Virgin Launches Flat Fee VPN Offering

Virgin Media Business has announced a new flat rate VPN offering for its business customers.

Big Red VPN is available in three package sizes of 10Mbps, 100Mbps or 1Gbps of unconstrained bandwidth on Ethernet or IPVPN networks, allowing users to use the full capacity of thier VPN lines.

All the bandwidth you need

According to the company, Big Red VPN provides a clear and simple alternative to restricted bandwidth connections, giving business and public sector organisations as much bandwidth as they need at a fixed cost.

The company said that the results from a Virgin Media Business commissioned survey showed that 37 percent of CIOs are upgrading their VPN every year, costing an average of £30,000 each time.

“In a time when all organisations are looking to cut costs while supporting their objectives, it’s critical that technology drives innovation rather than hinders it. But the pressure of bandwidth constraints continues to be a hugely expensive, disruptive and frustrating challenge to overcome,” aid Virgin Media Business’ managing director Mark Heraghty.

“With a VPN service based on MPLS (Multi Protocol Label Switching), you’ll get private and secure-by-default characteristics, and potentially avoid the additional costs and management of additional firewall devices,” according to the company’s website, which also claims that users will get the ability to configure the topology, from any-to-any connectivity through to hub and spoke, to create a more resilient, scalable network .

Big Red

As part of the Ethernet service, users are able to get any-to-any connectivity with reduced dependency on central hubs in the network, up to seven classes of service for support across a wider range of applications with transparency to layer three routing protocols and real-time online statistics for network performance monitoring.

With Big Red VPN for IPVPN networks, users can choose from a ‘hub and spoke’, any-to-any or partial-mesh VPN to connect specific sites or overlapping networks, delivering up to eight classes of service.  Virgin will also be extending its managed service option to cover Big Red VPN customers who prefer to outsource their network design, installation and management.

Virgin already offers Ethernet VPN, IPVPN, IPSec and SSL VPN but pricing details have not been made available for Big Red VPN.