A surge in consumer broadband take-up saw Virgin Media increase its turnover by 3.3 per cent in the final quarter of 2009.

The lure of super-fast broadband services appears to have been too great for many households to resist, as 63,600 new connections were added between October and December.

A net addition of 28,600 new households means Virgin Media now holds a total of 4.77 million broadband package subscriptions in the UK.

According to the broadband provider, a total of 560,300 customers have access to download speeds of 20Mb or more, while an adventurous 41,400 can gain speeds of up to 50Mb.

The latter package enables users to download music tracks in less than a second and full 15 GB high-definition movies in under an hour.

And with Virgin Media announcing the introduction of a new 100Mb broadband deal, consumer take-up for the next few quarters could well surpass the level seen over the last three months of 2009.