own plans to build a 1 gigabit per second fiber network in the U.S. that would serve between 50,000 and 500,000 homes. Virgin’s network is ten times slower, but far more ambitious in terms of users. Virgin competitor British Telecom also recently unveiled its own fiber broadband service, BT Infinity,  that offers speeds of up to 40Mbps.
Praising its fiber network, Virgin Media CEO said:
There is nothing we can’t do with our fibre optic cable network, and the forthcoming launch of our flagship 100Mb service will give our customers the ultimate broadband experience.
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 this service will be a historic moment and will mean the UK will be comparable to other leading broadband nations.
Virgin is testing an even faster 200Mbps fiber service, which it plans to roll out officially sometime in 2012.
Tags: broadband, fiber
Companies: Virgin Media