Virgin Media plans a 200 Mbps DOCSIS 3.0 tier in the U.K.

Virgin Media testing DOCSIS 3.0 to new limits with 200Mbps, 3D and 1080p [EngadgetHD]

It's currently only available to 100 pilot testers in Ashford, Kent in Britain, but Virgin Media is planning to take DOCSIS 3.0 speeds and features to the next level with a tier that has 200 Mbps downstream speeds. Virgin Media is the largest residential ISP in Britain, and with the announcement that they're testing 200 Mbps cable broadband speeds, the company moves into the first place position worldwide for the fastest commercially available cable broadband. In the U.S. that title is held by Cablevision, which announced plans last week for a 101 Mbps top speed tier.

According to this article, the customers that are testing Virgin's new DOCSIS 3.0 broadband are also watching the company's high definition television service in 1080p, an upgrade that other cable operators also are watching closely. Though these new products are still in the early testing phase at this time, Virgin's planned 200 Mbps tier is quite the testament to the capabilities of DOCSIS 3.0 and how cable will remain the speed leader in the highly competitive broadband business.  Virgin's move is, at this point, a limited test but it is clearly a forerunner to dramatic increases in broadband speed offerings that we'll see in the next few years as cable operators complete their DOCSIS 3.0 plant upgrades.

Meanwhile, Wayne asked when Insight might launch DOCSIS 3.0 in a comment he posted on this blog.  As I've been reporting, we don't have a firm date at this time, however, we are busily getting ready for DOCSIS 3.0 with a great deal of behind-the-scenes work being done on our networks.  I'll keep you posted.   

Comments

[Derek Licciardi]

200Mbs barely matters. You'll not see that speed realized most of the time. Most of the download sites, P2P sites, torrents and game sites where this would be the most useful cannot deliver bits that fast to a single user. Some can but most can't. That and most people have 100baseT networks or worse, 802.11b/g networks in their house. It's nice to have more bandwidth outside your internal lan but I would bet that a good portion of users have no idea that 200Mbs requires a house network refitting. Even 100Mbs requires as much because 100baseT won't get 100Mbps consistently as most 100baseT routers (Linksys...) certify to 70 - 90Mbs throughput.

So 200Mbps is a nice marketing number but be careful that your users know what their getting or your call center will be flooded with "What happened?" calls.