Some people get rubbish speeds because the router is not upright!!

boatman

Virgin CEO on Watchdog has just blamed their rubbish speeds in the evening on people not standing their router upright!!!???
I kid you not....

I've heard some rubbish in my time but that really is scraping the barrel.

glentoran99

Its not rubbish at all, even moving your router slightly can change the speed

IAmWales

There is some truth to this, for all providers. Also ensuring your cabling is not pulled tight around doorways or snagging on anything can help.

Sometimes we overlook trivial suggestions that can make a difference.

AndyPK

Wifi speed I guess ?

Neil_Jones

I suspect Watchdog were talking about the wi-fi speed, for which position can make a difference, as can moving it away from your cordless telephone. As regards to the actual speed of the internet itself generally the router position, unless its on a very long data cable, shouldn't really make a lot of difference.

lee111s

Clutching at straws.

In reality, parts of their network are just too congested and they're too slow at increasing capacity.

kwikbreaks

Yes. And now they've been called out but they'll still keep selling in areas way past their upgrade date.

I know from experience once things start going wrong it takes months for them to be fixed.

boatman

The CEO was 'trying' to defend the speed customers actually receive. Watchdog did tests over the course of a week and people were getting 6mbps not 200mbps, but in the shops they were still telling people even on a bad day it might be 150 instead of 200!! Sorry but having your router on its side does not change a speed from 200 to 6.. Just made him look stupid.

Yes putting it on its side will affect wifi, but the whole point in the story was about their 'over utilisation' of the network.
Link here, comment at 11mins 40secs.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0580rbt

wongataa

Neil_Jones wrote: »

I suspect Watchdog were talking about the wi-fi speed, for which position can make a difference, as can moving it away from your cordless telephone.

That shouldn't make much difference. Wi-Fi uses the 2.4GHz band. DECT phones in Europe use 1.9GHz so there shouldn't be interference.

Neil_Jones

wongataa wrote: »

That shouldn't make much difference. Wi-Fi uses the 2.4GHz band. DECT phones in Europe use 1.9GHz so there shouldn't be interference.

Hmm. Could swear I heard somewhere moving DECT phones from near a router could reduce interference or is this something I've dreamt up and took as fact? Wouldn't be the first time that's happened...

kwikbreaks

You probably read it on an internet forum. Possibly this one or maybe one in a region where DECT phones use 2.4GHz if there is one, I've got a secret to share with you - not everything you read on the internet is true. On the subject of broadband I'd go as far as suggesting a good 50% of what you read is BS. Possibly this post is too.

Given the amount of BS it would help not to repeat things that have been read unless you have a good technical reason for believing they are true.

Perhaps the VM CEO read that putting their hub on its side would trash the speed. My guess would be close to zero difference. Perhaps somebody on VM could try a quick experiment and report their findings.