Virgin Media took over NTL Telewest back in 2006 and in the three years since, have established themselves as one of the highest-ranking competitors in regards to home broadband. Virgin Media ranks third, behind only BT and TalkTalk, as the UK’s leading broadband provider.
The great appeal of Virgin Media is the fact that consumers can not only purchase broadband services, but can also create packages consisting of broadband, TV (digital channels) and telephone service. This is a great deal cheaper than the majority of companies will offer for the three services separately.
Virgin Media pride themselves on having an average broadband speed of 8.15Mb, which has resulted in the company being awarded the ‘2009 Fastest Home Broadband’ award by Top 10 Broadband, in 2009. Virgin’s top speeds are being made even greater, by the introduction of the potentially revolutionary, fibre optic-based broadband.
Virgin believes that fibre optics is definitely the future for broadband, because unlike existing systems, fibre optics do not require the user to connect to their existing phone lines.
Nirgin Media broadband packages come with many “freebies”, including a wireless router, which by itself is worth around £40, something that many other companies will charge the customer extra for. The average packages that Virgin offer cost between £12.50 and £28 for around 50Mb. Each of these packages includes two months of broadband completely free, with the user only paying for their Virgin phone line.