Anyone on Virgin Broadband?

[wizer]

Hi guys

As mentioned in KU's thread, I've just signed up to Sky BB and my line speed is 5.5mb max with an average of 3.5mb in real terms. Whilst this is ok for browsing, I find it too slow for streaming video and work stuff.

I'm considering Virgin Media (it's available to me), who's 10mb package isn't a whole lot dearer than Sky's 15gb service (which they signed me up to, knowing I can only get 5mb). On paper it will be 7mb faster than what I'm currently getting.

Any users of VM here? Is it as good as the hype?


Ta

 

[Daven]

I am - not had any problems at all!

Dave

 

[cambournepete]

I've got the 10Mbit service.
Typical download speed is 6.5 Mbit.
Upload is over 450k (they quote 512 I think).

No problems with their service at all.

 

[studders]

I'm supposedly meant to get 10mbit but that rarely happens, or anything like it. 3 -4 mbit is the average and that drops dramatically, to the point of almost unusable, during peak hours.

 

[mailee]

I am the same as Studders, depends on how many are using it as to how fast it is. Quite slow tonight, having to wait for pages to load. I am afraid I can't comment on the downloading times as I normally don't download anything, just browse. I think the advertised seed of these things is irrelevant as the bandwidth is shared anyway. More luck than anything if you get 20 meg.

 

[9fingers]

I've been with NTL ( now badged VM) for many years

Their network is a legacy of a whole lot of different systems glued together so performance can be very variable form area to area.

I get very good performance from them but as far as I know there is only on other house between me and the box in the street that is a fairly heavy user.

Their tech support on the phone is poor - routed overseas and they seem to have little visibility of the local network detail/issues and just walk you through a standard set of things to try. Their engineers however, are very helpful when called out and often leave you their mobile numbers after a call for any follow up support.

Tom, I think your best bet is to talk to other users down your road and in the local area to see what the contention issues are like as that is the likely to be the parameter that most affects the performance you will get.

Bob

 

[yo_chuci]

i'm with them. 10meg.
normally get 8meg+ just done a speedtest now (7.05pm xmas night)
and am getting 7.49meg.

very rarely seems togo below 5 for me. tho as crow flies i am 8miles from the main hub in stockton.

1.5miles crow flies to BT main hub and i can only get 2meg so went with virgin.
been fine for me

edit... just tested again by connecting to maidenhead etc and got 9.87eg. tried another in Ireland and got 6.5. the first test i did above was to dublin so maybe its just slow to ireland tonight. normally is slow to london/maidenhead so test to ireland. maybe the sea is soooooooooo cold its slowing it down lol

 

[paul-c]

i am - had no problems other than complained about slow speeds once and they sent me a new modem out straight away ,arrived next day.
just done a speedtest 19.69 mbs download - 0.74mbs upload
:lol: cheers paul

 

[RobertMP]

10meg here. Ususally get 10meg too. Often get 40meg on a large download! Don't know why it goes so fast sometimes but I'm not complaining. 2gig download in just over 30 minutes.

They do have odd times when the service drops for an hour or so a few times in the same day. Averages once in 2 or 3 months that you get a day like that. Annoying but so good the rest of the time I don't worry too much.

 

[Jamesc]

Another vote for Virgin, I too was NTL then got transferred over. I've only ever called tech support once (thats testament in itself) They tried the standard things and determined that my box was dead. A brilliant engineer turned up the next day with an uprated box and ran in a new cable just for good measure. Not bad when you consider our drive is around 100'

James

 

[Smudger]

I'm getting 5.7 on Virgin... 0.27 upload...
I've had a few issues, things were very slow last week. I've had some hardware failures but generally they can get an engineer out in a couple of days and they have been very helpful. They have a free helpline for Virgin phone customers.

 

[peter99]

Be careful with their claims, I lived on a farm until recently and the performance from Virgin was poor.

It all depends on the exchange your linked to. Irreelevent what Virgin etc say their speed is, if the exchange only does 5 instead of 10 thats the speed you'll get. And if your at the end of a supply line (as we were) that has a big effect too

 

[wizer]

Thanks guys. Sounds positive. I know 12-13yrs ago when they ran the cables down our road, that there was a big take up locally. I wonder how many stuck with Bell, Cable and Wireless, NTL, Virgin.

I'll see what their terms are. It will probably be a year's service to begin with.

 

[paulm]

Sky broadband has been issue free for me now (tempting fate !) for two or three years and all for £5 a month.

Was previously paying Virgin around £18 per month and it was absolutely rubbish.

All sorts of performance issues, hours on the phone to overseas call centres telling me to do this that or the other.

After 6 months of that I finally had them confirm that they had general performance issues at their end that were known about all along while they wasted hours of my time getting me to check everything at my end, b@@#%!$ds !!! :evil:

Seems they knew they had to upgrade equipment somewhere near us and that there would be very, very poor performance till it was done and that that might take several months to do, but repeatedly overlooked telling me that while they strung me along and wasted my time.

They then kindly offered to reduce my monthly payments for the inconvenience and I told them in return what I thought of their wasting my time and months of frustration at rubbish performance, told them where to stick it and changed to Sky, been brilliant since.

Wouldn't touch anything to do with Virgin, ever again, on principle :evil:

Cheers, Paul

 

[devonwoody]

I got 9.6mb at 08.01 today (Saturday) using that speed test above. (Virgin, Blueyonder.

 

[Aled Dafis]

Don't get me started.

I've had issues with my BT Broadband for almost 6 months. I only get 128K:shock:. Every time I contact them, they do something that boosts the speed up to about 1.2Meg which is acceptable, I can just about watch U- tube etc. but within a few days it starts slowing down, and within less than a week, I'm back down to 128K again :evil: :evil: :evil: My theory is that there's a fault with the line coming into the village, as a my neighbour has the same issue. Getting them to own up to it is a totally different matter though :evil:

I can't wait for my contract to expire so that I can move to someone more reliable/proactive. Any recomendations? I'm out in the sticks, so Virgin and Sky are out of the question.

Cheers

Aled

 

[devonwoody]

But can it make any difference who your server is if its coming through the same bit of copper wire in your village?

 

[Aled Dafis]

Quite true, but my gripe is that they're not doing anything to fix the bit of dodgy copper wire.

Surely a seperate broadband supplier would be able to put more pressure on BT to fix the issue. I used to be with Eclipse internet, and their customer support was second to none. I'm quite annoyed with myself that I was lured to BT by their "sexy" home hub at the loss of good UK based customer support with engineers on the other end that know their stuff! :evil:

My next door neighbour is so annoyed that he's even considering going for mobile broadband to do away with the cabling issue.

Cheers

Aled

 

[peter99]

I changed to 3 mobile broadband dongle and cancelled the wired contract.

£15 month, 5gb (more than enough) and a 1 month rolling contract from day one so can switch if I want to. Speed is good enough for my needs and I can use it anywhere, not just home, with my lap top.

Depends if you've coverage from 3 though.

 

[devonwoody]

I changed to 3 mobile broadband dongle and cancelled the wired contract.

£15 month, 5gb (more than enough) and a 1 month rolling contract from day one so can switch if I want to. Speed is good enough for my needs and I can use it anywhere, not just home, with my lap top.

Depends if you've coverage from 3 though.

I had a 3 phone but could not get a signal in my home, so I had to get something done to my mobile and a new card. (went Virgin)