Yeah, just got that email. I suppose now is an appropriate time for those in the know to nominate suitable free alternatives, hint hint
You'll be lucky. XSNews used to do a capped free tier, something like 50KB/sec iirc. Virgin just provide OEM/rebranded access to Omicron (Highwinds/Newshosting), and if it's going away that's a shame when prices are on the up every few months. It was one of the few perks of a VM account. Best to just pay for a decent service. Something like Newsgroup.Ninja (that's their name and their url) is mega cheap, you can get it for something like $25-30 a year - check /r/usenet on Reddit for codes. It's just a subsidiary of Omicron, so the same backbone as VM's using with the same high completion and the biggest retention going. I pull about 2 TB a month off it at gigabit speeds no drama.