Virgin Media - False advertising?

peasantboy

How is Virgin Media allowed to advertise unlimited bandwidth when they have a traffic management policy?

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

I really want to move to ADSL because it's cheaper, faster and there are a variety of providers out there who don't have such lousy restrictions. Unfortunately for me I moved into a cabled flat so it made sense to use cable, plus the last time I used cable was when NTL was running the show and such pathetic restrictions didn't exist.

Right now I pay £17 a month for 2mbit. From 4pm to 9pm. I cannot download more than 500mb in that time frame. If I do, my connection speed gets halved for 5 hours from the time I went over the limit. So things such as youtube, bbc iplayer and so on can easily eat through that.

I've looked around at ADSL providers and be unlimited do 8mbit for £13.50 per month without such lame restrictions.

If BT didn't charge such insane prices for a phone line installation I would be on ADSL right now :mad:

Nilrem

Do they ever specifically say unlimted bandwidth or just unlimited?

They are technically unlimited in that they never cut you off.

VM have a bit of an odd disadvantage when it comes to competing with ADSL in that whilst ADSL can happily offer "up to" speeds knowing that most users will never get it (thus effectively keeping the overall usage down), VM can nearly always provide their "up to" speed in terms of connection to their network, thus use STM (as i've often said in these threads, compare the price of a guaranteed unlimited bandwidth line with a 10mb connection to what VM offer ).

Most other ISP's have some restrictions in place, be it STM, application management (throttling certain ports used by bandwidth hungry apps for example), or even bandwidth caps that they either totally cripple your connection after you've used it up (some cut you down to about 56/128k speeds once you've used your monthly allowance), or charge extra.

VM's method isn't ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but it's relatively honest, as the details are readily available, they never cut you off, or charge extra if you go over a set limit (IIRC BT are currently charging their customers about 50p a gb over the limit, and planning on taking it up to £1).

It's also worth remembering that VM's 2mb is really intended as the most basic level, mainly for people who really just want to check email etc, and their other levels offer much better capacity (and iirc they are soon to upgrade 2mb customers to 10mb, with the STM taking them down to about 2mb).

adrian2000

peasantboy wrote: »

How is Virgin Media allowed to advertise unlimited bandwidth when they have a traffic management policy?

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

I really want to move to ADSL because it's cheaper, faster and there are a variety of providers out there who don't have such lousy restrictions. Unfortunately for me I moved into a cabled flat so it made sense to use cable, plus the last time I used cable was when NTL was running the show and such pathetic restrictions didn't exist.

Right now I pay £17 a month for 2mbit. From 4pm to 9pm. I cannot download more than 500mb in that time frame. If I do, my connection speed gets halved for 5 hours from the time I went over the limit. So things such as youtube, bbc iplayer and so on can easily eat through that.

I've looked around at ADSL providers and be unlimited do 8mbit for £13.50 per month without such lame restrictions.

If BT didn't charge such insane prices for a phone line installation I would be on ADSL right now :mad:

Stay with Virgin, as in May they are goint to be upgrading all of there 2MB customers free of charge to 10Mb.

There is another thread about this already.

Anyone on 10MB I suggest you phone to downgrade and say yourself a few pounds and then get upgraded for free.

Adrian

mazza111

Adrian I'm not sure if you can downgrade to the 2MB any more, existing customers who are already on it are ok, but my daughter tried to downgrade one of her customers yesterday to take advantage of this and the system wouldn't let her. Worth a try though, maybe it was a system glitch with my daughter. She also informs me that they are going to increase prices next month, by £1 a month or something. So watch this space. She's on a very basic package at the moment, until she gets her staff account, and her package is going up by £2 a month.

BTW they limit the BW on the 10MB too. I haven't been throttled on the 20Mb but I haven't been using my pc much in the past few months. I think the only one that's going to be unlimited eventually is the 50MB

LeeSouthEast

What's the point in being upgraded to 10mbit? It just means you can hit the 500mb cap quicker :P

peasantboy

adrian2000 wrote: »

Stay with Virgin, as in May they are goint to be upgrading all of there 2MB customers free of charge to 10Mb.

There is another thread about this already.

Anyone on 10MB I suggest you phone to downgrade and say yourself a few pounds and then get upgraded for free.

Adrian

I downgraded last week to 2mbit from 10mbit because my 6 month introductory offer had ended. Nice to know I'll be back on 10mbit soon then.

bristolleedsfan

peasantboy wrote: »

I downgraded last week to 2mbit from 10mbit because my 6 month introductory offer had ended. Nice to know I'll be back on 10mbit soon then.

Seeing as VM are increasing the base prices for new customers, it will be interesting to see once existing contracts end will existing prices get increased as well.

Minimum Broadband only Monthly price ( excluding new customer offers) 20.00

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/websales/product.do?id=3264

alicat71

its not a free upgrade from 2MB to 10MB.. there will be a price increase of £2 and 2MB will not be available from 9th March onwards..

It will be done area by area and this will happen between May and October

Anon

alicat71 wrote: »

its not a free upgrade from 2MB to 10MB.. there will be a price increase of £2 and 2MB will not be available from 9th March onwards..

Strange that none of the press coverage about this big announcement has made any mention of pushing the price up as well for millions of customers - maybe that wouldn't have made such a good story :rolleyes:.

Anon

stuartw101

alicat71 wrote: »

its not a free upgrade from 2MB to 10MB.. there will be a price increase of £2 and 2MB will not be available from 9th March onwards..

It will be done area by area and this will happen between May and October

If thats the case i may aswell start paying the extra £2 now.

typan

adrian2000 wrote: »

Stay with Virgin, as in May they are goint to be upgrading all of there 2MB customers free of charge to 10Mb.

There is another thread about this already.

Anyone on 10MB I suggest you phone to downgrade and say yourself a few pounds and then get upgraded for free.

Adrian

I received a phone call today, and was offered an upgrade from 2mb to 10mb, at no extra cost, plus I get a new modem, about time too, I've had this one 9 years ! :T