Virgin's 50 Mbps broadband package might launch in 2 weeks

7th October 2008

According to thinkbroadband, Virgin Media's much anticipated 50 Mbps cable broadband package is rumoured to be launching in two weeks' time — although it should be said that this is according to someone on their forum, so it could just be someone telling porkies.

thinkbroadband's article on the story also mentions that the roll-out of the 50 Mbps package will be completed by April 2009, by which time it will be available to the 40% of the population that are covered by Virgin's cable network. It's going to be pricey, though, as it's rumoured to cost £52 per month, although Virgin wouldn't confirm the price. If other things, such as phone and TV, are included in that price it wouldn't be as pricey as it first sounds.

The last time I spoke to Virgin Media they also confirmed that they would be enabling multicast at the same time as when they're launching the 50 Mbps broadband package, so this could be the first large ISP to support the ultra-efficient live streaming technology. It doesn't sound as though all Virgin subscribers will be enabled to receive multicast streams, though, because the thinkbroadband article says that the 50 Mbps broadband will be delivered via a "new network", so multicast will probably be limited to 50 Mbps subscribers only. However, multicast support only requires a software update to be carried out on Internet routers, so Virgin's remaining subscribers might get it in future.

Those who will get multicast support will be able to receive the BBC's multicast radio streams, which should be the highest quality Internet radio streams available in the UK out of any of the big radio broadcasters as they use 128 kbps AAC — although before the BBC's Internet streams could be the highest quality Internet streams this also requires the BBC to switch on some new servers that are due to go live in the next few weeks, because at present the multicast streams are being "transcoded" from the BBC's satellite feeds.

Virgin Media have also said that 50 Mbps subscribers will be able to receive an exclusive HDTV channel called VoomHD that will only be deliverd via multicast.

And as mentioned in an article about the BBC delivering HD content via the iPlayer by Christmas, the BBC is trialling delivering iPlayer TV streams over Virgin's 50 Mbps network, and Virgin is trialling "edge/network" caching of iPlayer content on its network. What this means is that Virgin would store iPlayer programme files in caches (i.e. servers) that are located at the edges of its network — i.e. close to the subscribers. The benefit of this is that iPlayer traffic wouldn't have to travel over the upstream part of the network, which would eliminate iPlayer traffic upstream of the caches, and it would make the delivery of iPlayer streams more robust. Another benefit is that the latency — i.e. the time it takes for a packet to travel from the server to the user — would be reduced as well, which further improves the reliability of streams.

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