Virgin Media boosts broadband for free... again*

Virgin Media today announced another free upgrade for its fibre optic broadband customers, injecting an ‘adrenaline shot’ of performance to boost upload speeds which will enable Virgin Media customers to share large files such as photos and videos at an even faster rate. The upgrade has started to roll out and will automatically be applied to customers across the country on its up to 10Mb, up to 20Mb and up to 50Mb services. Unlike some of its competitors’ ‘free’ upgrades, customers will be able to take advantage of these new upload speeds as soon as their area is enabled, without the need to sign up or re-contract.

Powered by Virgin Media’s unique next generation broadband network, increased upload speeds will enable customers to upload video to sites such as YouTube or Facebook in ultra-quick time or send files more swiftly to online backup services such as free Virgin Media’s VStuff service. Faster upload speeds also allow customers do more at once, such as hosting larger online multiplayer games on popular games consoles, as well as provide greater capacity for family members to send, share, poke and tweet at the same time with minimal delay.

Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media said: “We’re once again pushing the boundaries of UK broadband with a true next generation broadband service that vastly outperforms struggling DSL-based services. With the huge growth in social networks these new upload speeds will help Virgin Media customers share their most precious moments and keep up with what friends and families are up to, whether it’s uploading to YouTube or even hosting a live videochat to show off baby’s first steps in high-definition.”

As part of the roll-out and in order to ensure fair usage of available capacity Virgin Media will be rolling out a new traffic management system at peak times, designed to adapt to network conditions to ensure time-sensitive and interactive uses – such as surfing or streaming high-definition video – remain unhindered by non-time-sensitive traffic such as peer-to-peer and newsgroup activity, reducing the possibility of annoying buffering that can occur when trying to watch TV online at peak times. Using smart network monitoring, the system will reserve at least 75 per cent of network resources for time-sensitive traffic, adjusting dynamically to overall network usage to ensure consistent performance for more customers.**

In addition, as the increased upstream speeds roll-out to customers, Virgin Media is also increasing its peak time allowances for data transfer to ensure more customers can get the most out of their superfast broadband service. On a daily basis this traffic management system improves the performance that over 95 per cent of customers receive, whilst helping to minimise the negative effect the five percent of heaviest users have by temporarily slowing down their speeds, ensuring a fair share of network resources during the busiest times. For customers on its premium up to 50Mb service, this temporary slowdown will only operate on upload speeds and an extremely heavy user will see this reduce from up to 5Mb to up to 1.75Mb, above its pre-upgrade level of 1.5Mb. Despite these peak time traffic management measures, Virgin Media fibre optic broadband remains without monthly usage limits.

For further information on making the most of Virgin Media’s new upload speeds head to http://www.virginmedia.com/fasteruploads