Virgin customers

[BloodOmen]

So whats Virgin like exactly? was tempted to try them since Virgin is testing 1.5gig download / 150mb ul lines atm (source below). All i've heard from people on Virgin tho is "Its fucking shit"

http://pressoffice.virginmedia.com/phoenix.zhtml?c=205406&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1552055&highlight

 

[Rulke]

Generally - it's not bad. I've been with them for cable/tv since they bought out blueyonder a while back.

I've got a 20mb line which is awesome (2.4mb/s even at peak times) BUT if I use it too much during the day it's throttled to a quarter of that. "Too much" being around 3gb in 3 hours or something - so not much

I'm not sure about bandwidth shaping - i noticed I was getting slower speed for my usenet downloads but just changed em to port 80 and it's all good.

I've got a V+ box and the full TV package. TBH I don't really use it since I've set up sick beard. The interface on the V+ box is slow and clunky and randomly resets itself every so often (once a month at least)

Their telephone support is horrendous (indians ofc) though I've only had to call them a few times.

 

[BloodOmen]

Ah, reckon i'll avoid then :/ drawn between who to go with because fibre becomes available in my area around june/july and I want shed loads of upload speed for better pings when playing on usa/japanese servers + obv I want to upload stuff, so far i've only checked BT and TalkTalk (i'm with TalkTalk currently) and the results of the fibre test for those 2 were:


BT: 36.9mb/s DL - 9.1mb/s UL

TalkTalk: 36.9mb/s DL - 2mb/s UL (the reason they gave for the shit upload when I asked was "We capped it at 2mb/s so you can max out your download speed" which was quite a wank reason I thought)

TalkTalk havent been bad tho, i've been with them for about 14 months now and i've literally never had a single issue with them and my adsl has been mega fast despite downloading mountains of stuff from the net (like literally 200-300gig a month) never been throttled once.

Edit: I heard BT were quite good aswell but were alot more strict when it comes to fair useage.

 

[Trem]

Virgin is very good, also everyone on 20mb lines will get it increased to 30mb free of charge before the end of the summer.

I am on 30mb and download *lots* and I rarely notice any shaping, VM are by far the fastest *download* isp available, but like has been said don't expect any support if you ring them.

They are the best of a bad bunch in this country.

BT can CTFO!

 

[Edmond]

Ahem.......BT 40mb

that is all

 

[BloodOmen]

Ahem.......BT 40mb

that is all

aye thats what I was looking at, do you already have it Edmond? the fibre that is? and if so whats your download/upload speed like in kb/s?

 

[Ch3tan]

They are the best for speed and giving you what the claim to. They are ruddy awful for customer service, and their traffic shaping and fair use policy is borderline fascist. If you are a regular gamer or downloader, stay clear.

I left them a year ago for sky. Now I only get 6meg instead of the 20 I was getting with Virgin, but I always get that 6meg, it never gets halved or worse.

 

[Moriath]

Ahem ... VM 50mb had it for over a year now

100mb rolling out

My 50 mb i get around 48 down most of the time

No issues here with their TV or anything either

YEs sometimes support can be an arse but thats the same with BT when i was with them and any other big firm tbh

Oh and Tivo Roxxorzzz!



No traffic shaping on 50 mb unless you upload over a certain number of gig during peak times when they restrict the account for 4 hours but i neve rupload that much so doesnt affect me

 

[Ch3tan]

Yes, but the 50meg is bloody expensive... the traffic shaping on the normal packages is really, really bad

 

[Edmond]

aye thats what I was looking at, do you already have it Edmond? the fibre that is? and if so whats your download/upload speed like in kb/s?

Yes, Infinity is what i have, I'm getting average 39 down and 8 up. Never had a problem with BT tbh, i was with Virgin once for just a phone line, it took them 2 months to get it up and running, and cos the muppet who installed it didnt sign the job off, they disconnected me after 7 days. When i complained they said i couldn't have back the same number as it had already been asigned to someone else

This was a business line and i had printed all my paperwork with the new number as well, i was pissed, and they offered no form of compensation either

The only reason i went with Virgin was they were doing a line install for £11.99 compared to BT £125.00

I spoke to the guy at BT and told him i needed a line in quickly and explained what had happened with Virgin, and they fitted it for free

Virgin can shove it up their :kissit:, where as BT can have big man hugs :wub:

 

[soze]

I am waiting for BT to roll out FTTC in my area and then waiting for SKY to re sell it. They are the only people I am aware off who do not over sell the Network BT and Virgin both slow down during peak times for me. But SKY is a constant 20MB.

 

[BloodOmen]

Ahem ... VM 50mb had it for over a year now

100mb rolling out

My 50 mb i get around 48 down most of the time

No issues here with their TV or anything either

YEs sometimes support can be an arse but thats the same with BT when i was with them and any other big firm tbh

Oh and Tivo Roxxorzzz!



No traffic shaping on 50 mb unless you upload over a certain number of gig during peak times when they restrict the account for 4 hours but i neve rupload that much so doesnt affect me

Ahh, so in theory if I were to get 50mb and only uploaded during Off-peak hours it should never get throttled? and I could download as much as I wanted even during peak hours?



Edit: nm found this on VM site


"How does it affect me?
Customers with Broadband size: 100 (100Mb) – your usage excluding file sharing traffic (see below) is unaffected.

Customers with Broadband size: XXL (50Mb) – your downstream usage excluding file sharing traffic (see below) remains unaffected and we'll soon be increasing your upload speeds from 1.5Mb to 5Mb. However during peak times we'll need to slow you back to 1.75Mb if your upload usage is particularly high.

Customers with Broadband size: XL / L / M – during peak times, we moderate the speeds of the very small proportion of customers who are downloading and/or uploading an unusually high amount. Where we improve upload speeds, we'll also be adjusting our traffic management in the upgraded areas so everyone can get a fair share.

National Broadband customers

This policy applies for our cable customers only.

There's a separate policy for our National broadband customers (if you get broadband down your normal phone line)."


Am I reading that right? its a little confusing, what i'm seeing is basically "You can download as much as you want when you want and we won't throttle your download speed ever providing you have 50mb-100mb BUT if you share files (aka upload) during peak hours you will be throttled from 5mb/s ul to 1.75mb/s upload (download speed will always remain unaffected).

 

[BloodOmen]

Trying to find out what the FUP is for BT Infinity but i'm having trouble finding it oO looking on the forums all I find is jibberish from people all claiming different caps... anyone know what it is? the most credible one i've found so far is "300gb a month during peak hours"

 

[Wazzerphuk]

I was on Virgin, and the throttling isn't really much of a problem in reality. They do do it but they don't throttle you too hard.

The download speeds are bloody fast. Once you're up and running you'll be set for life, but if you do have any tech issues they can be pretty slow.

 

[Yaka]

beem with vermin over 12 years now, when things got bad they were terrible but things are somewhat better nownot brilliant.

BB is preety much wat wazz says, tho they lump you with the awful superhub rather than a stand alone modem.

tv side slightly has improved with tivo i got qouted £150 install and £140 a month subs fee i said no kept my V+ box which 2 weeks later began randomly rebooting and began sparking inside. after a bit of talking i got tivo with my normal fee and i dont pay for first 3 months

 

[Moriath]

140 a month .. lol think thats a typo ?

Im on VIP package get Tivo for 150 install and 0 a month with tv sky sports, movies and hd with espn thrown in free
2 boxes xl tv and phone with unlimited calls and 50meg bb its a smidge over 100 quid a month total

 

[Trem]

Ahem.......BT 40mb

that is all

*cough*.......*flem*...........*fart* BT 40mb for how many customers? I can get 4mb maximum from BT.

 

[GReaper]

thinkbroadband has a list of FTTC ISPs which you might find useful.

 

[Yaka]

140 a month .. lol think thats a typo ?

Im on VIP package get Tivo for 150 install and 0 a month with tv sky sports, movies and hd with espn thrown in free
2 boxes xl tv and phone with unlimited calls and 50meg bb its a smidge over 100 quid a month total

nope the woman wouldnt budge at the time, remmber being pissed about it at the time, when the V+ b0rked weeks later i mentioned it to the guy i was talking to told him how upset i was he just put me on hold for a good while said his boss oked it. lucked out i guess

 

[BloodOmen]

Got the relevant info for BT Infinity now

Installation fee: £0.00

Monthly Cost: £28 not including phone costs and what not

i'll be getting the unlimited plan (which clocked in for my line at 37 down 8 up) quoted from the people who gave me the info

"Infinity Option 2 - Completely unlimited, fair usage of 300 has been removed. No download restrictions or throttling."

"P2P is throttled heavily at ‘peak times’ but is full speed after midnight."

Theres me sorted I only ever downloaded at night anyway.

 

[Syri]

From what I've heard, the connection on the cable side is great. Goes pretty fast, and reliable. Customer service, pretty much awful. Service on a BT line, absolutely shite. was stuck with their ADSL service because they haven't finished off the job of cabling my village (company they bought out ran out of cash half way through, they didn't bother to finish it off)
so basically, if they've cabled the area, and you don't think you'll need to talk to them much, it's fine. otherwise, avoid. that's my take on it at least.

 

[Wazzerphuk]

Lol, they claim no throttling and they say they throttle p2p. Do they hope people stop reading early?

 

[Access Denied]

Lol, they claim no throttling and they say they throttle p2p. Do they hope people stop reading early?

Question about that actually. Is there any way to hide that what you're doing is p2p? Aside from programs like Peer Guardian which I've been told is crap. Seems to me that if I can fool BT into thinking that what I'm downloading isn't p2p it won't be throttled since direct downloads aren't affected. Maybe route all p2p traffic through that port?

 

[BloodOmen]

Lol, they claim no throttling and they say they throttle p2p. Do they hope people stop reading early?

its 2 different people thats quoted from, the first one meant you dont get throttled for downloading mountains of things (like with other ISP's if you downloaded say 15gig in 1 hour) and the second one meant you do get throttled with P2P during peak hours, torrents go slow as hell for example until midnight.

 

[BloodOmen]

From what I've heard, the connection on the cable side is great. Goes pretty fast, and reliable. Customer service, pretty much awful. Service on a BT line, absolutely shite. was stuck with their ADSL service because they haven't finished off the job of cabling my village (company they bought out ran out of cash half way through, they didn't bother to finish it off)
so basically, if they've cabled the area, and you don't think you'll need to talk to them much, it's fine. otherwise, avoid. that's my take on it at least.

yea they said the customer service is shit because its an indian call centre, they said the best way to get problems resolved is contacting ELC or a moderator on the official BT forums, they said it gets sorted surprisingly fast then.

 

[Roo Stercogburn]

Careful of BT Infinity if you use VPNs at all. Their new Cisco-based boxes cock up royally and all BT will say to you is that its working fine, nay luck, upgrade to business broadband. Note they don't actually guarantee to fix it, they just tell you to upgrade

 

[eksdee]

Virgin are a horrendous shower of *****. End of. If you can possibly avoid them, do so.

 

[Moriath]

Virgin are a horrendous shower of *****. End of. If you can possibly avoid them, do so.

In your opinion.

 

[eksdee]

No shit sherlock. :C

 

[GReaper]

I'd personally avoid them as well, but if you want more than 40Mbit/s, or your old ADSL connection is just too far from the exchange for a decent connection - it's the only option (if it's available).

The only other thing is that FTTC connections are still fairly new, I'd personally wait for one of the LLU providers to offer some nice high bandwidth minimum throttling option. At the moment all we've got are ISPs which are reselling a BT service - hence the rather poor monthly download limits on most of the packages.

But for users who are stuck with ADSL1 speeds, they probably don't care - anything is an improvement.