Virgin Media beefs up ADSL offering

 

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By Barry Collins

Posted on 4 Aug 2009 at 11:22

Virgin Media is boosting the speed of its ADSL services in a bid to woo customers in non-cable areas.

The company has around half of the country covered by its cable network, which is capable of speeds of up to 50Mbits/sec. The other half have until now been offered a maximum of 16Mbits/sec on Virgin's ADSL2+ LLU lines.

Virgin is now boosting the headline speed to 20Mbits/sec for customers within reach of its LLU network. In what it's describing as its "National Broadband Best Speed Promise", Virgin now describes the speeds as "the fastest broadband we can give you up to a superfast 20Mbits/sec" - essentially adding seven more needless words to that weasel "up to" phrase.

However, a Virgin spokesman says that the company "will guarantee to give [ADSL] customers the fastest line we can support" instead of selling them additional speed boosts (as it did previously), and that the customer's actual line speed will be made clear at the point of sale.

For the first time, Virgin is also offering its ADSL customers the option to rent their phone line from the company, instead of BT.

That means customers can get an up to 20Mbits/sec connection with "unlimited" downloads for £26 per month, including the line rental.