Incorrect. I get a rock-solid 2.33mb/s from Giganews
2.35mb/s for me
maybe you can tweak it to get the extra 0.02MB/sVirgin Cable Any Good ?
- Thread starter wizardmaxx
- Start date
2.35mb/s for me
maybe you can tweak it to get the extra 0.02MB/s
Soldato
- Joined
- 2 Dec 2006
- Posts
- 8,204
I think he speeks the truth. Out of everyone who says how great Virgin is. How many do long downloads? I love the fact that for playing games its perfect and i know i will have a low ping constantly and fast internet. For downloading its hell as you know you will be throttled and dispite the serposid only 5% will be throttled and the only lasting 4hours. It lasts longer then 4 hours and its obious its not just the top 5%.
Only if you hit said quota between the hours of 4pm to 12am. It hasn't affected me atall, I do all my downloading outside of those hours anyway, and despite averaging 300gb a month I have never been throttled. It's much better than the shaping forced upon people by most ADSL providers.
2.35mb/s for me
Quite possibly, but I really can't be arsed to mess about with it for the sake of 0.02MB/s
Fair play to you for adapting your browsing habits to suit the terms and conditions that were changed and forced upon you, I personally however still think it's bang out of order having to rethink how you use your service when you originally signed up for "unlimited" broadband. Up until a few weeks ago the cheeky buggers were still advertising it as "unlimited" without any caveats about their AUP.
How long have you had cable internet btw? You must have noticed some degradation in service - be it actual connection quality or other ancillary factors of your subscription?
All you have to do is read the (sensible) posts on Cableforum.co.uk to see how many people up and down the country on all tiers and packages are sick to the back teeth of Virgin Media's laxy-daisy approach to maintaining their network and their customer base.
That's pretty much what I do
I never believe any ISP when it says it's unlimited anyhow, there's always an asterisk next to the word
I know lots of people have had problems but that can be said of all ISPs, all shops, all mobile phone networks etc.
All I can base my view on is my experience and I've been with them since they were cabletel with very few problems (the only ones I can think of is some limited downtime and being overcharged once which was sorted with a 5 minute phone call) which is why when I moved for a year to Stafford, I had no hesitation about going for VM there.
I haven't changed any 'browsing' habits, there is no way anyone would hit that 3gb daily peak-time limit just 'browsing'. I presume you are talking about my downloading habits, and again I haven't changed anything, I have always done my heavy downloading outside of peak hours due to the hours I work.
7-years plus, ever since the old cableinet days.
There has been some degradtion in general browsing speed, something which I hope the throttling is going some way to alleviate. The only other thing that has degraded to any extent is customer services, but luckily I rarely have to use them as my connection has been near-faultless in 7-years.
I personally think virgins throttling is complete crap, they say that after 4pm, if you download more than 3gig, your speed will be lowed to 5mb (from 20mb)
its 7:50pm and i've downloaded nothing since about lunch time today, and this is the result from 3 different sources on speedtest.net:
im convinced they're throttling people regardless of what you download after 4pm.
I might give them a call tomorrow...
its 7:50pm and i've downloaded nothing since about lunch time today, and this is the result from 3 different sources on speedtest.net:
im convinced they're throttling people regardless of what you download after 4pm.
I might give them a call tomorrow...
I'm on 20MB, according to my router it's been connected for 38 days now and I my home users have downloaded 171.55GB in that time.
Off good sources I get 2.3-2.4mb speeds easily whilst torrents are around 1mb speed but no less than 700-900.
It's good enough for me but of course if I can improve torrent speeds I would be up for trying that! Perhaps I need to tweak uTorrent a bit more.
Off good sources I get 2.3-2.4mb speeds easily whilst torrents are around 1mb speed but no less than 700-900.
It's good enough for me but of course if I can improve torrent speeds I would be up for trying that! Perhaps I need to tweak uTorrent a bit more.
Last edited:
I personally think virgins throttling is complete crap, they say that after 4pm, if you download more than 3gig, your speed will be lowed to 5mb (from 20mb)
its 7:50pm and i've downloaded nothing since about lunch time today, and this is the result from 3 different sources on speedtest.net:
im convinced they're throttling people regardless of what you download after 4pm.
I might give them a call tomorrow...
speedtest is pants... try a news provider and you will more than likely see you can max out your connection, suggesting the problem is elsewhere
as for the OP... anything is better than tiscali
You'll find some love it and some hate it. TBH i've had it in umpteen different places and never had a major problem but then again I worked for them for 4 years so clearly I must be a fanboy and/or a liar
YMMV
You worked for telewest, ntl or Virgin for 4 years?
Unless I'm mistaken, (which I could be
) Virgin have only done cable for a year or less, from when they bought out the other two companies mentioned onwards.I found that my service got poorer when Virgin bought Telewest. A lot poorer.
Last edited:
im on cable 20mb at the minute and its delightful. im only getting about 12MB mind (only! what a shocker) very fast
Upgrade your modem, Virgin will upgrade it for free if you do the new install yourself, its very simple to do, then you will get the full 20Mb
Regards
Vic
You worked for telewest, ntl or Virgin for 4 years?
Unless I'm mistaken, (which I could be
I found that my service got poorer when Virgin bought Telewest. A lot poorer.
Ntl 'merged' with telewest and the combined group bought virgin mobile and called themselves virgin... virgin haven't bought anyone, infact I believe RB only holds ~12% of the shares
You're both wrong NTL acquired TW, ran into problems with the BBC contract that stated the BBC had the right to force the sale of Flextech as it was a partnership between TW as was and the BBC so on paper at least TW purchased NTL (reverse buy out). This was after NTL publically said they dind't want to continue with the Flextech partnership as they didn't see it as part of the future business and did a U turn. NTL:Telewest then purchased Virgin Mobile and the rights to use the Virgin brand for a a fixed period of time. Despite a lot of people assuming that the bearded one is behind it all he's not 9that 12% figure sounds about right if I recall).
As for the service if you saw any difference in the first 6 months it had nothing to do with Virgin, the TW and NTL provisioning systems were not linked in that way and in effect both were run as separate systems, it's only in the last 14 months they've begun to merge the customer service systems and I haven't got a specifics of what they did since I left.
As for the whole 'they forced T&C changes on us' ... Show me an ISP that hasn't introduced a FUP or some form of restriction. I sat down and did the maths and the theoretical difference of what you could download at 20mbit 24/7 compared to the throttled version at peak times was utterly insignificant if you download 24/7. I do however agree that if you only use it during the 'peak' times then you could be frustrated, especially in a multi PC household. Look at the ADSL market if you think it's unfair, several market unlimited then bring in restrictions of tens of GB, on cable it's actually unlimited in terms of volume, all they've done is reduce the speed at peak times, you can still have as much as you want. Still you can't please everyone
NTL acquired TW, ran into problems with the BBC contract that stated the BBC had the right to force the sale of Flextech as it was a partnership between TW as was and the BBC so on paper at least TW purchased NTL (reverse buy out). This was after NTL publically said they dind't want to continue with the Flextech partnership as they didn't see it as part of the future business and did a U turn. NTL:Telewest then purchased Virgin Mobile and the rights to use the Virgin brand for a a fixed period of time. Despite a lot of people assuming that the bearded one is behind it all he's not 9that 12% figure sounds about right if I recall).As for the service if you saw any difference in the first 6 months it had nothing to do with Virgin, the TW and NTL provisioning systems were not linked in that way and in effect both were run as separate systems, it's only in the last 14 months they've begun to merge the customer service systems and I haven't got a specifics of what they did since I left.
As for the whole 'they forced T&C changes on us' ... Show me an ISP that hasn't introduced a FUP or some form of restriction. I sat down and did the maths and the theoretical difference of what you could download at 20mbit 24/7 compared to the throttled version at peak times was utterly insignificant if you download 24/7. I do however agree that if you only use it during the 'peak' times then you could be frustrated, especially in a multi PC household. Look at the ADSL market if you think it's unfair, several market unlimited then bring in restrictions of tens of GB, on cable it's actually unlimited in terms of volume, all they've done is reduce the speed at peak times, you can still have as much as you want. Still you can't please everyone
Last edited:
![[HB]Rugrat](/styles/overclockers/avatars/4.png){kind=avatar}
Associate
- Joined
- 29 Jan 2003
- Posts
- 1,237
I'd echo this - I had 5 or 6 years of great BB service from NTL/Virgin but over the last 6 months it's gone down the toilet and Virgin clearly aren't interested in helping out.
I pay for a 4mb service and during peak times (6pm to about 2am) my download speed fluctuates wildly between about 50kbytes and 120kbytes per second. Previously I'd get a solid 470kbytes per second. This is not down to traffic-shaping kicking in.
Whenever I ring to report a fault they force me to ring the premium-rate "help" line - who tell me they need to do line-tests and they'll call me back. Which they then don't do. I then call the regular support lines who tell me I'll have to call the premium rate number again.
I've been through this a number of times. Hilariously I complained to their customer service team in Glasgow the other day and they told me they weren't able to deal with that type of customer service issue and I'd need to - you guessed it - call the premium rate help line again. They did say they'd compensate me for the loss of service but ONLY when they'd fixed it - without giving any indication as to when or even how my service would get fixed when "Graham" and "Jane" in India were clearly not doing their jobs properly.
I'll be cancelling my contract with them in the near future and complaining to Ofcom about the chronic lack of customer care. As long as everything works they're OK. The minute you need them: forget it, they're a disgrace.
As far as the outsourced tech support goes, I agree 100% - it's pants and it's ludicrously expensive. I was on Telewest (and later Blueyonder) broadband myself years ago and it was fantastic; real geeks answering the phones within three rings, all on an 0800. Regarding the changes to terms and conditions, ANY customer of ANY type of service is entitled to cancel their contract and leave without penalty if the terms and conditions change to their detriment.
In other words, you're allowed to decide whether to accept the changed contract or do a runner. If you stay and accept it, you've only one person to point the finger at
The throttling issue is an important one though, imo. My brother is on 20 megs and is very heavily throttled. VM have since admitted that the whole area is being "traffic managed". I asked them whether that meant my brother was losing service on a ~£40 a month connection due to other people, and they said yes. Basically even if my brother doesn't touch his connection in 24 hours, he'll still connect and not get more than 1mbps sometimes.
"Area traffic management". No thanks.
In other words, you're allowed to decide whether to accept the changed contract or do a runner. If you stay and accept it, you've only one person to point the finger at
The throttling issue is an important one though, imo. My brother is on 20 megs and is very heavily throttled. VM have since admitted that the whole area is being "traffic managed". I asked them whether that meant my brother was losing service on a ~£40 a month connection due to other people, and they said yes. Basically even if my brother doesn't touch his connection in 24 hours, he'll still connect and not get more than 1mbps sometimes.
"Area traffic management". No thanks.
I've had NTL for over 5 years now and it continues to be an absolutely fantastic service. In fact the service keeps getting better and better - the recent traffic throttling HAS made a positive effect on my peak time browsing speeds, which can ONLY be a good thing. I've still managed to download over 500gb in the last 2 months, so you can all relax! I'm in one of their busiest and most over subscribed areas, yet I almost always get my full speed of 2.45mb/s - even more stable than before the traffic throttling came in. I can also say that they do NOT throttle me unless I download the full 3gb.
I've only ever had to phone support a few times, so the fact they charge is no big deal for me. If I had a serious problem that needed lots of calls I'd just get them to pay the bill, which they have said they would do.
I'm only saying this because you often only hear about the negatives. I just wanted to say that they do have happy customers as well. I would happily recommended them to anyone.
I've only ever had to phone support a few times, so the fact they charge is no big deal for me. If I had a serious problem that needed lots of calls I'd just get them to pay the bill, which they have said they would do.
I'm only saying this because you often only hear about the negatives. I just wanted to say that they do have happy customers as well. I would happily recommended them to anyone.
I've had Telewest for years, only very, very minor outages every year or so, excellent service and I recommended it to everyone.
Since Virgin took over, I was still very happy with my 10mb service, but the trouble started when I went up to 20mb, now I normally download at 1mb, often less, at any time of the day or night. Having said that, I can max out the connection now and then, but far too infrequently for my liking.
As a result, I'm going over to Sky Max, even though Virgin offered me the 20mb connection for £25 per month, it's not going to be worth it, even if I only end up with 6mb ADSL, the £15 saving makes up for it.
Since Virgin took over, I was still very happy with my 10mb service, but the trouble started when I went up to 20mb, now I normally download at 1mb, often less, at any time of the day or night. Having said that, I can max out the connection now and then, but far too infrequently for my liking.
As a result, I'm going over to Sky Max, even though Virgin offered me the 20mb connection for £25 per month, it's not going to be worth it, even if I only end up with 6mb ADSL, the £15 saving makes up for it.