Virgin Media says it will increase the speeds available to broadband customers and offer a top speed of 152Mb from February 2014.
The cable company will boost existing customers’ speeds “by at least 20Mb” meaning customers on its up to 30Mb will now receive speeds of 50Mbp and higher.
The new 152Mb top speed is twice that available via BT’s Infinity broadband and other ISPs dependent on Openreach’s fibre network.
Virgin says the new tier will allow customers to download an HD movie in less than four minutes and a music album “in a breathtaking four seconds”.
However, unlike many of its rivals including Sky and BT, Virgin Media caps download speeds for some users during peak hours.
The company says 838,000 customers signed up to get 30Mb or faster broadband in the first nine months of 2013, although it does not break out the numbers signing up for each speed tier.
CEO Tom Mockridge, said: “As people connect more things simultaneously to the internet more often, they need powerful broadband with the bandwidth to deliver a great experience for everyone in the home.
“That connection is what we deliver with our unrivalled network. We are boosting speeds again and ensuring our customers can get even more value from their Virgin Media subscription.
“Our top speed will be twice as fast as BT and all the others reliant on their old copper telephony infrastructure as we extend our lead as Britain’s ultrafast broadband provider.”
Despite extolling its superiority over Sky and BT’s broadband offerings, Virgin Media is increasingly reliant on its two rivals for premium TV content.
The company no longer operates its own channels and recently admitted increases from Sky and the cost of signing up BT Sport had left it facing “higher programming costs” while the delaying in securing the channels had cost it 12,600 TV subscribers.
It says customers will see bills for TV, broadband and fixed phone services rise by an average of 6.7% from February.
