Virgin Media could soon give Sky customers a surprise broadband speed boost

Virgin Media could soon offer Sky customers a major boost to their broadband speeds.

According to the Telegraph, Virgin Media’s parent company, Liberty Global, is considering a radical move which would allow other providers to use its UK fibre network.

Currently, Virgin only lets its own customers access its dedicated cable technology – which offers speeds that are much faster than most of its rivals.

But that could be about to change with Liberty Global rumoured to be weighing up whether or not to open up this superfast broadband to other suppliers such as Sky.

In fact, the Telegraph reports that an exclusive deal with satellite TV firm could be under consideration.

Although Virgin Media’s fibre network is only available in around 50 per cent of the UK, those with access to this service can currently receive speeds of over 300Mbps.

Virgin also recently announced that these downloads will increase to 500Mbps later this year and it also hopes to have its fast fibre in 17 million homes over the next few years.

The fastest speeds Sky currently offer is 64Mbps via its fibre network which is considerably slower than its Virgin rival.

Although this may sound like exciting news there could be some hurdles to overcome before more customers will see an increase in speeds.

It’s thought that competition laws could complicate the move and something similar has been considered before but then rejected.

Virgin Media isn’t commenting on the rumours with a spokesman for Liberty Global telling the Telegraph: “We have the best broadband network in the UK and everyone knows it.”

The news of this update comes as some of the biggest UK broadband firms are joining a new Ofcom scheme aimed at making it much more simple for customers to get a refund when things go wrong.

Ofcom says the new scheme could see customers benefit from £142m in payments – around nine times the amount they receive today.

From this month, Sky, BT, Virgin Media and Zen customers will begin getting as much as £8 per day for outages that aren’t fixed within a set time.

There’s also money back if an engineer doesn’t turn up or cancels the appointment with customers getting £25 back on their monthly bill.

Speaking about the automatic compensation Sharon White, Ofcom Chief Executive, said: “We think it’s unacceptable that people should be kept waiting for a new line, or a fault to be fixed.

“These new protections mean phone and broadband firms will want to avoid problems occurring in the first place. But if they fall short, customers must be treated fairly and given money back, without having to ask for it.

“We welcome the companies’ commitment to this scheme, which acts as a strong incentive to improve service for customers.”

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