More than 10,000 people signed up to Virgin Media's new 100Mb broadband service on the first day the cable company opened registration for the new product.
Virgin Media intends to roll out the 100Mb broadband service, will allow customers to download a TV show in 30 seconds or a music album in just five seconds, from December, starting with London, the south-east and Yorkshire. In the first 24 hours after opening pre-registration for the service on Wednesday, the company is understood to have had more than 10,000 sign-ups.
Earlier this week Virgin Media reported that it had reached 4.24m broadband customers, but just 700,000 opted for a 20Mb or 50Mb speed service. Despite the low overall number Virgin points out that this represents solid growth of 41% year on year.
Rivals have questioned the demand for faster services – Virgin's 50Mb service has just 90,000 subscribers – but the company argues that in five to 10 years 1Gb could be commonplace.
"When we think the market is ready we will upgrade the network accordingly and launch products," said the Virgin Media chief executive, Neil Berkett. "The brilliant thing is with the scale and power of our network we could run 400Mb today. [About] 100,000 lapped up 50Mb in the past 12 months; that gives an indication that the market is ready for 100Mb."
The 100Mb service will initially be made available to a potential 200,000 homes and will be available to Virgin Media's entire cable footprint, covering up to 12.7m homes, by mid-2012.
Berkett, who has referred to the 100Mb product as a "Ferrari" service in Virgin Media's portfolio, said that the company is continuing to trial 200Mb and that a 400Mb service is being tested in labs.
Earlier this month Virgin struck a deal for the rights to use Speedy Gonzales, the hyperactive Mexican mouse from Looney Tunes cartoons, in a multimillion-pound TV ad campaign to promote its superfast broadband services of up to 100Mb.
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