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Still no Gig1 here, stuck on lowly M600 
Virgin Media Discussion Thread
- Thread starter macca40
- Start date
Nice am looking to do the same in a couple of months. Does your VM contract change or update in your customer profile on their site? I'm wondering what happens to that when signing up to an O2 deal or when that ends.Just got my Volt Gig1 upgrade from M600 after taking out a O2 SIM only for £6pm, great Volt benefit! Shame I can't get a Hub 5 yet, I'll patiently wait then I can chuck a 2.5Gb NIC in my PC and get the full benefit, the new router config shows it'll pull around 1200Mb. Best I can get for now with overheads.
I got the SIM on 10th, heard nothing for a few days so sent O2 a DM on Twitter, they logged it and said should be sorted within 14 days. Reading everywhere else they say don't even try contact VM they are useless (which I can confirm) and just leave it with O2 to communicate back to VM... So just got an email not long ago from VM (22nd) - they've confirmed my eligibility and upgraded me to Volt Gig1.
I realised as my work RDP and internet went down, 30 secs later the email pinged through as my router was booting back up. Got the config change immediately
Already on Ultimate Oomph paying £74pm with mates rates deal. Far cheaper than upgrading with VM direct who wanted £105-110pm when I spoke to them!
Soldato
VM contract and account area updates to show the revised BB plan (i.e. Volt Gig 1) but your actual contract doesn't get renewed or anything.
The only new contract is the O2 SIM only I took out for £6 pm, using in my iPad I recently got so win-win. Needed one anyway
Associate
@Sparx I'm out of contract on 3 x Virgin Mobile sims, I could swap one to O2 and get a nice BB upgrade like you - where did you get the £6 sim from as the O2 website shows £10 minimum on a 24 month sim only plan.
Soldato
Uswitch exclusive I think - https://www.uswitch.com/mobiles/compare/sim_only_deals/
Filter O2 network, order by monthly cost - then you have 12m deals with 6GB (£6) or 15GB (£8).
Personally I ended up going for the £8 one as using it with my iPad. With the Volt benefit O2 double your data too, so my iPad has 30GB data also.
Soldato
Gig 1 now available at mine, but seems a little daft seeing as FTTP is available here at a lower cost too 
Competition is always good though
Competition is always good though
Associate
@Sparx Thanks chap, all signed up for the £8 15GB, will port my number etc then get VM to upgrade me. Due to Virgin Mobile Family discount - this way will cost me £2 more a month in total but that 1Gb connection yo.
I have the option of both and I highly doubt I’ll ever choose VM.Gig 1 now available at mine, but seems a little daft seeing as FTTP is available here at a lower cost too
Competition is always good though
Absolutely. If there’s a choice between the two it’s FTTP every time.
Soldato
Soldato
Ditto. We moved home 7 months ago, coming from 50Mb FTTC to 600Mb Virgin (and now Gig1) has been fantastic. Admittedly whilst I've had no issues with VM so far (only 1 planned outage for the DOCSIS upgrade) it's been fine. No congestion round here either it seems as my speeds are pretty solid all day.
However should FTTP (i.e. Openreach or an independent fibre firm) roll out here, I'd definitely jump for it! What an age we live in, 2021 and some people can finally start talking about competition and having options for ultrafast fibre / FTTP.
Associate
Cityfibre is rolling out at the side of Preston (typically), so it will be a while before it reaches the other end where I live. Even on Gig1, I'd downgrade to 900/900 just for the upload. Even 100/100 would be fine for the most part.
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Soldato
Where is everyone getting this sub £10 o2 sim deals? Cheapest I seem to see on their site is £10 for 5gb on a 24month contract
Caporegime
Is Virgin's network not capable or higher upload speeds?
Also on Gig 1, how does it work when your internet speed is faster than the ethernet port? I think I've got 1gig ethernet ports but might be slower slightly than the actual gig1 speed?
Also on Gig 1, how does it work when your internet speed is faster than the ethernet port? I think I've got 1gig ethernet ports but might be slower slightly than the actual gig1 speed?
DOCSIS is asymmetrical so it won't ever go more than 200mb upload with version 3.0 which VM use, 3.1 allows for a 10G/1G but I think VM only enable 3.1 on downstream right now.
From what I gather they are moving away from the HFC DOCSIS setup to FTTP so I wouldn't expect much from them until they transistion, though to get classed as gigabit capable and receive government funding towards upgrades the upload has to be 20% of the download so there is hope of improvement.
Though the wording could also be read as they only need to provide 20% of the 33% of min download but that's still at least 75Mb upload on what they currently provide for Gig1 download.
I'm sure they would have to do more to remain competitive with FTTP guys who can do Symmetric 1Gb.
Your ethernet caps the port, full bandwidth is only available via multiple ports, so if you have a few things connected or stuff on wifi it would share between all those if you have a router with balance ability you can plug in two cables and get all bandwidth in to your third party network but not many have that and it would still limit a single stream to ~940Mb
From what I gather they are moving away from the HFC DOCSIS setup to FTTP so I wouldn't expect much from them until they transistion, though to get classed as gigabit capable and receive government funding towards upgrades the upload has to be 20% of the download so there is hope of improvement.
Though the wording could also be read as they only need to provide 20% of the 33% of min download but that's still at least 75Mb upload on what they currently provide for Gig1 download.
I'm sure they would have to do more to remain competitive with FTTP guys who can do Symmetric 1Gb.
Your ethernet caps the port, full bandwidth is only available via multiple ports, so if you have a few things connected or stuff on wifi it would share between all those if you have a router with balance ability you can plug in two cables and get all bandwidth in to your third party network but not many have that and it would still limit a single stream to ~940Mb
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Caporegime
I think 50Mbit upload is good enough for now for me I can't see anywhere upload is a limiting factor much?
940Mbit to the computer then what 200Mbit to other devices, seems adequate I guess, these speeds are insanity if pulling anything at full download, I can't imagine a time we'll be on a gigabit internet and be sat twiddling thumbs waiting for hours upon hours for something to download. Even 8k streams wouldn't tax this sort of speed.
940Mbit to the computer then what 200Mbit to other devices, seems adequate I guess, these speeds are insanity if pulling anything at full download, I can't imagine a time we'll be on a gigabit internet and be sat twiddling thumbs waiting for hours upon hours for something to download. Even 8k streams wouldn't tax this sort of speed.
It can be limiting as upload bandwidth for requests and acknowledgements is used more than it may appear. Part of an earlier post I made:
Unfortunately 50Mbps (which is not even stable for me and can drop by a lot) isn't enough to watch my Plex UHD video library remotely without transcoding.
Download on the other hand is fine.
Yup noticed even when downloading games on PS5 it was taking 10-15 MB on the upload just to download for comms traffic and I have limited that to 500MB. That is a fair chunk of my 40MB upload particularly if others are doing stuff in the house.
If fact just looked at my app as it is doing some background downloading you can see it likes a bit of bandwidth.
Plus games are only getting bigger, last two I downloaded FC6 and AC:Valhalla were 100GB and 140GB, blimey a patch for Cyberpunk the other month was 80GB
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Caporegime
I can't see it being long before VM have at least 100Mbps on the upload for Gig1 customers.