Virgin Media Bandwidth Throttling

mr.sly · 15 Mar 2007 at 15:46

I've seen a few threads about Virgin over the last few days and I've just been on the phone for half an hour with them trying to find out what's happening.

I pay for a 4MB connection, but recently I've been getting speeds between 2MB and 10MB. So I phoned up and after abit of lying the guy came back and said to me, that I'm apart of a trail at the moment, and they have software running to throttle speeds after 15 minutes of continuous downloading, and that will last for two hours and then start again. They've checked it legally and because I'm apart of a trial (being upgraded to 10MB and I'm guessing others to 20MB) they're allowed to do. And it will carry on until they've upgraded everyone in the UK.

I'm happy they've upgraded me to 10MB for free, but when I can only use that 10MB for 15 minutes it seems pretty pointless.

He said this is happening across 6 regions at the moment, but didn't say where.

Hope this helps a few of you out.

WotDa · 15 Mar 2007 at 15:52

You can download 850mb in those 15 minutes though, apparently;

http://www.dslzoneuk.net/calculator.php

mr.sly · 15 Mar 2007 at 15:58

Hmmm... never really thought of it that way. a lot of the files I've downloaded have been below 850mb though and I've seen the speed drop.

WotDa · 15 Mar 2007 at 16:55

Could be 15 minutes, or a set bandwitdh ammount that it triggers perhaps then.

sid · 15 Mar 2007 at 17:05

Whats the point of their 20mb service coming out soon if its going to be throttled lol?

No one who doesn't download a lot is going to have 20mb anyways, seems like a farce tbh.

Im on their 2mb service and download about 40gb pm. haven't seen any throttling esp on usenet but it would be a shame if it is throttled

sid

mr.sly · 15 Mar 2007 at 17:51

sid said:
Whats the point of their 20mb service coming out soon if its going to be throttled lol?

No one who doesn't download a lot is going to have 20mb anyways, seems like a farce tbh.

Im on their 2mb service and download about 40gb pm. haven't seen any throttling esp on usenet but it would be a shame if it is throttled

sid

Once the 20MB has been rolled out across the UK the limits will be taken off I was told on the phone. They said it's just throttled now because they're testing the higher speeds.

WotDa · 15 Mar 2007 at 18:03

Slyvester said:
Once the 20MB has been rolled out across the UK the limits will be taken off I was told on the phone. They said it's just throttled now because they're testing the higher speeds.

So, they're testing the 'speeds' but capping them? lol

mr.sly · 15 Mar 2007 at 18:12

Yup. I'm guessing they're trying to see how much the network can handle, so they don't want everyone in the same area downloading at 10MB+ all the time.

I can live with it till May though, if it means I get 20MB for the same price.