Currently on m250 package with virgin, out of contract and paying £55 a month. My area has full fibre and there are plenty of providers, after seeing whats available it's definitely time to upgrade. Called them and was told they could do gig1 for £60 a month, said I was canceling and the retention team offered it for £41. This is a pretty good deal considering new customers are only getting it for £39 a month, but after doing some research it seems fttp is the better option especially for gaming(ping). So I'm thinking of ditching virgin completely and going with someone else, but i really don't know who I should pick. The speeds are all relatively similar it mostly comes down to who would have the most stable/reliable connection and I'm in Scotland if that helps, thanks.
Should i make the switch from virgin?
- Thread starter OB_
- Start date
Ok, it's openreach.
I can't believe I'm going to say it but... Vodafone.
If you actually want the 900 Mbps it's £36 at Vodafone plus £61 cashback and £25 voucher if done via topcashback. Just under £33 a month on average.
The main reason though? Scotland. Vodafone is arguably the best Scottish ISP. Vodafone have major congestion problems and put a lot of people onto the Edinburgh gateway. The English obviously hate this but being Scottish you lick your lips. "Come on Vodafone over subscribe your network further and further" you scream. You could cut your pings down by a large margin due to this. Worst case you get routed somewhere abit more south but it will still beat all other ISPs afaik.
Going Vodafone from VM is jumping out of the frying pan into the fire. If you want an ISP that are similar to VM, great. If you want someone decent look at Aquiss (you have to provide your own router), or PlusNet for a cheaper option.
Last edited:
I cannot recommend the move to a FTTP provider enough if you’re gaming etc.
Virgin media latency and routing is atrocious. I’m with an alt FTTP provider now (1000/1000 for £33 a month) and it’s insanely good. My ping, latency stability, routing, speeds everything are brilliant.
Virgin media latency and routing is atrocious. I’m with an alt FTTP provider now (1000/1000 for £33 a month) and it’s insanely good. My ping, latency stability, routing, speeds everything are brilliant.
It depends on the area you are in. I moved from FTTP to VM, and apart from ping times I haven’t noticed any difference, including gaming and Zoom calls etc.
Definitely expect it to vary. Main improvements that I noted were reduced and more consistent ping, general snappiness when browsing, and no service degradation that required a router restart (was usually every month or 2).
Otherwise, didn't have any major issues with VM, and it's a good option if you don't have FTTP in your area.
Thanks for all the replies, I think if I want the best of the best fttp seems to be the winner. I'm still a little concerned about who is the best provider I was leaning towards vodafone but is there much of a difference in terms of quality between providers if it's fttp?
I used Virgin for years and as soon as FTTC came to my area I swapped away from them, reasons are many:
1. Customer service always blaming my network or my computer for issues with the internet
2. I had more connectivity issues then I liked - 1 or 2 hours here or there
3. The fact that they had in contract price rises - yes you had the option of leaving them during the price rises - but still...
4. They are expensive compared to other FTTC products out there
5. Sales calls - Always trying to up sell you on things you dont want - even after telling them that you didnt want anything and never will want more than the internet
I went with them at the time because they were the fastest provider in my area at the time...
Stelly
1. Customer service always blaming my network or my computer for issues with the internet
2. I had more connectivity issues then I liked - 1 or 2 hours here or there
3. The fact that they had in contract price rises - yes you had the option of leaving them during the price rises - but still...
4. They are expensive compared to other FTTC products out there
5. Sales calls - Always trying to up sell you on things you dont want - even after telling them that you didnt want anything and never will want more than the internet
I went with them at the time because they were the fastest provider in my area at the time...
Stelly
As I mentioned, apart from ping times I haven’t noticed any difference. Also haven’t had any outages requiring reboots or otherwise.
I would rank Vodafone one of the worst, definitely nowhere near the ‘best’. For that you’d want A&A but you’ll scoff at the prices.
@OB_ Do you use Virgin Media as your main email account or are you independent of them for email? I'm asking because I am also looking at leaving Virgin right now due to FTTP coming to my street, and one the of main chores I am now realising I will have to do is divorce all the websites which use my Virgin(actually ntl) email address, to something independent like Gmail. It is going to be a very time consuming process and I was actually going to create a thread to ask if there were any particular strategies people use when this needs to be done and so forth. It's going to be a right ball ache I can see.
The only thing I would suggest is to consider whether getting your own domain is something worth the effort/cost for you. With your own domain you aren't tied to one email service and will never have to change email address again in the unlikely event Google/MS etc stop doing them, or more likely apply terms you're not happy with. Just as useful is that with your own domain you can use multiple email addresses/aliases so you don't have to use the same email address everywhere.
Most people cannot justify the effort/cost which is fine but the benefits are significant. For example I have over 1000 sites with email addresses from one of my personal domains but no one email address/alias has more than 10 sites using it and most are site specific. If I ever get too much spam or unwanted content to one address I can easily remove that one only need to update one or a few sites and I can also trace the culprits for site specific addresses.
In any event you may find a few web sites that are poorly designed where the email address cannot be changed even by customer service as its both the email address and database ID for you, and in that event you would have to create a new account (AO appliances were one surprising example a couple of years ago!).
Just get on with it, it will take less time than you imagine.
Another vote for your own domain. I use a combination of iCloud random addresses and things like [email protected] so I know exactly where any breaches come from.
It’s very simple to use your own domain with iCloud, Google, and Microsoft.
They aren't good in Scotland either. My gateway was Bradford then Leeds whilst living in Edinburgh. So my pings to cloudflare were 10ms and 7 respectively. Now I am on a Scottish ISP, I get 1ms as my internet gets plonked out across town into the same data centre as a fair few content providers.
VERY happily ditched VM last year (had the "we've changed our ToS so we can increase when we want" bailout option from a longish contract).
Now... I'm a BT employee so price wise it's not worth talking about and is utterly a no brainer.
Ping times though... I think I'm down to about 12ms to most game servers in Europe.
The ONLY minor thing I'll say as an attempted + on BT is their contention ratio's are usually lower than a lot of the other options. In a busy area, at peak, less slowdown. I usually easily blow past 900MB at 20:30 on any weekday evening in the middle of a popular Sheffield suburb with mostly young-ish families all round. Not sure how that looks on other FTTP providers.
Now... I'm a BT employee so price wise it's not worth talking about and is utterly a no brainer.
Ping times though... I think I'm down to about 12ms to most game servers in Europe.
The ONLY minor thing I'll say as an attempted + on BT is their contention ratio's are usually lower than a lot of the other options. In a busy area, at peak, less slowdown. I usually easily blow past 900MB at 20:30 on any weekday evening in the middle of a popular Sheffield suburb with mostly young-ish families all round. Not sure how that looks on other FTTP providers.
Last edited: