Virgin Media Discussion Thread

See Virgin Media and 02 are merging,Unsure if this will be a good or bad thing,Will we see yet more price rises now 02 also has a say in it..already paying more than enough :D
 
Nevakonaza said:
See Virgin Media and 02 are merging,Unsure if this will be a good or bad thing,Will we see yet more price rises now 02 also has a say in it..already paying more than enough :D
Click to expand...

Hard to say, perhaps a good thing reading they want to reduce operating costs down 6b by year 5. It may help to be more competitive with their pricing model.

It's a wait and see I guess!
 
Madeddie said:
Hard to say, perhaps a good thing reading they want to reduce operating costs down 6b by year 5. It may help to be more competitive with their pricing model.

It's a wait and see I guess!
Click to expand...

They'll just sack people and increase their profits because of lower overheads. They won't be lowering prices. I'd be surprised if the regulator allows it to happen given they blocked an Asda/Sainsburys merger last year.
 
Steampunk said:
They'll just sack people and increase their profits because of lower overheads. They won't be lowering prices. I'd be surprised if the regulator allows it to happen given they blocked an Asda/Sainsburys merger last year.
Click to expand...

Why wouldn't they allow it? They allowed BT to buy EE which is one of Virgin's and O2's reasoning for doing this.
 
Madeddie said:
Hard to say, perhaps a good thing reading they want to reduce operating costs down 6b by year 5. It may help to be more competitive with their pricing model.

It's a wait and see I guess!
Click to expand...
What worries me is if Virgin do to O2 what they have already done with Virgin Mobile now - move all their call centres offshore. This seems to be a common tactic with Virgin and it riles me so much as I like to speak to somebody who doesn't strangle conversations with their language barrier. I dread the days of dealing with script monkeys if Virgin Media call centres are anything to go by. :eek:
 
Since the start of around May my download seed has halved to around 150-200Mbps max. It's ever since that recent issue nationwide affecting people. I posted about it on VM forums seeing if a VM rep comments as it's impossible getting through to anyone on phones and the livechat function doesn't seem to exist any more.

Anyone else noticed the download speed drop recently?

https://community.virginmedia.com/t...my-360Mb-speed-has-halved/m-p/4247607#M227964
 
mrkev said:
Why wouldn't they allow it? They allowed BT to buy EE which is one of Virgin's and O2's reasoning for doing this.
Click to expand...

Because it will lower the companies in the market, lower competition, increase costs for the customer as they will have less alternative companies to move to. The regulators tend to let companies buy up their competition when there are plenty of other companies in the market, but when it gets to a few very big companies that own everything, the regulators don't want a monopoly or duopoly that only benefits the shareholder by taking consumer choice away, and usually increasing costs to the customer as choice of supplier goes down.
 
Virgin Media and O2 merging doesn't reduce any choice though - O2 aren't a fixed line provider anymore, and Virgin are only a virtual mobile network operator. It's not the same as the rumoured O2/Three merger that was going around.
 
it might reduce choice if they brand merge or fix tarriffs between each other - no longer are virgin a different option to O2 - so that is reduced consumer choice and loss of competition. It's nothing to do with network. Fact is two different companies condense to one company ergo less choice of contract, rate etc. Virgin historically have proven to be far more competitive than the network brands although that has diminished in recent years. Take away valid competitors and the big boys can price hike. How is that a good thing exactly?
 
It's just fake competition though based on price differentiation of the same underlying product, which is partly to blame for why the UK was so slow to get to widespread FTTP connectivity - because most providers were just moaning until Openreach did it for them while driving the price of broadband down to the point where it was sometimes a free addon to a pay TV package, ensuring that the public in general didn't feel that paying more than £30 a month for a connection was reasonable and destroying the economic argument for investment.

Moving between an MVNO and the underlying provider (e.g. Giffgaff and O2) doesn't give you anything except a different pricing structure and billing system, and the support is different. There's no differentiation in the network quality, coverage, speeds available etc. It's why I don't agree with Ofcom when they talk about how many hundreds of ISPs there are in the UK - there might be hundreds of people you can pay a bill to, but there's about five different physical infrastructure providers and in many areas you have a choice of using one of them.
 
Caged said:
It's why I don't agree with Ofcom when they talk about how many hundreds of ISPs there are in the UK - there might be hundreds of people you can pay a bill to, but there's about five different physical infrastructure providers and in many areas you have a choice of using one of them.
Click to expand...

Agreed on that point - I am stuck with virgin broadband for that reason! With mobile however I would argue that where the network is working it is good competition to have piggy-back options. Virgin offer the EE network for much better prices. A win-win. With the switch of network some of my family will have to switch as the O2 network is woeful where they live. I remember visiting when I used tesco mobile back in the student days and you couldn't get a text message - except for walking out of the house and going to the end of the drive. So they will have to switch to EE, being the only network with signal there. Hello price hikes! Competition is best with each network having at least one piggy-back alternative. Then you really can choose infrastructure and pricing.
 
ik9000 said:
Agreed on that point - I am stuck with virgin broadband for that reason! With mobile however I would argue that where the network is working it is good competition to have piggy-back options. Virgin offer the EE network for much better prices. A win-win. With the switch of network some of my family will have to switch as the O2 network is woeful where they live. I remember visiting when I used tesco mobile back in the student days and you couldn't get a text message - except for walking out of the house and going to the end of the drive. So they will have to switch to EE, being the only network with signal there. Hello price hikes! Competition is best with each network having at least one piggy-back alternative. Then you really can choose infrastructure and pricing.
Click to expand...

Virgin were due to move their mobile customers to Vodafone from 2021. We can only guess what will happen now. Even though I live in a big town, O2 is pretty bad here with some dead spots.
 
Virgin moving to vodafone was not ideal but their network in that area was better than O2's but not as solid as EE's. The main problem with vodafone is vodafone - from what colleagues have gone through they are a nightmare to deal with, and even more difficult to leave. So long as your contract was with virgin it would be tolerable provided the coverage was there. That was still a piggy-back but remaining independent option. This is a full-on merger which is a different kettle of fish.
 
Hi all is anyone having issues accessing the overclockers forums and shop via virgin media?

I can only access the website using my mobile data (giffgaff). As soon as I connect via WiFi the website can not be accessed. Same issue on my pc which is wired.

The message I get is secure connection has failed.

Not experiencing this problem with any other website.


Edit: Problem started midday yesterday
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom