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Daily Mirror
Daily Mirror
Technology
Dave Snelling

Latest Virgin Media broadband upgrade could make BT and Sky look embarrassingly slow

If your broadband speeds are driving you to distraction, good news could be on the horizon. Virgin Media has just announced the launch of ultra-fast internet technology and it could soon mean homes are treated to speeds of 10Gbps. At that rapid rate, it would take just 3 seconds to download a full HD Hollywood movie and only 44 seconds to install a PS5 game onto consoles.

This upgrade also makes BT and Sky look pretty slow with their fastest speeds currently around 900Mbps.

Virgin says that all new connections being made will now receive this latest technology - which is called XGS-PON - with the firm promising that it will future-proof its service for years to come.

Although 10Gbps might sound pretty excessive we are all ploughing through more and more data and things will only get worse as files get bigger and we start watching 8K streams on our new TVs. That's why Virgin feels the time is right to give its network a boost.

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Another bonus of this latest tech is that it allows people to upload files just as fast as they download them - that's not something that current broadband infrastructure can handle.

Speaking about the changes Jeanie York, Chief Technology Officer, Virgin Media O2 said: "Late last year, we announced an important milestone in the evolution of our broadband services when we began trialling state-of-the-art XGS-PON technology on our live full-fibre network. These trials proved successful so now we are taking the next step forward in our network evolution and starting to sell services powered by the latest fibre technology, known as XGS-PON, much more widely.

"In the long term, XGS-PON and fibre connections will provide customers with even more bandwidth as the technology enables symmetrical upload and download speeds. This means that customers will have the ability to upload as quickly as they download, at speeds of up to 10Gbps."

Sadly, if your street already has Virgin's fibre cables installed you won't see these much quicker downloads as it's only being rolled out in new areas which don't already have Virgin cables.

News of this Virgin Media update comes as EE has also just announced a boost that will increase the speeds it offers to around 1.6Gbps.

It's expected that this upgrade will begin rolling in the summer with millions of homes being offered the improved service.

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