Melita yesterday described the uptake of its 50Mbits broadband internet package, launched on Monday, as "very encouraging and diverse".

The communications group officially launched Malta's fastest broadband offering this week after announcing that switching works on its €10 million submarine fibre optic cable between Malta and Sicily had been completed. Melita described its new internet packages tiers as "nothing short of a huge shake-up in the local broadband market".

"One could have thought that the client base for super fast broadband speeds would be skewed towards corporate customers," Malcolm Briffa, Melita's head of marketing, told The Times Business.

"However, our experience has shown that home users are increasingly demanding super fast speeds. Naturally, the latest free upgrade to 50Mbits per second will continue to help these heavy broadband users to fulfil their expectations."

Mr Briffa said the cable had contributed in growing the company's corporate base further, pointing out that several new business clients had approached the company when the cable project was launched.

"Ever since we announced that works on the submarine cable project had been completed, we noticed a significant influx of requests from gaming companies and other similar businesses," Mr Briffa added. "The Maltese Islands are now very well serviced to handle international data and voice traffic. The 50Mbps connection helps SME's to achieve the high bandwidths required by their businesses without the need of investing in complex hardware and other expensive infrastructure."

Melita intends to continue to spearhead the market even at entry level. Subscribers of its 2Mbits package are to be given a free upgrade to 5Mbits between July and August with no changes to hardware required. With a 52 per cent market share and over 52,000 households and businesses connected to its cable internet service, Melita said the move was made with changing lifestyles in mind.

"The 2Mbps to 5Mbps free upgrade will benefit thousands of families in the Maltese Islands: 85 per cent of our customers fall within this category," Mr Briffa said. "Moreover, we have now re-engineered our internet packages to reflect this new internet power wave being channelled to people's homes."

Asked whether Melita was able to increase broadband internet speeds further, Mr Briffa said Melita intended to retain its position as market leader.

"Technology is developing at a very fast rate and there is room for increasing internet speeds even further in the short term," he said. "We believe that currently we are the only broadband internet provider in Malta able to offer super fast speeds reliably and cost-effectively. Some additional investment would be required for Melita to take broadband speeds a notch higher. Naturally, such an investment would need to move in parallel with market demands."