For many years I’ve stuck with Virgin for my cable broadband and have seen the offered download speeds increasing gradually over time from under 1 Mbps to today’s 50. This week I got notice that the upload speeds, which had been languishing at about 1.5 would be increased, at no additional cost, to 5 Mbps. All I had to do was switch off and reconnect the modem.
In the past, even with an advertised download of 50 Mbps, I never saw a test result above 30, so I tried a number of experiments over the past two days. To my great surprise and much to my delight, Virgin broadband now does what it says on the tin. I’m averaging 49.97 Mbps download and 4.77 upload. I’ve never seen anything like this on a domestic installation, although I believe in other parts of the country speeds of up to 100 are now on tap, and it’s more than encouraging.
As we move more and more stuff to the cloud, upload speeds are becoming more important for the average user. My new combination of 50/5¹ is having a very positive effect on my Dropbox sync, MobileMe and, in the future it will benefit iCloud.
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¹ This fast broadband from Virgin isn’t the cheapest, of course. I pay £30.80 per month, excluding tax. I do not take their tv or phone services although there are discounts available for packages. However, I’ve had no problems in many years while friends with telephone broadband connections often have difficulties.