Virgin Media boosts XL broadband to 30Mbps

Virgin Media is going all-out to promote its broadband service as the best in the UK with a free upgrade for XL subscribers from 20Mbit/s to 30Mbit/s.

This marks a 50 per cent increase of the ‘up to’ speed for free (well, provided you pat the one-off upgrade fee of £30, which covers the new SuperHub wireless router). As a trade off to the upgrade, Virgin Media is cutting the monthly cost of the service from £20 a month to £18.50 a month, provided you take a phone line for £12.24 a month.

Upload speeds are 3Mbit/s, while the data allowance is unlimited. It makes Virgin Media slightly cheaper than BT’s closest Infinity broadband service (Option 1), which has a download speed of 40Mbit/s.

As Infinity uses fibre to the exchange and copper to the home using VDSL, Virgin Media claims that its service, which uses fibre to the home, is better. It has even gone so far as to claim that the new XL package “is expected to give customers faster average speeds than BT Infinity”.

Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media said, “As consumers continually demand more and more from their broadband, the unique power of our next-generation network means that we’re able to turn up the dial to meet their needs.”

The faster speeds are available now to new and existing customers, with 13 million UK homes covered by the Virgin Media network.