The Net’s Most Wanteds

Virgin Media retaliated sharply to BT’s false claims of being able to provide customers a cheaper alternative to its Virgin Media XXL broadband service. BT said last week that its new Infinity broadband service would help end-users save as much as £7.47 if they opted for the new fibre optic broadband service which it would launch soon. It added that this new fast broadband product would have download speeds up to 40MB and upload speeds up to 10MB.

BT compared this new offering with the Virgin Media Broadband XXL service which has been in the market for quite some time. In its comparisons, BT did not mention that the Infinity product required the customer to pay rental for an additional phone line, whereas the Virgin Media XXL product did not impose any such requirement. BT also conveniently missed out some key information about its new offering such as having an 18-month contract period and a 20GB monthly download limit on its Option 1 package.

While the Virgin Media spokesperson ensured that the comparisons were made known to all he/she wondered aloud if consumers would actually wait for the launch of BT’s Infinity product, especially since Virgin Media’s XXL had a 50MB limit and unlimited downloading facilities which was obviously better than what BT was offering.

Virgin Media also announced that it has plans to come out with a new 200MB product but did not specify a definite time line as it was currently studying the market. A BT spokesperson said that the Infinity product would initially target 4 million homes after which the company planned to grow its network to accommodate an additional 6 million homes.