75% of new Virgin customers on 10Mbits/sec or faster

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 6 May 2009 at 08:47

Virgin Media's latest financial report has exposed the cable company's massive speed advantage over ADSL, with three quarters of new customers enjoying connection speeds of 10Mbits/sec or greater.

Virgin offers the fastest mainstream broadband connections in the country, with speeds of up to 50Mbit/sec. ADSL, by comparison, currently offers a maximum of 22Mbits/sec over a single line.

Virgin claims more than a third of its customers are now on lines with connection speeds of 10Mbits/sec or more, and that figure will continue to rise as the network is upgraded.

"From May 2009, we plan to begin upgrading our 2.4m existing 2Mbits/sec customers to our 10Mbits/sec service," the company's financial report claims.

"We continue to roll out availability of our 50Mbits/sec service which we expect to be available to our entire broadband-capable network during the third quarter of 2009."

The cable firm's speed advantage appears to be helping it retain customers, with Virgin reporting a record low churn rate of 1.1%.

The company's also squeezing more money out of its customers, with average revenue per user rising to £42.29 per month, up from £41.95 a year ago.

The increased revenue helped the company post an operating income of £13m for Q1 2009. The company was making a £2m loss in the same period last year.