Virgin drops 50Mbits/sec broadband to £28

 

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By Stuart Turton

Posted on 15 Jul 2009 at 11:51

Virgin Media is knocking the price of its 50Mbits/sec broadband service down to £28 per month.

The £28 offer will be available to new and existing customers who take a phone line with the service from 1 September. Those that want the broadband on its own will be paying £38.

Virgin says the price cuts are due to the completion of its DOCSIS 3 network, which triples the bandwith available to the company. "The synergies and cost efficiencies of completing work on the entire network means we can pass these savings onto our customers," a Virgin spokesperson claims. "It's not an introductory offer or anything like that."

Virgin Media says that its 50Mbits/sec service is available to around 12 million UK customers, and the price drop looks set to put pressure on BT, which is rolling out its 40Mbits/sec service to 40% of the country.

Alongside the price drop, Virgin also announced that it would be trialling a 10Mbits/sec upload service in the North East and Midlands area with the aim of exploring the public's appetite for "video conferencing, multiplayer gaming and home working."

Virgin was unable to confirm how many people will be involved in this trial, or the specific towns that will be involved.

It's also launching a Virgin-branded netbook assembled by CMS, the company which manufactures the netbooks for Zoostorm. Dubbed the "Freedom" it will be available in Red and Black and is thankfully free of any other George Michael references.

The specification is fairly standard with a 10in screen complemented by a 1.60 GHz Intel Atom N270, 1GB RAM and a 120GB hard disk. The netbook will be available for free on a two-year broadband bundle.