Virgin offers 50Mbps broadband for £51

Virgin Media has unveiled a 50Mbps broadband service for £51, a speed nearly nine times the average broadband speed in the UK.

The 50Mbps broadband service costs £51 per month as a stand-alone service or £35 when taken with a phone line, which costs £11. Installation charges start from £30 plus an additional £50 activation fee.

The service is initially available to around 1.3 million homes in parts of Scotland, the Midlands and South London. The rest of the 12.6 million UK homes covered by Virgin's fibre optic network will need to wait until next summer.

>>50Mbps broadband: check availability in your area

According to Virgin, the 50Mbps service will enable customers to download an entire music album in 11 seconds; a TV show in around one minute, a high quality movie in 3.5 minutes and a high definition movie in 15 minutes.

Neil Berkett, Virgin Media’s chief executive, said: "Today marks a historic moment, for both Virgin Media and the UK. As the first ISP to roll out next-generation broadband access, our 50Mb service represents the dawning of a new era of high-speed services in the UK and is just the beginning of what we hope to offer our customers over the coming years."

Currently Virgin Media offers broadband speeds of 2Mbps, 10Mbps and 20Mbps to customers. It said more than one million of its customers subscribe to a 10Mbps or 20Mbps broadband service and it has seen a 78 per cent year-on-year increase in customers taking higher speed packages.

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Charlie Ponsonby, chief executive of broadband comparison service Simplifydigital, said: "Seeing really will be believing and we predict the difference will be remarkable. The launch of ultra fast broadband will really start to change people’s perceptions as to what is an acceptable broadband speed."

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According to broadband.co.uk speed tests, Virgin Media was already the UK's fastest broadband supplier. During November, the cable broadband provider offered its customers an average download speed of 6.311Mbps beating O2 and Be's 5.216Mbps.

Earlier this year, BT unveiled plans to roll out a fibre-optic network capable of delivering broadband services at speeds of up to 100Mbps to 10 million homes in the UK by 2012.

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www.virginmedia.com/50

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