Virgin Media talking about 200Mbps by 2012

The British broadband war heated up as Virgin Media announced that it could be offering customers 200Mbps connection speeds by 2012.

This is around 40 times faster than the average speed of UK web surfers, the chief executive of the company, Neil Berkett, claims.

The move comes shortly after its rival, BT, announced that it was to spend £1.5 billion on improving its network by 2012, but only to offer speeds of 40 or 60Mbps.

"BT [is] talking about 40Mb in 2012; we have got 50Mb now and by 2012 we would have the technical capability of delivering up to 200Mbps," said Mr Berkett.

He added: "We are leading next generation access in this country."

If delivered, the service will be faster than even the advanced internet markets of Japan and Korea.

Virgin also announced that it had lost 19,500 customers over the three months to the end of June, but had made a profit before financial charges of £333 million.

The company also added a net 54,600 broadband users in the period which, while much lower than that gained by BSkyB and BT, was mainly made up of faster broadband customers.

Posted on: 2008-08-11, in: Broadband

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