Virgin Media broadband experiences?

mark66

mark66

mark66

Soldato
Joined
1 May 2003
Posts
3,207
Location
Bucks
Hi,

I currently get my broadband through Sky and currently see around 2.5mb down, 0.6mb up with a ping of around 30ms. Its not bad by any means, but not great either. I am sure its no fault of Sky, more the distance from our local exchange etc.

I've been doing some looking around and I can get 10mb broadband through Virgin with their phone package for £12.50, which is exactly what we pay Sky for our BB and phone.

So I am very tempted to order this, but thought I would have a quick search to check them out before I did and it does seem that there are quite a lot of 'problem' threads. Now I am hoping this is more the case of people only post when something is wrong and not when things are good.

SO....I would like to hear how people find their 10mb Virgin internet?

Do you get exactly 10mb down?
What about upload? I read that it is currently 0.5 but is going to 1mb, has this happened yet?
Also what are the supplied routers like?
Is the service ok for gaming?

Would really like to hear from people as I would hate to swap something that is currently useable to something worse!

Cheers

Mark
 
I had 10 from the upgrade from 2 (free upgrade)

I got max speed down. 6ish on wireless.
Upload I can't remember exactly... it's not good on the 50meg now anyway so :P The upgrades are taking place slowly, no idea when its where when
Had no problems really with my current router they have given me, though I was using my own on 10meg.
Can't really comment as only play MW2 (PC) at the moment and well the system is rubbish so ;)

The only problem i have with virgin is the disgusting customer support they have. Thank god its free with a virgin landline. Also; especially recently the net has randomly gone down for periods of upto 5 hours. Though I know some people near me have been getting power cuts so it could be because of that?
 
I am on 20mb as well, and know people on 10mb and 50mb packages locally. There are quirks and usual modern throttling during peak hours, but it still holds out as one of the top ISPs for delivering up to their stated down/up rates. Stronger than Sky in that aspect, I would say. Upload speeds are also being increased on all packages in the near future, so it is worth a consideration.
 
Been with vm for 10 years. Phoned them regarding problems 3 times, its always been an exchange outage and fixed within hours. Never had any real problems that I can remember. I rate them very high as to what they offer. Been forced to upgrade to their xxl bb as I'm a heavy user around their peak times. I can't fault the service and always get advertised speeds, even since the free dialup days.
 
As above, been with them since they laid the cables ten years ago and had very few problems. Always get the speed advertised.

A few areas get some problems with over-subscription but most are fine. You will always hear more people complaining when things go wrong rather than when things are OK.
 
IrishChr1s said:
Been with vm for 10 years. Phoned them regarding problems 3 times, its always been an exchange outage and fixed within hours. Never had any real problems that I can remember. I rate them very high as to what they offer. Been forced to upgrade to their xxl bb as I'm a heavy user around their peak times. I can't fault the service and always get advertised speeds, even since the free dialup days.
Click to expand...

Some are lucky...
 
As with any of these things it's all fun and games until you eventually have an issue.

Do you get exactly 10mb down?
Yes, unless your local exchange is over subscribed; which is common. Be aware that there are some heavy download restrictions in place.
If you download too much your speed is reduced by 75% for 5hrs or so. You can find details on Virgins web site.

What about upload? I read that it is currently 0.5 but is going to 1mb, has this happened yet?
It's still being rolled out. Some people have it already, yes.

Also what are the supplied routers like?
They work for the most part.

Is the service ok for gaming?
It depends. Usually it's OK for gaming. At the moment as a result of the upload changes there are quite a few people suffering very slow speeds and packet loss.
In my area the cable network was very good for gaming before Virgin took over the operation.
Generally it's not too bad though. Problems are either related to your local area or a peering issue to other networks. (BT/Telia/Level3).
 
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I had Cable from BY>VM for the best part of 5+years.
Always got my max speeds, a little over even on ocassion xD

I had 20Mb Cable from them and only ever had a couple of "outages/faults" both were actually issues in the area. In 7 years I feel thats adequate uptime.

At times I thrashed my connection heavily, never had a FUP or warning letter.

Were currently looking at buying a new house part of the spec was Virgin Media, cable coverage ;)

Current premises is Sky ADSL, must say however I've also not had any issues with them either and again I've thrashed the connection at times.
 
Gutted. Order the BB and phone last week and they arrived to do the install today.....however apparently a car was parked over their junction box in the street just around the corner and therefore they couldn't get down the hole to feed the cable to my house! They had tried a few days earlier to do the routing, but the same car was parked there and they are not allowed to leave notes on peoples cars!!

I didn't realise that they needed to physically route the cable to the access point, I just assumed that all the cabling was already under the pavement. But apparently not, they use some sort of long rods, a bit like drain clearers, to push the cable along until they can hook it out when it gets to the house!
 
mark66 said:
Gutted. Order the BB and phone last week and they arrived to do the install today.....however apparently a car was parked over their junction box in the street just around the corner and therefore they couldn't get down the hole to feed the cable to my house! They had tried a few days earlier to do the routing, but the same car was parked there and they are not allowed to leave notes on peoples cars!!

I didn't realise that they needed to physically route the cable to the access point, I just assumed that all the cabling was already under the pavement. But apparently not, they use some sort of long rods, a bit like drain clearers, to push the cable along until they can hook it out when it gets to the house!
Click to expand...

Next time they're coming leave a note on the car a day or two before.
 
Vm is fine for gaming, 2 years ago (when the base package was 2mb instead of 10) me and a mate could both play DoD or CSS down the connection at the same time no problems (till we got kicked for being on the same ip address) and at 10mb 8-9 of us shared it fine last year, with 3-4 of us playing online games all that the same time.

This year there's just 2 of us and games are fun, but were on a different bit of the belfast exchange and our connection collapses once a month from some unknown reason and we have to ring up to get them to sort it out... Fingers crossed it going ok for now though
 
im on the 20mb connection and am very happy as of lately. i have downloaded 150GB this month and haven't experienced any throttling at all.
 
kona786 said:
im on the 20mb connection and am very happy as of lately. i have downloaded 150GB this month and haven't experienced any throttling at all.
Click to expand...
Not run into any traffic management?

230GB this month on the 50meg, of course no limits or throttling
 
I always get throttled... from about 5PM to 11PM and i also get throttled when the line is running full speed...

I have 10mb package but get only about 290kb/s tops under throttle.
 
pingwing said:
Vm is fine for gaming, 2 years ago (when the base package was 2mb instead of 10) me and a mate could both play DoD or CSS down the connection at the same time no problems (till we got kicked for being on the same ip address) and at 10mb 8-9 of us shared it fine last year, with 3-4 of us playing online games all that the same time.

This year there's just 2 of us and games are fun, but were on a different bit of the belfast exchange and our connection collapses once a month from some unknown reason and we have to ring up to get them to sort it out... Fingers crossed it going ok for now though
Click to expand...

What exchange are you on? That happens to me every couple of months.
 
I'm really upset about how Virgin works with existing customers. I really want to upgrade my broadband to 50MB from 20MB but that seems to be a problem.

First Virgin system is not working as a matter of experience I went through months ago and now the same thing. when I go to the Virgin website and choose to upgrade my broadband for £28 pounds month, the system tells that I'm good to go then they tell me to phone them. When I phone them they say it will cost £20 pounds more + what I'm actually paying. In the end I will be paying £58 pounds for it when in fact I should be paying only £28 per month.

I told them months ago about this and nothing yet has been done to solve this problem. Since then I have been thinking to terminate my existing contract of 6 years. Kind sad they don't care about existing customers.
 
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