Consumers will have to pay at least £46 ($70) a month for Virgin Media’s new super-fast broadband service, which offers more than double the speed of its closest rivals, the cable operator announced on Monday.

Today, about 1.5m Virgin Media customers can upgrade to 50 megabits-per-second broadband, which allows hour-long TV shows to be downloaded in a minute. By the end of the year, it plans to have 40 per cent of its network, which currently serves 12.6m homes, online with the new service, with the rest completed by summer 2009.