Virgin's 100Mbps broadband tops 4m homes

Virgin Media has announced that its 100Mbps fibre broadband is now available in four million households around the UK.

In March, the superfast speed reached one million British homes, delivering a connection rate 16 times quicker than the national average.

The service has now expanded to 4m homes in more than 100 cabled towns around the UK, from Cwmbran to Clydebank. Under Virgin's rollout plan, 100Mbps broadband will cover its entire network of 13m households by mid-2012.

Jon James, executive director of broadband at Virgin Media, said: "As data consumption rises and consumers grow increasingly reliant on their broadband service, only Virgin Media's unique network is primed to cater for the UK's impending data explosion.

"With four million homes now able to 'get in the fast lane' with our 100Mbps service, the UK is racing up the broadband league tables and we're delighted to be playing the leading role in boosting the UK's digital infrastructure."

Virgin Media has been trialling 200Mbps broadband since last year, and in April began testing speeds of up to 1.5Gb in London's Old Street.

The cable operator believes that such speeds are required to cope with the growing use of connected devices, including smart TVs, games consoles and tablet computers.

More than half a terabyte of data is carried on Virgin's network every second during peak times, enough to download 62 copies of the entire Encyclopedia Britannica in a second.

According to a forecast report from technology firm Cisco, global IP traffic will reach 966 billion gigabytes of data by 2015, driven by an estimated three billion internet users.

Cisco estimates that there will be nearly 15 billion network connections (fixed and mobile) in the world by that time, consuming three trillion Internet video minutes every month.