Virgin Media to deliver free broadband boost
Lower tier Virgin Media broadband customers to get faster download speeds for free
Virgin Media is rolling out a free upgrade of its broadband, which the company says will improve internet speeds for more than a million of its users.
According to Virgin, the upgrade, which starts today, doesn’t require any action from customers. The broadband provider will simply send a notification when improvements have been made to an area’s performance.
Exactly what that improvement is will depend on the current state of your broadband. Virgin says more than half a million customers can expect to see their broadband speeds double, and some may even see their speeds increase fivefold.
The boost will mainly affect customers on the lower tiers of Virgin Media’s broadband plans, mostly those with the M50 package, as well as older legacy tiers with even slower download speeds. The company told Expert Reviews that all customers that signed up to the M50 package before 1 December 2019 will benefit.
The boost will mean that these customers are upgraded to the M100 service at no extra cost; a tier that offers an average 108Mbits/sec download speed. The upgrade is focused on bringing weaker areas into line with other parts of the network, then, rather than bettering areas that already have relatively nippy internet speeds.
“We’re starting 2020 with a broadband bang by rewarding our loyal customers with this free speed upgrade so even more people can experience our ultrafast, future-proof connectivity,” said Annie Brooks, executive director of connectivity at Virgin Media, in a statement.
According to a 2019 report from Ofcom, the total median download speed in the UK is 54.2Mbits/sec. On the upper side of this scale, meanwhile, is Virgin’s own Gig1 Fibre package, which launched in 2019 and has average download speeds of 1,104Mbits/sec. So far it’s only available in select locations, though – Southampton, Manchester and Reading, as well as its surrounding areas.
