Virgin Dismisses BT Infinity Broadband Claims

BT has announced details of its super-fast broadband service, and claims it undercuts rival Virgin Media – but Virgin says the BT comparison ignores availability.

BT’s super-fast broadband will be sold to consumers under the name Infinity, and to businesses as plain super-fast broadband. Consumers get up to 40Mbps downloads for £19.99, which BT says is “‘a saving of £7.47 per month” on Virgin’s XXL service.

BT’s £19.99 consumer offer includes only 2Mbps uploads, a £50 installation fee and a 20GB monthly limit. To get 10Mbps uploads and unlimited usage, users have to pay £24.99 a month – without an installation fee.

Virgin says the £19.99 offer – or even the £24.99 one – isn’t a fair comparison because of the installation fee and contracts (Virgin contracts are 12 months, and start with two free months). Virgin says, its XXL service can go up to 50Mbps and does not require the subscriber to also take a phone line from Virgin.

The 20GB download limit is the equivalent of four HD movies, says Virgin, and Virgin’s offer is 56p/MB, compared with 62p/MB, the company adds. Although currently limited to 1.5Mbps upload, Virgin is planning to improve that, we are told.

More tellingly, Virgin says its service is available now in large parts of the country, while the BT service is only available to a few pilot exchanges. BT will roll-out Infinity in up to four million homes by the end of 2010, but will take until the British Olympic year, 2012, to reach 10 million homes.

The UK’s roll-out of fast fibre networks for broadband has been criticised, and BT’s fibre roll-out will fall short of requirements, according to analysts. Extending the fibre network beyond this will require funding, BT says. The government has promised a £6 levy on phone lines, to pay for fast broadband, and launched a consultation on how to spend the fund created.

In the meantime, some cities including Manchester and York have taken the matter into their own hands with their own fibre networks.

With Virgin already available to 12.5 million homes, a Virgin statement said, “We’re not sure why people in the UK would want to wait for BT’s 40Mbps service which hasn’t launched yet,when they can already get Virgin Media’s great value 50Mbps service”.