Will joining Virgin Media Broadband mean i get max speed?

spud17

I'll second Hotspur, 4 weeks in and no complaints so far.
Quick and easy install of new cable, instant switch on by installers, and I've not seen under 2.05meg, all for £10/mth. £25 install, but £10 credit on first bill for signing up on line.

DebtBurdenedMan

I have had VM Cable (prviously NTL) for about 2 years now and not a single problem.

I thoroughly recommend them.

globalds

If you can get cable .Then take it .It is a much cleaner line .It may suffer like all other users when the web is busy .you only have to look at this site to realise that when a site is busy ,even a fast connection won't make it any quicker.But generally speaking cable is far superior to adsl..And offers the scope for massive bandwidth increases

poppy_f1

i've been with virgin (ex telewest) now for about 6 years for broadband and havent had a major problem with them
couldnt recommend them enough, im on 10mb and getting upgraded to 20mb soon and even tho there may be some restrictions in place i still feel its vfm

AxeSlash

Right. I'd like to clear something up:

Virgin ARE rubbish.

The reason that they are the biggest providers in the UK is because they are an amalgamation of three older providers - NTL, Telewest, and Virgin.

I had years of flawless service from Blueyonder, but since Virgin have taken over, speeds have dropped, and now I have serious connection issues - random disconnects that seem to be related to the quantity of data downloaded. It sounds like their Traffic Management system has got a bit too big for it's boots.

If you read all the posts on thinkbroadband.co.uk, and do the "compare ISP" thing, you will see that Virgin are FAR lower than anyone else. Take the Be* forum for example - little to no negative comments. The Virgin one is CRAMMED with people complaining about it - wrong billing, slow speed, bad customer service, various problems. Most of which did not occur until Virgin took over (NTL users excepted - it does sound like NTL used to have some issues).

Therefore the logical thing to believe is that Virgin are doing something wrong. They inherited a perfectly good infrastructure from Blueyonder, and seem to have completely messed it up.

The tales of their tech support are shocking as well. I've not had to deal with them *yet*, but I am just in the process of composing an email to them leaving them no option but to sort out my problem or a) face legal action and/or b) lose my custom. We'll see how that pans out.

It's a shame because Blueyonder were fantastic. Never once had a problem, and most people seem to be of the same opinion.

Oh and slapping this "Traffic Management" on us (throttling the speed at peak times) without any written warning or notification must be illegal? Especially when I signed for a full service with no throttling. I'm paying for that, and I expect that.

My advice is to go elsewhere. Avoid Virgin. Find the best provider in your area using thinkbroadband.co.uk, and go with them.

If they don't sort my issues out, I'm off to Be*.

pickles110564

I was with NTL and then Virgin for 18 months and found their BB to be excellant and if I had not moved house to a not cabled area I would still be with them.
I have gone with Sky BB and am very disappointed, I forgot how slow it can be surfing on this type of connection and it locks up and freezes quite often.
With all providers there must be horror stories but I wish I could still be with NTL/Virgin

Hotspur

The engineer turned up on time today and I am up and running on Virgin broadband within 7 days of placing my order without any pulling out of the hair. Much quicker than my previous Plusnet ADSL and found the phone technical support, who helped me solve a minor problem, very helpful and easy to understand.

Vampgirl

AxeSlash wrote: »

If you read all the posts on thinkbroadband.co.uk, and do the "compare ISP" thing, you will see that Virgin are FAR lower than anyone else. Take the Be* forum for example - little to no negative comments. The Virgin one is CRAMMED with people complaining about it - wrong billing, slow speed, bad customer service, various problems. Most of which did not occur until Virgin took over (NTL users excepted - it does sound like NTL used to have some issues).

Therefore the logical thing to believe is that Virgin are doing something wrong. They inherited a perfectly good infrastructure from Blueyonder, and seem to have completely messed it up.

Sorry, I don't see what's logical about your argument: not all internet users use that particular forum so there's no way to tell if its a representative sample of the entire customer base. Virgin have a much larger customer base so of course there are going to be more people complaining about it than Be*. If you're wanting to compare services then you should be looking at complaints per thousand users.

OP, I would say definately go for the cable: if you're at the end of a long line then you're probably going to have problems with ADSL whereas cable is not distance-dependant.

hurrah

Vampgirl wrote: »

Sorry, I don't see what's logical about your argument: not all internet users use that particular forum so there's no way to tell if its a representative sample of the entire customer base. Virgin have a much larger customer base so of course there are going to be more people complaining about it than Be*. If you're wanting to compare services then you should be looking at complaints per thousand users.

OP, I would say definately go for the cable: if you're at the end of a long line then you're probably going to have problems with ADSL whereas cable is not distance-dependant.

Do you by any chance work for Virgin Media.:D

epz_2

im on 20 meg and and realisticly only get 15megs down but i suspect its more due to the limits of the other side.

the new speed restrictions might be an issue if you go for a cheap package or download a lot in the evenings but doubt they are worse than adsl