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Virgin Media pilots 200Mbit service

Virgin Media has begun a pilot of a 200Mbit/s broadband service in Kent to gauge future demand for bandwidth in the home.

The pilot, which began last week in Ashford, will see 100 Virgin Media staff and customers connected at the new speed for at least six months. A spokesman for the firm said the upstream bandwidth for the new service hadn't been decided yet, but that a range would be tried.

Virgin Media talked up the speed potential of its network at the launch of its 50Mbit/s service late last year. Today it claimed the 200Mbit/s pilot area would be the fastest DOCSIS 3.0 network in the world.

Although it doesn't believe there is currently a commercial demand for 200Mbit/s, the firm wants to assess how consumers would use it for services such as HDTV, and home security and surveillance. The triallists have been selected for their high-end PCs and tech savvy.

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