Virgin Media and Cisco partner on fibre broadband technology

Cisco has announced it is partnering with Virgin Media to deploy high-speed internet services on the cable company's fibre optic broadband network.

Virgin utilised Cisco's 3G60 Broadband Processing Engine to achieve download speeds of up to 1.5Gbps in a trial conducted in east London's Old Street area, known as the Silicon Roundabout.

The company revealed it is now set to further enhance Virgin's infrastructure by deploying DOCSIS 3.0 technology, which enables cable TV providers to offer internet protocol-based video services.

Mark Palazzo, vice president and general manager of Cisco's cable access business unit, said: "We are proud to help Virgin Media achieve such significant milestones with its network capacity and broadband connection speeds."

The 1.5Gbps service, described by Virgin as the world's fastest cable connection, is more than 240 times quicker than the UK's average speed.

It utilised the same infrastructure as the provider's up to 100Mbps broadband product, which is currently being rolled out to more than half of all homes in the UK.