Virgin Media is to partner with Highwinds to provide an enchanced Newsgroup system. The system will provide 7 day retention for Binaries and 90 day retention for text.

It seems that the new system will not be as good as a dedicated, premium newsgroup provider, but it should be a lot faster than the current system, and should be more reliable.

“We’re delighted to be working with Highwinds to build out our
newsgroup service. Our expanded access to newsgroups will give our customers a free news feed to newsgroups with exceptional retention, providing one of the best free newsgroup services in the UK,” said Alex Brown, senior product manager at Virgin Media.

The system should go live sometime this spring.