Virgin Media brings fastest fibre broadband to thousands more homes: are YOU on the list?
Virgin Media is bringing its supercharged gigabit broadband speed to Wales for the first time. Hundreds of thousands of homes across Cardiff and South Wales will now benefit from average speeds of 1,140Mbps. That’s around 18 times faster than the average connection speeds across the UK. With the new broadband speeds coming to Wales, Virgin Media has now switched on gigabit speed in all four of the UK’s capital cities.
As millions of us continue to work, study and socialise from home, Britain’s average broadband speeds have been thrown into the limelight. Britain already has some of the worst average download speeds in mainland Europe, something Prime Minister Boris Johnson had pledged to fix – until the £5 billion war chest set aside to upgrade the infrastructure shrunk to £2 billion earlier this month.
The new target set by the Government is to bring gigabit speeds to a minimum of 85 percent of all UK premises by 2025. To date, Virgin Media has switched on gigabit connectivity to more than 7 million homes, making it the UK’s largest gigabit provider, with a plan to bring these next-generation speeds to its entire network by the end of 2021. As a result, Virgin Media will single-handedly contribute almost two-thirds of the Government’s minimum broadband ambition four years ahead of the target.
While a gigabit-capable connection isn’t strictly necessary right now. For comparison, Netflix suggests a minimum of 5Mbps for High Definition or 25Mbps for Ultra HD video. So, you can imagine how many simultaneous Ultra HD streams can be running in your home before you notice a hint of a stutter or buffering (for the record, it’s 45 simultaneous streams). However, these supercharged speeds will be useful when the next-generation of technology arrives, like 8K streaming, Augmented Reality (AR) and Virtual Reality (VR) apps, video game streaming, or downloads for the latest generation of consoles, like hefty PS5 game updates and more.
And given that broadband data use increases tenfold every seven years or so, the arrival of these innovative technologies will arrive sooner rather than later.
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