Virgin Fibre... you thoughts?

_Jimlad_

_Jimlad_

_Jimlad_

Soldato
Joined
5 Jun 2005
Posts
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Southampton
so i live in a rubbish BB area, 2.5mb is MAX and more often or not its 1.5mb and that is with o2/B, others are worse. Utube, Iplayer unwatchable

Anyway Virgin have just laid fibre optic, and i signed up for a 30mb line, they said on the phone they can guarantee pretty much at least 25mb all the time????? (big claim)

what are your views on them ?
 
been with ntl/virgin for 10 years with all speeds.

I always get the speed quoted. right now on 100MB and it get it.

dealing with them is another matter. They mess everything up, but when you get service and no need to contact them its fine.
 
Just hope you never get oversubscription problems. I had oversub issues for about 3 months. They downright refused to do anything at all. Their tech support team's prime motto is "Just lie to shut them up".

In the end I upgraded to 50Mb and its been brilliant since.
 
_Jimlad_ said:
Anyway Virgin have just laid fibre optic, and i signed up for a 30mb line, they said on the phone they can guarantee pretty much at least 25mb all the time????? (big claim)

what are your views on them ?
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They can't guarantee 25Mb/s. A lot of users are seeing congestion during peak periods.
 
Virgin are good when it's working fine lol, On the odd occasion it likes to play up other than that I can't fault it, good ping and my speeds are usualy between 25-30mbs (on 30mb), upload is always around 3mb.
 
I pay for 30 Mb, and get exactly that (actually I get a little over 30 Mb). I'm not in an oversubscribed area though, those who are do not always get as great a service.

When there is problems I find they have decent tech support if you know where to go. On the phone they are useless but if you go to their community forum and post a thread in the tech support section they get to it fast and can easily perform remote diagnostics and arrange engineers if needed.
 
Install is tomorrow for up to 30mb. Im hoping and wishing a lot sunderland north isnt a oversubed area. Thankfully the uni is over the river and they and students i think would be using sunderlands (not sunderland north) exchange.

Will post some tests if requested.

In my view anythings better than adsl as up to 24mb im getting 4500sync which is about 450 ish dl speed and upload speed of about 950k which is about 90k upload speed tho i limit it to 70-80 so as not to slow any downloads down or browsing. I am also hoping disconnections wont happen as with virgin there shouldnt be any length problems like with adsl or weather problems as its mostly underground in shielded pipes.

I will be using wired not wireless tho if i do get a mobile smartphone as im cutting bt off while im getting rid of BE internet i will need a new phone service and didnt want virgins and should get a mobile cos all my familys on em so txting would make it uber cheap to keep in touch and free mins. Sorry getting offtopic there but as i was saying if i get a phone i might use wireless with the superhub and i hope not to get too many issues with it.
 
Over subscribed areas are a pain as they don't tend to do much about it :( (happened last 2 places I lived in Belfast, but they were over populated student bits and it levelled out after peak times).

Speeds are a sure thing, never get drop offs or anything bad unless there is a real network problem (again rare).

Only thing to be wary of is to follow the fair usage programme for your package (this is key for VM). Unless you pay for the top package you are restricted to downloading "only" 500mb between 4pm and 9pm with your speeds crippled to one 10th for 5 hours if you go over it. Not actually bad as its pretty hard to break it (unless you have a need to download at peak times all the time) but when the cap comes in you'll know :( (had a **** who lived with us in 3rd year who could not understand the idea of not downloading at some times so we shouted at him a lot)

Anyway VM are pretty good overall :) (though I haven't experienced a bad adsl connection for a long time either as no one uses adsl in vm areas so either way you'll probably end up with the best of both worlds depending on how many people you are catering for with one connection...)
 
Honestly the best package to avoid major congestion is 50mb, as you'll get more priority over the people on the 30mb ones. Just see how 30mb is first now, since it's only been freshly laid it should be fine for you... until it gets popular in your area.
 
benftl said:
@jimlad, whereabouts in Southampton are you?
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im in bassett, and i kid you not, its impossible for any standard BB provider to get more than 2.5mb, only o2 and B can get that, sky and talk talk for example are often around 1mb and peek times its like have 56k - i think this will be a lot better for me !

i have run speed test on 4 of my neighbours pc's and done a 'joint' complaint letter in the past
 
3dcandy said:
maybe you have aluminium cables instead of copper in your area jimlad...
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BT said it was the length of distance to the exchange and not much they can do. Anyway signed up with Virgin for the 30mb, coming in 2 weeks, as long as it gets over 5mb i will be well happy.

i could not see any 500mb capping in the small print?
 
_Jimlad_ said:
BT said it was the length of distance to the exchange and not much they can do. Anyway signed up with Virgin for the 30mb, coming in 2 weeks, as long as it gets over 5mb i will be well happy.

i could not see any 500mb capping in the small print?
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I was in portswood for several years and we had similar problems. Southampton is majorly bad for ADSL and I couldn't find anywhere with cable. I want to move back there but the internet would be a real problem as atm I have 50mb just down the coast.
 
oxygene said:
I was in portswood for several years and we had similar problems. Southampton is majorly bad for ADSL and I couldn't find anywhere with cable. I want to move back there but the internet would be a real problem as atm I have 50mb just down the coast.
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well im close to portswood, and virgin have laid the whole area, for me this virgin line is gonna be amazing! going from 1.5mb at peek times to ANYWHERE near 30mb is gonna be a deal breaker, roll on the 19th dec for install!
 
30mb connection is 10gig usage from about 10am till 3pm and 5gb usage from 4 till 9pm (i think its 9). Upload is unlimited except from 3-8pm (i think) and allowance is 4gb i think.

Providing you are using the increased upload speed tarrifs.
 
It's not fibre.

It's not particularly good for gaming.

But overall it's probably better than a 2.5meg ADSL sync.
 
been with them for 4years now.

was on 10mb i got 11.5mb down.

20m got 22mb down

50mb got 55mb down

now on 100mb and i get about 110 down.

Always been rock solid up and down.

Fibre doesn't have the problem of copper of degrading over distance.

Only problem you can ever have is conjeston, personally never seen it.

And ping wise, i've always been stupidly low, getting 5ms on some CSS servers in london!
 
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