Virgin Media has expressed an interest in providing broadband of up to 200Mb by the year 2012.

The news comes in the wake of BT's unveiling of plans to roll out a 100Mb fibre-optic network of its own over the same timescale.

Virgin Media's chief technology officer Howard Watson told Reuters that the increase in speed is within the capabilities of the company as it seeks to expand its 50Mb network.

He commented: "It is capacity that we have in the network that is reasonably easy to get at, and then (we need to) re-purpose that capacity for more broadband.

"We are trying to build a market here for high speed broadband; that market doesn't exist yet in the UK, and it's too early to be looking at over-regulation or wholesaling in that context."

Virgin has just embarked on a project to roll out a 50Mb network in the UK over the next six months.