Virgin Media said on Thursday that it plans to offer 100Mb broadband services to customers by the end of 2010. The company says this is due to its use of cable, rather than the more widespread ADSL technology used by competitors. In some areas Virgin says it will offer even faster speeds of up to 200Mbps.

The extra-fast service, says Virgin Media, will let customers download a music album in as little as five seconds, as opposed to the 75 seconds the same download would take on a 24Mbps ADSL connection.