Virgin Broadband Limiting bandwidth.

globalds

You have to be a heavy user and there is only one realistic way that you will be up/downloading this much on a regular basis.
So OP just shut down some of the torrents you are seeding .
The cap is only for peak times
The bad news is virgin are up to this at the moment too.
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/06/09/1447231.shtml?tid=158
So expect a letter through the post sometime soon

mandi

brightonman123 wrote: »

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

and if he does, he can expect a whole lot of CRAP of them ..

Dont waste your time e mailing OP they wont reply ..





Soirry I couldnt be constructive.. but I have nothing but contempt for Virgin ..

Older_but_not_wiser_2

Phatness wrote: »

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.

Some people would give an arm and a leg for a 5 Meg speed.

swake

globalds wrote: »

You have to be a heavy user and there is only one realistic way that you will be up/downloading this much on a regular basis.
So OP just shut down some of the torrents you are seeding .
The cap is only for peak times
The bad news is virgin are up to this at the moment too.
http://yro.slashdot.org/yro/08/06/09/1447231.shtml?tid=158
So expect a letter through the post sometime soon

Interesting read.

I thought my opinion of virgin couldnt go any lower.

You have proved me wrong

mustrum_ridcully

Actually this throttling is reasonably fair, a lot more fair than the download caps where they might put you on a business tariff if you download an "unreasonable amount". If you need to download linux distros or games via steam or pirate movies/mp3s you can do it at night with no throttling.

If you want a petrol analogy, think of the fiber optic cable as petrol station, it has say 100 gallons of petrol, if people buy petrol normally they won't run out. However as soon as the panic buyers turn up filling up their tank, boot, glove box, radiator... with fuel they'll run out, so they limit every one to 2 litres.

shandypants5

But sureley, if they CAN limit everyone, they SHOULD limit everyone.
So that EVERYONE gets what they paid for?

If the system wont handle everyone on 20mb why are they allowed to sell it?

They should sell it as 5mb (priced accordingly) and tell people that sometimes they MAY be able to get 20mb if they download at night or other low trafic times.

Like throttling in reverse, you get what you paid for, and sometimes you get a bonus.

If people really need 20mb they should be able to then pay extra for it and have it guaranteed.

My issue is not with bandwidth throttling, I see why this has to be done.
But why should I PAY all the time for something that I cannot get all the time?

soolin

I'm stuck with the so called fast Virgin broadband as well, I sometimes limp along to 2mb, but that is on a good day.

They just keep blaming my set up and insists that all is well with them, yet sometimes the connection dies entirely, and that is still my fault apparently as they never show any reported problems.

shandypants5

soolin wrote: »

I'm stuck with the so called fast Virgin broadband as well, I sometimes limp along to 2mb, but that is on a good day.

They just keep blaming my set up and insists that all is well with them, yet sometimes the connection dies entirely, and that is still my fault apparently as they never show any reported problems.

I get the same....
Connection just vanishes.. then comes back.

Online gaming is impossible.

Vampgirl

shandypants5 wrote: »

But sureley, if they CAN limit everyone, they SHOULD limit everyone.
So that EVERYONE gets what they paid for?

If the system wont handle everyone on 20mb why are they allowed to sell it?

They should sell it as 5mb (priced accordingly) and tell people that sometimes they MAY be able to get 20mb if they download at night or other low trafic times.

Like throttling in reverse, you get what you paid for, and sometimes you get a bonus.

If people really need 20mb they should be able to then pay extra for it and have it guaranteed.

My issue is not with bandwidth throttling, I see why this has to be done.
But why should I PAY all the time for something that I cannot get all the time?

The thing is that you ARE already paying for for the setup you're getting - what you are paying for is internet access with bandwidth UPTO 20MB. Guaranteed 20MB would be a LOT more expensive than what you're paying. Pretty much all residential services work this way, and many of the business DSL services do too. If you want guaranteed bandwidth then DSL/cable is not the right product for you: you'd need something like a business ethernet product and the cost of that would over £1000 per month. You pays your money, you takes your choice!

ISPs would not be able to survive financially if they had sufficient bandwidth for every user to have access to their max bandwidth on DSL/cable networks - there would be huge amounts of spare capacity. 2MB is perfectly sufficient for most people's day to day needs - we have 2MB cable broadband and that is perfectly fine for two people working all day from home plus surfing/downloading/etc out of hours.

d.ylan

All I can suggest is to do what I've just done, this letter was the straw the broken the camels back.

I signed up to BT and Sky the day that letter came through. The £120 BT new line installation fee was reduced to £30 for an 18month contract offer.

It means I'm going to have higher bills this month to cover the installation charges and overlap between virginmedia termination and sky/bt activation, but after that my house will be free of the monopoly for the future, giving us the power of choice back.

I chose Bethere as my new isp on the BT line too, new BT line wired up on one day, and Bethere was up on running three days later with no stupid caps.

Very dissapointed in VirginMedia's service, provisions and prices, and plans to implement the privacy-invading and currently-legally-dubious Phorm adware systems. Not to mention the attitude of the man at the helm,

Virgin Media CEO Neil Berkett has attacked the principle of net neutrality, whereby internet service providers do not interfere with or degrade the speed at which content is delivered from websites to consumers, branding it as "b****cks".

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitaltv/a93556/virgin-media-ceo-attacks-net-neutrality.html