Should I get 10mb or 20mb Virgin broadband?

pinkacidbootson

pinkacidbootson

pinkacidbootson

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Rhone-Alpes, France
I'm moving into my second year student house soon and will need internet, there's already a cable box installed and I think the previous tenants used VM. It's got a BT line, but I just typed my postcode into the Be website and it says "no service". Also I got this result from the BT ADSL checker:


"Your exchange is ADSL enabled, and our initial check on your address indicates that your line should be able to have an ADSL broadband service that provides a line rate up to 2Mbps.

Our check also indicates that your line currently supports a potential ADSL Max broadband line rate of 5Mbps up to 8Mbps.

Your exchange is planned to have ADSL WBC by 31st March 2009. Our check also indicates that your line currently supports a potential ADSL WBC broadband line rate of 7Mbps."


I am looking at getting either 10 or 20mb from VM, but I've read about all the problems with VM and I'm wondering if there's even any point getting the 20mb. There's 7 of us in the house, and will only cost about 50p-£1 more each per month to get 20mb over 10mb, but would the 20mb actually end up any better than 10mb?
 
20MB will definitely be better to share. With VM though you will soon get into trouble if that number of people are fairly heavy users or internet ******. Definately worth checking www.bethere.co.uk (currently true unlimited usage and good 24MB connections) or consider using an Entanet reseller such as Vivaciti (good ADSL max connections with a large choice of limits for daytime usage and fairly long off peak hours with massive off peak limits).
 
I'm the only heavy user in the house, since I sometimes download large files and I do a bit of online gaming. Everyone else just uses the internet mainly for things like Facebook, BBC iPlayer, downloading songs etc.
I will be buying myself a second router to go in my bedroom as well.
 
I think it is about 50GB a month that will set the alarm bells of at Virgin (that or filesharing). I had to leave Virgin because I regularly used over that (I would be surprised if 7 students didn't too). My friend has just had a warning letter through the post fo filesharing and torrents.

Up to you, but Virgin are cracking down on high users and illegal users, the customer service is atrocious and the connection rarely runs at anything like it should these days (according to numerous internet accounts of experiences). I would rather have an 8MB line that I can use how I please than a rubbish 20MB connection.
 
Oh and yes I am pretty sure you can use an old V Box (if already installed and connected) for the basic 5 analogue channels without subscription.
 
broadbandchecker.co.uk tells me that up to 16mb is available in my area, so I'm looking at 16mb Sky broadband now. Is there any way of getting someone in to check how good my BT line is for broadband?
 
on cable an old set top will get you 1-5 with several extras.. only if it is from the area though, say one form a different place will not work at all

on the other front at the moment in most places there is the analog bypass that has 1-5 and some other stuff on there depending on area and how good your TV is. you will still need a tv license for any of this of course.

overall if u can get a box that is from where u are planning to use it (that city) it will be ok... you need a card in it too else it will nag u for a card to be put in. if you cannot be bothered or for the time being just use the analog ones.
 
So if I just connect the cable into a TV it won't just pick up the standard channels?

Back on topic, how would I find out what the fastest possible broadband I could get is through my BT line?
 
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AFAIK thats like asking how long is a piece of string (literally).

You could use SamKnows to give you a rough idea or even ask your neighbours potentially (though you could always be 'wired' differently so what you get is totally different to what your neighbour has). The only way to get an accurate figure would have been asking the previous tenants (if they had ADSL) what speed they were getting...

ps3ud0 :cool:
 
I'm almost certain the previous tenants had virgin media for internet.

Here's what I get from samknows...

"The following services are available in your location:

BT Wholesale ADSL
BT Wholesale ADSL Max
BT Wholesale SDSL
AOL LLU
Bulldog LLU
TalkTalk (CPW) LLU
Sky Broadband / Easynet LLU
Orange LLU (Formerly Wanadoo)
Virgin Media (Cable)

According to BT Wholesale, your address should be able to support a 5Mbps or greater ADSL connection via ADSL Max."

It also says I'm 1.5km from the exchange.

According to the map I can get ADSL2 at ~6mb in my area, so it looks like I'll be going with VM.
 
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simon50 said:
So if I just connect the cable into a TV it won't just pick up the standard channels?

Back on topic, how would I find out what the fastest possible broadband I could get is through my BT line?
Click to expand...

Yes you can. We did this up until the en of this year. We plugged the cable feed into the TV using an f-coax adaptor and we received channels 1-5, plus eurosport, E4, MTV and a few others. Nottingham sends analogue signals still so it worke for us. We were using a fairly newish Philips TV.
 
if you want ot pirate films and music get 20mb otherwise 10mb is loads...

With virgin you can ask for the bandwidth to be changed over the phone and then get it put back a few weeks/months later.. the change takes 24hours top kicj in so they say (but usually 5mins from experience) - they did not change me anythign extra other than than the cost diference between the speeds...
 
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