The broadband arm of the Maltacom Group last week announced that all existing ADSL broadband high speed Internet customers currently with connection speeds of 1 Mbps had their connection speed doubled to up to 2 Mbps as from last Wednesday.
The upgrade was undertaken at no extra charge to customers as part of its continued effort to provide high speed, affordable broadband connectivity to all households and businesses.
"Doubling existing broadband access speed is in line with our strategy of continuing to lead in our objective of taking broadband to every home," Keith Fearne, CEO of the new Maltacom subsidiary recently formed through the merger of Maltanet and DataStream, said.
"By upgrading customers to 2 Mb or 2,048 Kb per second connectivity at no extra cost we are ensuring that everyone can access high speed broadband Internet starting at the affordable price of Lm9.95. Always on broadband services of all Internet service providers (ISPs) are being upgraded over a period of one week starting this Wednesday.
Mr Fearne announced that broadband penetration in Malta is ahead of the EU10 average by seven per cent and in line with EU 15 averages. "With over 26,000 broadband connections, the company has market leadership. We are now moving to the next step, where broadband is not just an Internet connection but a gateway to every home providing video, music, education, commerce and gaming."
Mr Fearne also announced that visitors to the IT&T fair would be in a position to have a look at some broadband home concepts on the Maltanet stand.
This speed upgrade is one of several technology initiatives to be undertaken by the company during the coming months.
Commenting about the network plans, senior network architect Ing. Geoffrey Cauchi said: "As of today, we have started provisioning customers on new higher speed network equipment and we are starting trials with a number of customers with speeds of up to 8 Mbps.
"This is part of our product roadmap for the coming few years, which would see us in a position to deploy very high speed Internet services, multimedia and video services to the broadband home at highly affordable prices. We have already started installing equipment based on ADSL 2+ technology which will allow us to provide speeds up to 24 Mbps".