The broadband speed wars are hotting up and it’s very good news for consumers.
Virgin Media was the first to show its hand back in September with the launch of its Gig1 service.
This upgrade is bringing speeds of over 1Gbps to UK homes which would allow a full HD movie to be downloaded in around 40 seconds or a blockbuster PS4 title in just 14 minutes.
Gig1 is currently available in Southampton and Greater Manchester with Virgin saying that this is just the first step in its ambitious plan to roll-out the speedy service to 15 million homes across the UK by the end of 2021.
Although Virgin Media is clearly leading the way it may not be at the front of the pack for much longer.
Vodafone has just revealed that it is expanding its Gigafast Broadband to many more customers in the coming months.
This will mean more of us will access to much faster internet speeds with Vodafone boasting it will be pumping broadband into homes at up to 900Mbps – that’s around 150 times faster than the average home broadband connection in the UK.
So when will this rollout begin?
From spring 2020, Vodafone will start making Vodafone Gigafast Broadband available to customers in Birmingham, Bristol and Liverpool on the Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) network that Openreach is building for them.
With the addition of these three areas, Vodafone Gigafast Broadband is currently planned for a total of 15 cities or towns.
So far, Vodafone Gigafast Broadband has already gone live in Aberdeen, Bournemouth, Coventry, Huddersfield, Milton Keynes, Peterborough and Stirling, with additional places to follow this year and next.
Speaking about the update, Vodafone UK Chief Executive Officer Nick Jeffery said: “Vodafone is committed to a full fibre future and to creating the infrastructure Britain needs to compete and win in the digital era. This initiative with Openreach builds on our existing commitments with CityFibre and underlines our belief in the power of digital technology to connect people for a better future and unlock economic growth for the UK.”