Virgin Broadband Limiting bandwidth.

Phatness

I had a letter the other day from Virgin telling me how they would be restricting the maximum speed of what they called the "heaviest users" at certain hours of the day.

As a result, despite paying for a 20Mb connection there will be 10 hours of the day when your maximum speed will be reduced to 5mb should you go over a certain threshold (in this case 6Gb).

Now while I admit that you'd have to go some to use up 6Gb in a single day but still.

Does that mean they'll be reducing the price by 75% for that period as well?

Probably not I imagine.

Is it just me or is there a whiff of something wrong with this?


Phat.

peter_the_piper

Its probably quite understandable if someone's downloading/uploading 6gig a day, I don't know of many Isp's which would give you genuinely unlimited downloads, they all seem to have a cap of some sort or other.

IvanOpinion

Everytime the speed gets pushed up we seem to get 'fair use policies' coming into play... i remmeber similar complaints from people who ha da 56K modem, then when we first got broadband etc. In order to stay ahead of the competition I think the latest technology is being released before the infrastructure is fully in place to support it properly .. therefore, in order to be fair to everybody some restrictions have to be put in place.

I don;t think this is unreasonable

Ivan

shandypants5

I understand why they do this but I do think its unreasonable.

Your PAYING for 20mb... you should get 20mb..
Or you should be due a rebate.

Imagine if you payed for 10 gallons of petrol, and then got told that 5 of them will only let you drive at 20mph..

How would you feel?

peter_the_piper

The problem is that if everyone downloaded to the max you would not even get the 5meg speed as the system would grind to a halt. Imagine a piece of pipe which takes 20 gallons a minute, if one person only uses it then they get the whole 20 gallons, if 30 use it then they all get a few drips. For the Isp to get bigger pipes costs a bundle so they have to fit eveyone in the best they can and if someones very greedy then the others lose out.

IvanOpinion

shandypants5 wrote: »

I understand why they do this but I do think its unreasonable.

Your PAYING for 20mb... you should get 20mb..
Or you should be due a rebate.

Imagine if you payed for 10 gallons of petrol, and then got told that 5 of them will only let you drive at 20mph..

How would you feel?

But think of it aas doing 20mph during rush hour traffic .. it wouldn't matter if your limit was 60mph ... however when you get out of rush hour, you get to cruise along at 60mph while everybody else is still doing 20. Hopefully in the near future they will sort this out and you will hear the same story from people when 100mb broadband is available

ivan

shandypants5

Then Bandwidth should be sold as "2mb is what we will allow you most of the time, but 20mb is what you may get if your lucky.

Why should they be allowed to sell 20mb to everyone if they cannot provide 20mb to everyone??

If your lights went dimmer as more and more people switched on lights then you would soon complain

maninthestreet

I would love to get 5MB download speed all the time - where I live, I'm lucky to get even 2MB, most of the time it's between 1 - 1.5 MB.

geri1965_2

I got this letter as well, but to be honest we had noticed it for ages. It's been a crock of sh*te since they took it over.

shandypants5

just off topic for a moment.. Ivan is your sig refering to your post count?
and if so why is that?

brightonman123

OP is best calling / emailing virgin, aksing for tariff 'review', ivo reduced service levels.. if no success than threaten to cancel..?