BT vs Virgin

tintin82 · 22 Jul 2018 at 16:12

Hi Folks,

Bit of long story but basically I have been having a bit of an issue with BT. I was on their Infinity 1 package and my internet was great with 48mb down, 9 up, ping 25. Then they persuaded me to upgrade to BT Plus with Infinity 2, but my speed is only 50 up, 14 down, ping 25. I have been on the phone for ages and basically they say that because my line meets the minimum requirement thats it, my line can handle no more. Now on closer inspection of my BT wiring I have an old MK1 master socket, some junction boxes, and an excessive cable run into the property. I am thinking of tidying all this up myself in order to improve (although know this is strictly not allowed).

But then I got thinking why not ditch all this old copper wire and move over to Virgin who have just moved into the area. Then I read about all the problems with reliability and ping problems. I really do not know which way to go with this. Try Virgin, or try to eck out as much from my current old BT line. Or just downgrade back to my original Infinity 1 package?

Thanks for any advice.

tintin82 · 22 Jul 2018 at 22:12

Raggs said:
there are some issues with latency with the virgin hub 3 are you a competitive pvp gamer ? some say it ruins it for them, if just game like me pve style then i doubt you'll notice it have played a ton of destiny 2 since last year i can't say it's effected me occasional drop out from the servers that's it.

there is a new firmware being rolled out that is meant to help the latency some people have got it by upgrading to 350mb not got it here though yet

edit : actually i was wrong looks like i got the update 12 days ago.

before this was typical of my graph

and today's graph

Thanks very much for sharing this. Great to see that the problems are not as bad as they used to be.

tintin82 · 23 Jul 2018 at 19:43

Thanks. Regarding the speeds, the headline 350mbps sounds great, but I dont actually need it, a snappy low latency connection is the main drive for me. On this basis would Virgin suffice as I hear they had problems with ping and latency, although that a fix is being rolled out with new firmware?

tintin82 · 24 Jul 2018 at 13:34

APM said:
Upgrade your master socket.

No joke, just rebooted my router right now after doing just that. No immediate improvement but guess my line will automatically retain to a higher sync speed over the coming days?

tintin82 · 24 Jul 2018 at 21:47

Well after all considered I decided to stick with BT (a case of better the devil you know). I called their retention team and they knocked my cost down a bit so ended up with fastest Infinity 2 and a mobile with 8GB, unlimted call / text for £41.99. Happy with that. New Master socket in place and going to look at my wiring setup to see if I can eck out a few extra mbps.