WightFibre is rolling out up to 152Mbps speed boosts to customers on its Isle of Wight-based network.
Taking a leaf out of Virgin Media’s book, WightFibre will bump customers on 120Mbps connections up to 152Mbps, but unlike Virgin Media the speed boost doesn’t come with any increases in price.
The new service will be available to WightFibre customers from October.
WightFibre chief executive officer John Irvine, said: “As people connect more things to the internet more often – TVs, tablets, smartphones and laptops, all at the same time – they need powerful broadband with the bandwidth to deliver a great experience for everyone in the home.
“WightFibre’s network operates completely independently of BT. Our top speed is now twice as fast as BT, Sky, TalkTalk and all the others reliant on BT’s older infrastructure as we extend our lead as the Isle of Wight’s fastest broadband provider.”
Irvine added that the volume of traffic enjoyed by customers had grown by 50 per cent in the last nine months and 200 per cent since July 2012. Not only does the speed boost put WightFibre customers above the UK national average – 17.8Mbps according to Ofcom’s last survey – but it sees it provide double the speeds possible on BT’s FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet) connections.
Independent speed tests conducted by Ookla at IsleofWightSpeedTest.com have put average speeds enjoyed by BT customers at 14.18Mbps. WightFibre says that on average its customers get 28.49Mbps – just over double.
It’s not known if customers using WightFibre’s 30Mbps and 70Mbps packages will see their speeds boosted as well. In February this year, Virgin Media began cranking up the download and upload speeds of all customers connected to its cable network.
Although Virgin Media offers speeds of up to 152Mbps, it doesn’t have offer cable broadband on the Isle of Wight. This leaves WightFibre as the sole alternative to ISPs using the Openreach network.
At the end of August, BT’s first fibre cabinet was installed on the island. Although the Ise of Wight’s BDUK scheme will not offer speeds to match WightFibre’s, it will provide 95 per cent of the island’s residential and business properties with superfast broadband.
If 152Mbps sounds appealing and you want to check your current line speed to see if you can get it with another provider, you can use our broadband speed test tool.
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