BT Infinity: Virgin Media’s response

With BT Infinity just around the corner, Virgin Media is eyeing up the new kid encroaching on it’s cable turf and claims that the UK’s leading broadband provider is still playing catch-up.

“We’re not sure why people in the UK would want to wait for BT’s 40Mb service which hasn’t launched yet, when they can already get Virgin Media’s great value 50Mb service,” a Virgin Media spokesperson said in a statement today.

“Last summer we completed the roll-out of our next generation service to 12.5 million homes and people throughout the country are already enjoying all the fantastic things you can do online with the UK’s fastest broadband service. We’ve been saying for years that fibre optic broadband is the future.”

Infinity is a real step forwards for BT, who has until now, solely relied on the old phone lines to deliver fixed-line broadband. However Virgin Media has been in the cable game for longer and, it has to be said, has a bit of an edge on the newcomer.

First of all the most obvious difference is speed. There was much fanfare in December 2008 when Virgin Media launched it’s premium XXL service which famously promises top speeds of up to 50Mbps.

Secondly, Virgin Media’s cable connections go all the way up to the premises – by contrast BT Infinity uses copper wire to make up the ‘last mile’ connection to homes, hence the sower speed. It is thought that BT will replace the last mile with cable in the future.

Virgin Media also claims that it pips BT Infinity in terms of value for money. A Virgin phone line costs just £11 a month compare to BT’s £11.54 per month for line rental. Whilst BT Infinity costs less, Virgin Media says that BT’s offering is “only £2.47 cheaper and for that you will get a much slower service. To put it another way, on a straightforward price per Mb comparison, BT costs around 62p/Mb. Virgin Media costs 56p/Mb.”

Virgin Media also points out that it’s XXL 50Mbps package provides a fully unlimited service, unlike BT Infinity Option 2 which applies traffic management at peak times. That said, Virgin Media’s L and XL broadband packages do feature traffic management.

1 Comment »Posted by Tom on January 22nd 2010 in BT Broadband, Virgin Media

Similar Posts:

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• Virgin Media eases up on traffic management
• “Misleading” Virgin Media broadband ad banned

One Response to “BT Infinity: Virgin Media’s response”

1. Didarul Alam said on 28 Jan 2010 at 1:23 am #

   Virgin Media is the only ISP providing 50Meg speed. I think this sometimes becomes so hard to believe where 80% of the UK population is still trying to cope with 2-8meg broadband.

   Likes the article and very informative.

   Thanks

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