Virgin Media has announced the trial of a home broadband connection offering download speeds of more than 8Gbps.
The trial to homes in Papworth, Cambridgeshire runs over Virgin Media’s existing fibre network. The 8Gbps connection represents speeds more than 200 times faster than the UK average.
The six-month trial will mean around 50 homes in Papworth, Cambridgeshire, will benefit from the UK’s fastest home broadband speeds.
Data is transferred along fibre optic cables using EPON (Ethernet Passive Optical Network) technology – a global point-to-point network standard.
“As the UK’s fastest widely available broadband provider, we’re committed to making Britain faster and this trial pushes the boundaries of what’s possible,” said Richard Sinclair, Executive Director of Connectivity at Virgin Media. “With the volume of our customers’ internet usage almost doubling every year, trials like this will ensure we have the capability to meet the demand of data-hungry services in the future – be that over cable or full fibre.”
Virgin Media has been working with ARRIS to trial new equipment and software to increase the speeds that its residential fibre network is capable of delivering.
“The world thought multi-gigabit speeds would only be for lab tests, businesses and governments” said Steve McCaffery, President, International Sales and Managing Director, International Business Operations at ARRIS, who has been working with Virgin Media to develop the trial. “Thanks to the foresight and ambition of Virgin Media, cutting-edge ARRIS technologies are now in real peoples’ homes.”
The connection speed was tested and independently verified by Ofcom’s technical partner, SamKnows, who fast tracked the development of a brand new speed testing tool specifically designed to test multi-gigabit connections.