Virgin Media want to replace my modem

[Deleted User]

advanta wrote: »

There seem to be an awful lot of complaints and most of the reviews seem to be saying it is worse than the older models.

I suggest you look at the dates of those "complaints". Certainly there were teething problems when it first began to be rolled out some time ago.

I've personally experienced no problems at all.

Why would you want to persevere with an ageing router when you can have a brand spanking new one?

No one is experiencing "weeks" of outage.

John_Gray

The SuperHub 3 is a cable router, not a modem.
Optionally, you can put it into modem mode and add your own router, which is what I've run for very many years. That reduces the likelihood of problems with the router portions of the SuperHub 3.
It won't insulate you from fibre/coax cable problems, but it may be the better option if you need better wireless than the SuperHub 3 can provide.
As previous posters have said, most customers find the VM fibre service to be quite reliable.

stragglebod

I assume they're not spending time and money calling you up and sending out routers just for !!!!!! and giggles.

Browntoa

As above , the replacement modem will be for technical reasons , network upgrade their side and your modem no longer supported so cannot make compatible.

You risk the break in service you seem to be trying to avoid and a wait for the new modem to arrive before you get it working again.

datostar

Virgin Media and its forerunners, Cabletel and NTL in my case, have replaced modems and modem/routers several times over the years as speeds have increased and connection protocols have changed. If they say your old modem will stop working they mean it. I too use a separate router with the Hub 3 in modem mode as I was having problems with wifi coverage and the use of multiple devices. If a new device connected it would kick an existing one off. Mine is an early model of the Hub 3 so newer ones might be better in that respect.

DocQuincy

I've been with Virgin since the NTL days. I have had very few outages in that time and any that I have had have been brief and fixed without me doing anything. You only get problems with Virgin when you have to ring them up since their customer service is really poor. The other issue is the loyalty tax.


Funnily enough my hub (I think it's v1) has started resetting itself. It's really old but they are sending us a v3 and currently it works fine in modem mode with an old router plugged in.


Prior to that I had a NTL router and they strongly recommended I replace it but there was no talk of de-registering it.



If I were you'd I'd accept the new router but keep the old one in case you have issues as it may still work. And if you think it's worth it get a decent router and use the Virgin one in modem mode as has been suggested to mitigate any issues.


Regarding business internet. I have TalkTalk Business in the office; I got it just so I could get a dedicated IP. Do business accounts really cover you better from outages? I assumed it was the same thing.

littlerock

We have a new superhub and it seems to be working ok although no faster. I think you have to replace it as they will be turning off support for the old one at the end of March.

worried_jim

I have the super hub and have zero issues.

[Deleted User]

DocQuincy wrote: »

Do business accounts really cover you better from outages?

Certainly do, but they obviously charge a premium for doing so.

Are you sure you subscribe to a fully guaranteed business connection?

Nilrem

Owain_Moneysaver wrote: »

If they have a technical need to replace their modem, and you don't agree, eventually I suppose they would turn it off.

Yup

All equipment on the VM network has to be tested to work with each other and the network, and that includes the "profiles" the modem uses to tell it which frequencies to use, the number of channels and the speed.

Older modems can't always use the frequencies they plan to use, or can't handle planned speed upgrades.
They are also fairly aggressively trying to remove legacy hardware from their network as it makes it far harder to administer (you need to train staff on hardware that might be 15 years old and only a few thousand left, and test changes with it), and update the network older equipment may not work with newer speeds or be unable to decode the TV channels.
They've been retiring basically anything older than their Tivo boxes and replacing them with V6's because they had so many 15+ year old boxes that couldn't handle HD at all, or could only use MPEG2 decoding which takes up many times more bandwidth per channel than H264), starting with Sky sports HD customers as IIRC Sky changed the contractual requirements for the encryption used and the older boxes couldn't be updated to work with it (some of them IIRC had to have their TV planners limited years back because they couldn't cope with a week of TV listings).

With regards to the modems they often retire models because they're making changes to the speed and the old modem isn't reliable with that speed or frequency range they intend to use so to continue to use it would require keeping a "profile" for it or restricting services available to other users.
For example some of the modems capped out at 10mbit, others choked at 50mb, and still more at 100mb either because they didn't have the ability to use enough of the data "channels" (IE one or two tuners, current ones have about six or more), or the interface to the home network wasn't up to it (10mbit/100mbit sort of kills off your 200mbit package), or the processor in the modem wasn't able to cope with the speeds (an issue with early superhub versions and why at one point the recommendation was put them in "modem only" mode as the router facilities took processing power).

In short if VM tell you they are going to replace the equipment for free, and that refusal will result in the service being lost, they're not joking, it might not happen for months* but it will happen.

On the plus side, it does mean that that if you get a package from VM that states it's X speed, you should always get that speed as the connection to their network, no "well you might get 16mb but you might get 1.5mb because the copper wiring is corroded and held together by sparrow poop and a dead rat and you've got an Acme rather than Emca modem" nonsense (although you still face potential issues with speed due to over utilisation on your part of the network).

As a side note if the op is relying on the BB for business he needs to either get a business package (very expensive compared to consumer), get a back up internet option (mobile phone data connection is about the easiest/cheapest for a few days use), or accept that the internet can go down for a while even with the best provider and hardware, as even if the provider never has an issue with their core network all it takes is a car to hit a cabinet, a digger to cut through a cable or some thieving git to try and steal the cabling thinking it's copper.

I've got one of their superhub 3's here, and it's pretty reliable most of the time, I think I've had a few short (30-60 minute) breaks in service over the last year, but given they've usually happened at something like 1am I'm guessing it's maintenance work.