Virgin Media ups the ante

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Virgin Media's CTO has spoken (see the Reuter's story here) about delivering 200Mbps to its cable customers by 2012, coincidentally the same date by which BT has proposed to have its odd mix of ADSL2+, FTTC and FTTH implemented.

While the VM announcement has been met with plenty of scepticism by cable customers and others growing weary of the hype over headline speeds, it still ramps things up somewhat, and may encourage BT and others to think a bit harder about putting together a solid FTTH offer together for the rest of us (or at least those of us that live in parts of the UK that are considered economically viable).

Of course VM does not cover large parts of the country either, so for those of us in less densely populated spots these two announcements have one clear benefit as we push forward projects for community/municipal fibre: 2012 is now established as a key milestone date. You could argue that the next digital divide starts then, and any community (rural, semi-rural, urban, it doesn't really matter) that does not have something in place to deliver high speed high quality service will begin to suffer from that point on in terms of people, jobs, businesses and prosperity moving away to locations with better connectivity.