At home we subscribe to Virgin Broadband's 20 megabit service which is delivered by (cable) fibre to the street and via coax copper to the house. We've actually been experience a rather choppy service of late - apparently due to a fault in the network that is taking weeks to fix.

But according to [URL="http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-16491614"]BBC News[/URL] today I may well be happy to forgive them soon because Virgin has announced it is to at least double the connection speed of 4 million of its cable broadband subscribers. In fact, as a current 20 megabit subscriber, I'll get an upgrade to 60 megabits. Those on 50 megabit connections will be upgraded to 100 megabits and those already on 100 megabits will only get an increase to 120 megabits, which is the current maximum speed possible.

Some of us will need new cable modems, but these will also be provided free of charge. Can't wait!

But there remains a broadband divide - Julia's parents are lucky to get 300K bits/second on their broadband ADSL connection and BT's schedule to get their exchange in Eversley upgraded to fibre, which could increase their speed to 40 megabits, has been delayed from September last year to June this year - and I'm not betting that the new June date will be honoured.