Virgin Media Tests "World's Fastest Cable Broadband" In London

Posted 07/25/2011 at 10:50am | by Brad Chacos

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Remember everybody's favorite pair of deliberately acting turtles, the Slowskis? Comcast used the commercials to poke fun at the slower speeds of Verizon's DSL service back when the cable company was trying to break into the broadband provider scene. Well, the tables have turned; even Comcast's 20Mbps speeds end up looking more tortoise than hare when compared to Virgin Media's blazing new 1.5Gbps down/150Mbps up connection.

The company already offers 100Mbps speeds to half the UK population, Daily Tech reports; the Gb-shattering thresh hold is currently in trial stages only. The service is being offered to a small area of London known as "Silicon Roundabout," centered around Old Street. Virgin Media achieved the speeds using DOCSIS 3.0 technology, which the company calls a "future-proofed platform with theoretically near infinite capacity." Virgin Media touts the 1.5Gbps service as the fastest cable-based Internet in the world.

So how'd they do it? "These superfast speeds are possible because of the £13 billion of private investment made by Virgin Media which means that every cable home is connected to a state-of-the-art fibre optic network by a high-grade coaxial line," the company's press release boasts.

In June, Comcast proved that they could achieve speeds of 1Gbps at the annual Cable Show in Chicago. Prepare to hit your bandwidth cap in a couple of hours!