BT Infinity pricing to undercut Virgin Media

BT's fibre-optic Infinity service will be rolled out to consumers in areas with access to Virgin Media

BT to target Virgin Media customers

BT Retail has revealed competitive pricing for its new broadband service BT Infinity which it says will be rolled out to four million homes and businesses by the end of December 2010.

The service will operate in areas that already have access to Virgin Media's fastest broadband service, XXL, in an attempt by BT to increase market share.

It says the service will be cheaper than Virgin Media's fastest service which runs on a fibre-coax network that Virgin built in 2001.

The service will offer download speeds of up to 40Mb/s from £19.99 a month, with upstream speeds of 2Mb/s for this price, or 10Mb/s at £24.99.

BT recently ran a trial of the service to customers in Muswell Hill in London, Whitchurch in Cardiff and Glasgow's Halfway district.

Some 75 per cent of BT Infinity customers will receive their services via a fibre-to-the-cabinet [FTTC] connection with 25 per cent receiving them via a fibre-to-the-premises [FTTP] connection, which can offer upload speeds of up to up to 100Mb/s. Openreach, BT’s local access division, is responsible for network rollout.

Today’s announcement is part of BT’s longer-term programme to make " super-fast" broadband available to at least 40 per cent of the UK. It says 10 million homes and businesses will be connected by the summer of 2012.

The company has also said rolling out these services will cost £1.5bn.

BT is also launching a new super-fast broadband service to business which will be known as BT Business Total Broadband Fibre.