Liberty Global-owned Virgin Media has completed a successful broadband innovation trial that delivered multi-gigabit download speeds.
During the trial, engineers achieved peak speeds of 2,200 Mbps in Manchester and Southampton — roughly 40 times faster than the average local broadband connection. These results demonstrate the potential of high-capacity links over Virgin Media’s existing network.
Jeanie York, Virgin Media’s Chief Technology and Information Officer, commented:
“We invest more than £1 billion into our network every year to deliver leading connectivity today, but our talented teams never stop pushing forward to ensure we’re ready to power our customers’ connectivity needs for whatever comes next.
Our services are being relied on and used more than ever before, and these innovative trials in Manchester and Southampton demonstrate how Virgin Media’s existing network is fit for the future with hyperfast, multi-gigabit broadband speeds delivered straight to customer homes.”
Virgin Media’s network is built on DOCSIS technology, and this trial used DOCSIS 3.1 over the operator’s current cable infrastructure. Using the existing network helped validate how multi-gigabit performance can be achieved without replacing large portions of the access network.
Delivering multi-gigabit capacity will help futureproof connectivity for bandwidth-hungry applications such as real-time augmented and virtual reality, 8K and higher-resolution video streaming, and cloud gaming.
Independent verification of the trial speeds was provided using measurement tools from SamKnows, the technical partner of the UK telecoms regulator Ofcom.
Virgin Media already offers a consumer gigabit plan called Gig1, launched in late 2019, which typically delivers average speeds around 1,130 Mbps. The trial used the same Hub 4 router that is supplied with the Gig1 package, showing that existing customer equipment can support much higher performance when the access network is optimized.
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