Virgin Media shows off stylish 50Mbps cable modem
This truly may be a world's first: a cable modem you don't feel incredibly pressured to relegate to the rear of your networking stash. Yes friends, that succulent device you see above is Virgin Media's shockingly stunning 50Mbps cable modem, which unsurprisingly relies on DOCSIS 3.0 technology in order to provide such 1337 speeds. It's still not as speedy as Ambit Broadband's channel bonding modem, nor can it hold a candle to whatever Sigbritt Löthberg had going on in Sweden, but 50Mbps isn't anything to sneeze at. No word on pricing just yet (don't worry, you'll pay it), but it should be available for UK-based speed freaks before the year's end.
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If there was a modem with speeds of 1337kbps, id buy it in an instant
That's pretty damn slow...
So what? its fucking l33t
You should have made it 1337mbps
1337kbps is NOT l33t.
Using l33t is NOT l33t.
50Mbps is.
I think you just failed at units. If it were 1337 gigabits/sec, I'd call it leet. Kilobits just implies you're another moronic script kiddie fucktard.
I love the internets!
@iEye
You'll love it even more when this tech gets to Comcast. What is the cap again? 200Gb? You'll speed up and be cut off in NO time =P
Interesting... in Spain they're starting to roll out 50 and 100 Mbps through EuroDOCSIS 3.0 (Cisco EPC3000 capable of doing +200/120 Mbps) and Virgin Media is giving out an outdated version of DOCSIS 3.0 that has a maximum output of 50 Mbps? How lame is that?
Oh, and no cap.
Even better if they upgraded their boadband speeds. They're falling behind.
What do you think that modem is for?
Falling behind the up to 8Mbps connection that the bt network offers?
Erm, last time I checked, VM were actually the fastest consumer broadband provider in the UK, with their 20Mbit connection. And yes, you actually get the full 20Mbit, unlike certain DSL-based providers who advertise 24Mbps, but give you less than half of that...
Virgin provide both Cable and ADSL broadband, the Cable they provide to the door which is where this 50Mb baby will be used. They also provide ADSL which is BT's copper to the door and Virgin provide the backbone which is much slower than the 20Mb of their current Cable offering.
We subscribe to 10Mbps on Virgin, but never get more than about 6.5.
Guys, I pay £18 per month with Be broadband and get ~22 meg unlimited. Virgin comes nowhere near.
They might offer 50mbps but you'll only get it if the day has a Z in it.
Wow dude you are leet!
that has to be the SEXIEST modem ive EVER seen
Those are two words I never thought I would see together. lol.
I don’t get it.
I always want my “networking stash” to look as much like commercial gear as possible. If I could afford all top line rack mounted Cisco stuff I’d be using it. In no way would I consider a stylized My Little Pony/Star Wars collection modem cool. In fact, if I were forced to use this box I’d probably hide in back of the stack or somehow try to make it look a little more serious.
Form follows function for us PC guys…
@-----
Sounds to me like form doesn't really follow function in your case; in fact quite the opposite - you seem very interested in what it looks like but don't mention anything about how well it works.
You're sounding like the anti-fashion brigade who insist that they don't care about fashion yet are very careful to never wear anything fashionable. They're just as much fashion victims as the people who only wear what's fashionable.
HAHAHAHAH BITCHES IM FIRST
Oh shit, sorry bout that but my idiot cousin took my pc
lol, I ranked you up for that
I've heard virgin throttle a lot and delivery sub-par speeds and reliability across the board. I'm with Be on their 24mbps package and getting about 14mbps according to speedtest.net with pings of 10< to all the TF2 servers I play regularly on so I'm very happy with it. I no longer feel the pangs of jealously when I read news like this, compared to when I had a really crappy 2mb connection :)
Still, that's a pretty sexy modem.
Virgin media do have some funny throttling but only if you're a crazy heavy bandwidth user. So, you're on their 24mbps package and you're only getting 14mbps? I'm on Virgin's 2mbps package (yes, I know) and I get almost exactly 2mbps speed on speedtest. Other people with faster connections similiarly get exactly what's advertised. Plus, their customer service are just lovely.
That's a damned sexy modem, too!
Click the read link if you haven't, there's a few more pics...then take a scroll down to the comments and read the first two. Nice to see that Techradar is populated with intelligent people!
I was on virgin 4mbps (though apparently we'd been upgraded to 10) up til about a month ago, and it was a load of balls. The internet died at least once a day, and we had a 700MB limit before we got throttled, which is ridiculous seeing as my household consists of 6 people, and on my own i normally download 700 in a day. so we switched to o2 broadband which has been vastly superior, no throttling, and much higher speeds on 8mbps. richard branson's a wanker.
That's funny. I'm on a 6(or 8?)MB/s plan from Comcast, and I get about 400-900KB/s down.
It all depends where you live but I've seen more underperforming"fastest-in-the-uk" virgin than be24. I prefer to have 8mbits on fast, without traffic shaping - it "just works", all the time.
I'd be jumping up and down about this if it wasn't for Virgin Media's stupid fucking download caps.
At least they told you. On this side of the Atlantic it took Comcast ages to own up to their cap.
Only one ethernet port? WTF?
Okay, so this is a /modem/ and not a /router./ You know the difference, yeah?
Its a modem, only one port needed to have it directed to your router of choice
That's embarrassing... I'd make a new profile after that one.
I hope to get this... i currently have Virgin's 20MB package...
Does it suck or does it provide?
To be fair, my speed on average is about 12 mb, this is through an old 54mb wireless connection from the opposit corner of the house, and the connection is almostly constantly shared between 2 computers. If that has any effect...
But i've never had any problems with connectivity, so thats a plus.
Id love to have this epic connection, but sadly BT would prefer me not to.
In my area BT basically said "fuck you" to NTL or whatever provider it was back then, and cable was never installed in our area.
No Virgin Media good times :(
It's so easy these days to make a gadget, "sexy." Just make it black and glossy as hell.
Not really, the 1st gen iPhone is dead sexy, like a muscle car with a 350 V8...
the new black one looks like shite! like a cheap honda civic with a 1 litre girl scout engine...
Throwing on a couple of blue LEDs doesn't hurt either.
Virgin Media are a great ISP.. very fair on the customers, such a shame ive bought a new house recently & ive had to goto O2 Broadband, while there good... due to BT's crappy lines (copper wires!) im over a mile from the exchange, meaning im trapped with 13mb broadband, virgins fiberoptic isnt avaliable in the area, im just hoping they expand alot... id certainly sign up if it appeared in my new area.
Beard.
The thing is that as far as I'm aware of, and the job I do means I do have regular chats to the guys behind the Virgin Media network, they don't do fibre optic to anyones door. They advertise fibre to my door but unless someones recently invented fibre over copper it doesnt exist. The system they use is fibre to a local distribution box and then a shared coaxial feeder from there. Its theoretically capable of a lot but I'm still disputing the advertising they do with the ASA as I still belive its very misleading.
Virgin Media are an aweful ISP. I was on their 20mbit plan, which is great for the first 3GB (doesn't take long) then you get dropped to 5mb for the rest of the peak hours. Absolutely shocking and this rule was changed during contract without notifying me.
I wouldn't ever use a Virgin Media service again, their customer support is outsourced, their tech support is clueless and they are ignorant and rude.
Highly reccommend be24! Solid connection, great speed, no capping.
be24 and O2 are currently the best ISPs available in the UK (O2 uses Be's network).
And they are not even based in the UK... Bulgaria I think, that's why.. they care about service aswell as profit.
I'm pretty sure they changed it but it's still pretty rubbish if you're a medium to heavy user.
Another happy Be* customer here, my friend is on virgin media and he is always going on about how hes always getting throttled by the speed trolls at virgin.