Virgin Media today announced it would be launching 5Gb broadband in Q2 of 2025. This adds to the company’s home broadband offerings of 500Mb, 1Gb and 2Gb. This falls under the company’s ongoing €200 million network upgrade to full fibre.
Speaking at the launch event today in Dublin, Virgin Media’s Vice President of Consumer, Paul Higgins, said Virgin Media is responding to consumer trends, increasing data consumption and what our customers have told us in terms of their broadband services”.
But there are some key questions which remains to be answered ahead of Virgin Media’s 5Gb launch in Ireland.
How much will Virgin Media 5Gb Broadband Cost?
Unfortunately, the launch event was a little light on the details of how much 5Gb broadband would cost consumers. Looking at Virgin’s offering today, every incremental increase in your connection speed typically adds €10 to your monthly bill.
Today, 2Gb broadband costs €90 per month after discounts. Logically, that would leave me to believe 5Gb broadband could be the first internet-only connection in Ireland to break through the €100 per month barrier.
Naturally, you can expect to see some discounts for new customers, but I don’t expect existing customers to be given a financial incentive to upgrade to 5Gb broadband.
So is there any incentive for them, or in general, to have 5Gb broadband?
Do you need 5Gb Broadband?
At a potential cost of €100 per month, you would have to start asking just how much do you need 5Gb broadband. In fact, you should be asking if you need faster broadband at all if you don’t generally feel the need on a day-to-day basis.
As you might imagine, I live in a pretty tech-heavy household. There are regularly multiple devices streaming to different devices, games downloading and games being streamed live, all while someone could be having a video call with family or work.
This typically happens concurrently on my 500Mb Virgin Media connection, in a mix of Wi-Fi devices and some hardwired into my network. Could I make an argument for 1Gb? Maybe, but I’d be reluctant to pay anything extra for it.
A large part of today’s launch event focused on “beating the buffer” as being a perk of 5Gb broadband. But given I do all of this, in a highly connected home, on 500Mb broadband, I fail to see why many consumers would be champing at the bit to spend anywhere near €100 per month on broadband.
Will 5Gb Broadband Need New Hardware?
Whether or not your existing Virgin Media router will need upgrading to access 5Gb speeds depends on what you have today. My 500Mb (white) router is not capable of handling anything beyond current speeds. Even if I wanted 1Gb broadband, I would need a new (black) router – also known as the Hub 2.
If you want access to Virgin Media’s 5Gb offering, or indeed its 2Gb offering, you will need their fibre-enabled hub. If you don’t have this, then you will need a hardware upgrade. This will also reduce the number of properties compatible with 5Gb broadband, as the address will need to be fibre-powered.
Another setback for consumers is that the existing routers Virgin Media use only support, at best, Wi-Fi 6. This means there’s no access to Wi-Fi 7, which is arguably essential to make the most out of a 5Gb connection. It’s easily overcome back plugging a Wi-Fi 7 mesh system into the router, but still, far from ideal.
It’s exciting to see Ireland’s broadband infrastructure push new speed limits, but we may have reached the point of diminishing returns. If you are experiencing buffering in your home, I’d look at checking your Wi-Fi strength away from your modem and potentially running LAN cables to key devices before taking the leap with 5Gb broadband.
