The benefits of a competitive telecoms market were illustrated last week when Virgin Media announced a major programme of upgrades that will see the cable company double the speeds available to more than four million of its fibre optic broadband customers.
Work on the 18-month project is set to get underway in February. When they get upgraded, consumers can look forward to receiving download rates of up to 120Mbps, depending on the package they are currently signed up to.
Virgin Media's bottom-tier 10Mbps deal will be discontinued completely as the telecoms firm's entry-level broadband service will offer 20Mbps speeds.
It's always great to hear one of the UK's largest internet service providers announce a speed boost of this size, but what's equally impressive is the fact customers will not have to pay a penny more to take advantage of the enhanced capabilities of their broadband connection.
There's no doubt that the decision to increase speeds without raising subscription fees has been motivated by BT, which unveiled a similar move in late 2011.
Under the telecoms giant's plans, the download rate offered by its fibre-to-the-cabinet service will roughly double to 80Mbps, while its top-tier fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) service - which only launched commercially in November - will rise to a staggering 300Mbps.
Although FTTH is only available to a very small proportion of homes and businesses reached by the BT broadband network, this is clearly still a welcome move and we're looking forward to more properties gaining access to the technology over the coming months and years.
So before you go writing off the UK's broadband industry and claiming Britain is lagging miles behind its European counterparts in terms of download speeds, just consider that the rivalry between BT and Virgin Media shows no signs of abating - and that can only be positive for customers.