LAURA SLATTERY

UPC will upgrade broadband speeds for 200,000 of its customers over the next two months, moving 170,000 people who currently have speeds of 25-30Mb per second to its new "standard" speed of 50Mb, and 30,000 customers already on the 50Mb speed to 100 or 150Mb.

UPC Ireland sales and marketing director Mark Coan said this would have a significant impact on average broadband speeds in the Irish market. Some 10 per cent of Irish broadband users currently access speeds of 50Mb and this proportion will rise to 30 per cent by the end of June.

Some customers will need to upgrade their modems to access the new speeds, while about 20,000 UPC customers live in areas where the company is unable to upgrade the network.

UPC, which provides the fastest broadband in the market, said there would be no immediate cost to the speed upgrades, but it plans to increase its prices as part of its annual rate increases from June.

UPC will also write to about 215,000 customers who have already signed up to both its broadband and television packages, inviting them to access the Horizon television app and website horizon.tv.

Th ese allow them to watch live and on-demand television content on other devices, while in the home.

Some 45 channels, including the main Irish and British stations, can be streamed live on laptops, iPhones and iPads via the service, which is a precursor to the full Horizon television platform that UPC will launch later this year. The app will be available on Android devices from the summer.

There have been almost 19 million streams of on-demand content via television sets on the UPC service since it launched last May.