The company has announced that they are to invest over £100 million on a program that will see most of its four million customers get more than double broadband speeds. A report on The Guardian states that Virgin Media has tested speeds of up to 1.5 GB a second in a trial of tech businesses.

This took place at the Silicon Roundabout in London, and the company will spend £110 million during an eighteen month upgrade plan. Customers who subscribe to its 10Mb service, which is 74 percent of its subscribers will get speeds of 20Mb.

Others that are on the 20Mb plan will get their broadband speed tripled to 60Mb, while customers on the 30Mb will also receive 60Mb. Customers who are on plans between 50Mb to 100Mb will see their speeds rise to between 100Mb and 120Mb.

Customers on Virgins top tier speed of 120Mb will be on the quickest service offered in the UK, and will allow them to download a HD movie in around five minutes. Neil Berkett of Virgin Media said that “having a fast, reliable broadband service should not be a luxury”.

The company is planning on funding the upgrades from the sale of its stake in UKTV, which was sold to US TV company Scripps. Are you a customer of Virgin Media?

Some of the UKs residents are experiencing painfully slow internet connections, and The Guardian are reporting that people living in Halesworth in Suffolk, are getting the countries slowest broadband. People living on Mount Pleasant Street experience average broadband speeds of a lowly 0.128 megabits per second. This area came top of the slowest streets in the UK for broadband speed.

This will mean anyone wanting to download a movie to watch will have to wait around 48 hours for it, or a short music track would take around one and half hours. It’s not just residents living in rural areas that suffer from slow broadband. Streets in the likes of Glasgow and Southampton feature in the slowest fifty areas.

Affluent areas are affected as well, as Chislehurst in Kent that is only a few miles outside of London also feature in the list. The research was recently carried out by comparison site uSwitch between the months of March to August. They tested 1.5 million streets across the country to compile the list.

The south of England is the worst affected in the country with West Sussex and Hampshire faring badly. It was found the average speed was 6.8Mbps, but the fastest was, Leamington Spa in Warwickshire. Residents here get average speeds of 19Mbps, which allows a full length movie to be downloaded in five minutes.

Consumers are advised to check there download speeds regularly to make sure they get the best package available in their area. What speed do you normally get and are you happy with it?