Virgin Media O2 UK Confirm Upload Boost on 500Mb and 1Gbps UPDATE
Broadband ISP Virgin Media (VMO2) has today confirmed that, “from next week“, new and existing customers who take their 500Mbps or 1Gbps home broadband packages will be able to enjoy updated upload speeds of 52Mbps (previously 36Mbps) and 104Mbps (previously 52Mbps), respectively, “at no extra cost“.
This free of charge boost follows only a few short months after Virgin Media increased speeds for all M100 and M200 customers at no extra cost, not to mention that they’ve already boosted uploads for their business customers. But the phrase “at no extra cost” does rather gloss over the operator’s annual price hikes, which are often partly linked to their service upgrades, although that’s another story.
Naturally, readers of ISPreview.co.uk will already be aware of this change, which we reported on Sunday (here). Indeed, many customers are already enjoying the latest speed boost after power cycling their routers over the weekend, although some have yet to benefit.
Gareth Turpin, Chief Commercial Officer at VMO2, said:
“As demand for fast and reliable connectivity continues to soar, we’re boosting upload speeds for millions of our broadband customers at no extra cost. In the last year, we’ve seen record upstream demand on our fixed network as a result of more people regularly working from home, using video calling apps and new advances in gaming, so now more than ever we’re laser focused on offering our customers a service that supports them now and in the future.”
As we’ve said before, this largely reflects the operators plan to put their broadband packages on a 10:1 ratio of download to upload performance. After this, the next major change we’re expecting is the launch of VMO2’s 2Gbps (download) tier, as well as their first XGS-PON based products (here) later in the year.
UPDATE 4:24pm
We wanted to get more clarification on the rollout timescale above, which has now been provided. “We’re currently testing the upload speed increase and will officially start rolling it out to all M500 and Gig1 customers from next week with completion by the end of the year,” said a spokesperson for VMO2 to ISPreview.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Excellent. Now I can upload more of my useless twitch, YouTube, twitter, onlyfans, facebook, and other non exciting narcissistic material.
On a brighter note, makes uploading my movies and TV programmes to torrents easier.
no1 cares
I’ll give you £5 for a 4K onlyfans sesh 😉
zzzz
Don’t care really as Telford won’t getting it. Telford (Madeley area) are suffering badly congestion for years and years since telewest and never fixed. This is why some area in Telford not getting 1Gig or no upload boost yet. VM don’t care! They only want GREEDY MONEY!
Get your self 5G or 4G home broadband screw virgin media complete rip off merchants.
Already on 5G home broadband
I’m on Virgin in Telford and I haven’t had any congestion on the Gig1 package in a little over a year since joining.
I’ve already received the upstream upgrade.
Full throughput 24/7
dude likes to talk to himself don’t he… 😀
‘at no extra cost’ hilarious.
These guys have three price hikes a year.
Yes ALWAYS IS but peoples still using VM! Crazy!
When the alternative is ~20mbit FTTC then I’d rather keep my 350mbit VM connection thanks.
1gb VM or
20mb fttc mmmm
I stil with VM for the time…
City fiber just installing cable across the road.
So I’ve got not long left to wait
There’s no need to pay full price with VM, ring retentions and politely but firmly negotiate, I’m paying just £21 PM for 500Mbps.
Second life of DOCSIS!
If only we didn’t have to wait for XGS-PON roll out to complete to see lower latency. 24ms+ here and much more when loaded.
xgspon is a greate improvement on latency, just a shame they still got me on 1000/50 -.-
great for using my private torrent sites 🙂
Looks like my line is already on 103mb/s upload!
That’s a nice increase, hopefully virgin can work on their stability though as the network has been marred with downtime of late.
Openreach is meant to be in my area with fttp by the end of the year and that’s when my contract ends so will probably be swapping to them anyway
So its as I said before, starts in june (officially) and can take several months to become nationwide.
Good you contacted them for clarification.
No need to pat yourself on the back their Gregg.
It’s hardly “starting” in June.
The upgrade is practically complete in entire cities.
The background work of introducing the OFDMA block on the US segment was in progress last year. The announcement is for the modem profile changes so the upgrade takes effect. I would assume all headends nationwide are ready for this now
Yes, I am talking about the official schedule.
For those who are in areas not ready this clarification was useful.
still waiting for these xgs packages to be released >.<
They’re currently being trialled in some areas but most users won’t see it until it’s rolled out throughout the entire network probably. The packages will be what VM offer now (maybe 2Gbs if they release that at all).
All you need to do is do a restart of the hub for the new upload rate to be applied, as its live in Poole, Dorset
I done a speed test and this is the new speeds I get
Ping 9
Download 1158Mbps
Upload 118Mbps
How do you get 1158mbps from a 1gbps port?
Wireless, or even link aggregation.
There are a couple essays to get over 1000Mbps on the Virgin Hubs.
Can take 7 months to complete. So those that have to wait are paying more for a lesser service than those that had it early..
They seem to have taken mine away! frown
Back down to 52MB BUT
I now have the DOCSIS 3.1 upstream channel now. Before I did not but did have the 100mb upload… how odd.
did you switch in or out of modem mode?
I seem to have gotten the config pushed to me yesterday. Getting 99-102 on upload now 🙂
@Martyn.
I am using Modem Mode. Been like that for 2 months or so since i got a better WiFi router to use.