Virgin Media's superfast broadband

Commenting on Virgin Media's new superfast next generation broadband offering, James Parker, manager of broadband at price comparison site moneysupermarket.com, said: "Virgin has taken the first steps to move Britain into the future with huge investment in its cable network; enabling it to offer the first broadband package of 50 megabytes.

"Until now, the fastest packages available were 24Mb from Be Broadband and 20Mb from O2 and Virgin, which are available for under £20. The Virgin package, at £51, is a high premium to pay, but for those that need guaranteed high speeds it can't be beaten. For the average user, 8Mb, 16Mb or 20Mb packages should be sufficient but for tech savvy families, heavy downloaders and internet gamers the Virgin package will be tempting.

"The bundled product represents the best value at £35 for 50Mb, but users must take a Virgin phone line at an additional cost of £11 a month. Existing customers with 20Mb broadband can also upgrade to 50Mb for only £10 extra per month*. Bundling up with the Virgin TV package for a monthly cost of £66 seems like a good deal. But when compared to bundle deals from Sky or Tiscali, again only the heaviest of internet users will find good value in a Virgin 50Mb bundle.

"Its great that Virgin have taken the first steps in bringing Britain up to speed with the rest of the world. The scale of Virgin's investment shows it means business and should make the rest of the industry, including BT, sit up and take note.

"At present this may only be tempting for heavy users but is the future of broadband. When Virgin has rolled out the service to all 12.6million cable enabled homes by summer 2009 there should be more competition close behind."