Compare Virgin Broadband packages including Broadband L, Broadband XL and Broadband Size XXL. Check Virgin Broadband availability in your area using our Virgin Broadband coverage checker by typing in your postcode below. Virgin recently started offering broadband without a Virgin phone package which means you can get Virgin Broadband as a standalone package.
Virgin Media Broadband basically comes in two flavours: the fast analogue kind and the super fast
cable kind. In order to know which is available to you, the online postcode checker provides a useful indication of whether or not your property is in a cable area, although for final confirmation it is always necessary to check with
Virgin Media. In any event,
Virgin Broadband caters to a wide range of customers and is very much at the forefront of the high speed internet industry.
Analogue broadband typically refers to
ADSL, ADSL2 or ADSL2+ data communications that are, in most cases, transmitted over a standard copper wire telephone line.
Virgin Broadband is essentially a cable service, however for many unfortunate customers who do not live in a cabled area, the company is able to provide ADSL alternatives. These packages are capped at downstream rates of up to 8Mb/s, which is at the high end of the technology itself.
Indeed, the actual download speeds a user on such a line will experience depend enormously on factors such as the physical distance (in terms of length of telephone line) to the local exchange, quality of the line itself and the condition of internal wiring. Nevertheless,
Virgin analogue Broadband offers competitive rates and speeds, especially when bundled with one of its telephone packages, and is very much worth considering for those who are looking for a noticeable improvement on their old
BT technology.
Virgin Broadband's cable services, for the privileged among us, provide access to immensely fast download speeds that are piped to the home via cutting edge fibre optic technology. Whilst Virgin services tend to be cheaper when bundled together, the standalone
broadband packages are also very competitively priced. These services are referred to as Large (L), Extra Large (XL) and Extra Extra Large (XXL), which may unsettle the odd male customer still raw from his ritual weekend shopping adventure with the wife. Nevertheless, Virgin Broadband is the stuff of dreams, not nightmares.
Virgin Broadband L offers a connection speed of up to 10Mb/s, which should remain more or less consistent at that downstream rate and is predictably the cheapest of the three packages. The typical download speed of a 5Mb file on a 10Mb/s line is under 10 seconds.
Virgin Broadband XL represents the UK's first big stride into super fast commercial broadband. The XL package offers a connection speed of up to 20Mb/s, which would roughly equate to a 2 second download time for a 5Mb file.
Virgin Broadband XXL is the granddaddy of super fast broadband. Indeed, as the technology is still relatively new in the UK, the service will not be fully rolled out to existing cable-enabled Virgin customers until the summer of 2009. Offering a connection speed of up to 50Mb/s, an XXL user could download a 5Mb file in just under a second or a 15GB HD movie in about an hour!
XXL is home entertainment in the fast line and is the ultimate package for online gamers, downloaders and music/movie lovers.
Finally, it should be noted that each of the Virgin Broadband cable services offers unlimited downloads, as subject to an acceptable use policy, and comes with a
free wireless router and over £300 worth of broadband extras.
