Virgin Fibre Optic Broadband

robt_2

kwikbreaks wrote: »

He's perfectly correct to point out that many do though and that VM don't rush to fix these issues. My own local area is oversubscribed and I'll be moving on once I can get Infinity. Meanwhile I've downgraded from 50Mbps to 10Mbps as that's all I can get a lot of the time (well all the time now obviously).

I agree there are sometimes problems.

But it is not 'the norm' which is how it came across to me.

fosheezy

robt wrote: »

I agree there are sometimes problems.

But it is not 'the norm' which is how it came across to me.

Please tell me where in this thread I said every VM customer had a poor connection & the company should be avoided?

All I said was "do your homework" and don't believe all the VM marketing hype, because there's a significant chance you may not get what you paid for. But then again, you might.

Mark_In_Hampshire

fosheezy wrote: »

My advice: do your homework first. Virgin Media look tempting with their high download speeds, but all too often the quality of the signal is poor. There are customers all over the UK (disclaimer: I am one) who are suffering from "high utilisation" faults within the Virgin Media network, which manifest themselves as massive amounts of jitter and packet loss. It almost seems like they're oversubscribed system-wide, and it takes them months to address any complaints. But don't take my word for it: search the web, or even just take a look at their own official tech support forums, where you'll see hundreds of new posts every day complaining about this sort of issue.

If all you want to do is download files, you'll probably be OK. But if you want to do anything latency-sensitive, like watch streaming movies, or play online games, or make Skype calls, or even telecommute, well... I wish you better luck than myself or many of their other customers are having.

The area where my parents live was oversubscribed. That's why they only got 7Mbps out of the 10Mbps they were supposed to get. This did get fixed however. When last there it was hitting 9.9Mbps consistently.

The alternative is an ADSL2+ connection with a headine speed of up to 24Mbps which in reality would struggle to manage 1.5Mbps (over 3km from the exchange with predicted speed of 256kbps). So it isn't hard for Virgin to do better!

Worth pointing out they have a 30 day guarantee which you don't get with ADSL2+ and phone lines, so you do get to try it out at first, though that doesn't mean the initial performance will remain the same in perpetuity, presumably parents connection was not "over-utilised" at some prior stage too.

kwikbreaks

Mark_In_Hampshire wrote: »

... that doesn't mean the initial performance will remain the same in perpetuity...

It certainly doesn't.

Cable performance is very localised as cable only has small pipes (currently most are 200Mbps down 18Mbps up) serving a relatively small area of maybe a couple of hundred modems. As they are currently selling 100 down 10 up connections on that infrastructure a single heavy user can have a big adverse impact and two can totally cripple the area. Mine went from near perfect to virtually unusable in a timescale of days.

VM will be introducing new traffic management soon which will hopefully tackle this issue but I will ask this - what is the purpose od 100Mbps broadband if not for bulk downloads and if those bulk downloads get throttled back what is the point of it at all. I don't see much point it buying faster tham 30Mbps and over the next year that will be the slowest VM sell as they will be increasing product speeds as a sweetener to the new traffic management regime.

If you can get Infinity then my advice would be take that option instead as it is better technology although it can't deliver the high headline speeds of cable a single torrent freak in your street won't make your like a misery.

Mark_In_Hampshire

kwikbreaks wrote: »

It certainly doesn't.

Cable performance is very localised as cable only has small pipes (currently most are 200Mbps down 18Mbps up) serving a relatively small area of maybe a couple of hundred modems. As they are currently selling 100 down 10 up connections on that infrastructure a single heavy user can have a big adverse impact and two can totally cripple the area. Mine went from near perfect to virtually unusable in a timescale of days.

VM will be introducing new traffic management soon which will hopefully tackle this issue but I will ask this - what is the purpose od 100Mbps broadband if not for bulk downloads and if those bulk downloads get throttled back what is the point of it at all. I don't see much point it buying faster tham 30Mbps and over the next year that will be the slowest VM sell as they will be increasing product speeds as a sweetener to the new traffic management regime.

If you can get Infinity then my advice would be take that option instead as it is better technology although it can't deliver the high headline speeds of cable a single torrent freak in your street won't make your like a misery.

Not sure about the data you quote re: pipe sizes. That's not to say that I think you're wrong on that, but as far as I understood the main issue with the network has less to do with that and far more to do with the disparate nature of bits of it, since it used to be a variety of franchises and little is as standardised as it ought to be.

The 100Mbps upgrades are being "rolled out" rather than just "switched on", like the increased upload speeds, so it was my impression that normally, work is done to provision for the extra capacity that's needed at the time (e.g. why generally 50Mbps users see 45Mbps+). Though of course whether or not every single head end cab and every single street cab get upgraded adequately is open to question.

I suspect cable tends to suffer most where it is the only real broadband option, like where you are (?), like where my parents are, and like some of the places we've lived at - ADSL slow to useless with lines over 3km long and bunches of decaying aliminimum pairs leave little in the way of alternatives. So if the take-up in a "normal" area is say 30%, in such areas it's close to 100% and when those areas get customers demanding the higher speeds it's those that suffer first.

Good that they do eventually "fix it" unlike with ADSL2+ where useless speeds are actually a feature of the technology not a fault.

On the other hand, they know the aggregate peak demand on any segment at any time and so could simply not oversell, couldn't they.

C_Mababejive

Here is mine via O2 LLU (not BT wholesale BB) via a Local loop provided by BT which has had a fault for three weeks,still to be fixed...(no incoming calls). I pay O2 £9pm and there seems to be very little latency. I do have a Virgin BB terminal at my home..but i ditched them as i got sick of reading of other users hacking cheaper deals via retentions.

kwikbreaks

Mark_In_Hampshire wrote: »

Not sure about the data you quote re: pipe sizes. That's not to say that I think you're wrong on that, but as far as I understood the main issue with the network has less to do with that and far more to do with the disparate nature of bits of it, since it used to be a variety of franchises and little is as standardised as it ought to be.

It's all public knowledge so if you think it's wrong look it up. There is different hardware around for sure (just as with ADSL) but it all operates to the same cable standards - the old 10/20 Mbps network is DOCSIS1/2 and the newer 30Mbps and above is (EURO)DOCSIS3. The 100Mbps upgrades are largely done but essentially involved boosting the kit that only supported 3 downstream channels to use 4. Some areas are getting 5 channels now and eventually all will get 8 but that is really for the 200Mbps release. Each downstream channel can support 50Mbps so currently most areas have 200Mbps total down and VM are selling 100Mbps unlimited broadband quite happily on that capacity.

superjaggybunnet

useless_git_requires_wife wrote: »

Virgin cable bb have been good for me. I never suffer any drop in service. I would avoid their tv and hone phone service like the plague, though.

Bit of a sweeping statement don't you think?

I have been with Virgin for BB, TV and phone for years. I have no complaints at all about any of their services. What is wrong with the TV and Phone in your experience?

I think the OP needs more information than just to 'avoid it like the plague'. That doesn't really help them make an informed decision does it?

:beer:

useless_git_requires_wife

superjaggybunnet wrote: »

Bit of a sweeping statement don't you think?

I have been with Virgin for BB, TV and phone for years. I have no complaints at all about any of their services. What is wrong with the TV and Phone in your experience?

I think the OP needs more information than just to 'avoid it like the plague'. That doesn't really help them make an informed decision does it?

:beer:

It's a statement based on my direct experience. Other people will post their experiences, and so the OP can decide for themselves.

The phone service is very expensive compared to other major operators and the tv service is not as good as Sky in terms of equipment or channel choice. Just my experience.

robt_2

Actually the new 'TV equipment' (TiVo) is far superior to Skys offering.