According to Virgin Media Businesses, they have just recently launched a new service for business internet that, according to them, will give customers “dedicated, fire-based, uncontested” internet access at speeds of up to 1Gbps. Big Red Internet, as it is being called, will be offered at two speeds: 100Mbps for customers currently using Virgin’s 10-30Mbps service and a 1Gbps service aimed at customers on a 60MB connection.
Virgin stated that these new services will help businesses whose internet is slowing down due to the sheer amount of traffic on their network. According to Virgin, a business-only line will not be affected by factors such as these.
“We have a network that is designed fundamentally around the millions of consumers we have who use it generally in the evening,” said Virgin Media Business MD Mark Heraghty. “The network is largely empty during the day, and we want to leverage that. Why wouldn’t you want to do that?”
Virgin’s service will be offered at a flat annual fee for a three year contract. The 100Mbps will run you around $19,000 unmanaged or $20,500 managed, whereas the 1Gbps will cost you over $34,500 unmanaged and almost $40,000 managed per year. Management includes installation and configuration of a router as well as network management provided by Virgin Media Businesses.
Heraghy also added that Big Red Internet is designed to “offer customers more capacity than they will ever need.” But this raises the question of why any company would want to pay for a service they will never fully need? “If a company genuinely only wants to use the same capacity they currently use, it’s probably not the package for them, it’s not a forced upgrade.” he said. “But look at the increase in technology such as hard drives and throughput capacity of fiber-based networks. People will find a use for bandwidth if it is properly priced. I believe we will see a huge take-up in this because we are delivering huge value.”
The service is available today but only to directly connected customers. Big Red Internet will not be available through resellers or bandwidth aggregators. Hopefully this service does what it truly sets out to do and legitimately makes business internet faster for everybody.
