Virgin Media Discussion Thread

I did the same, on 350 which is more like 380Mbps :)

How much you paying for the broadband?


It's tied in on a TV, BB and phone package.

Keep meaning to give it another go at getting the price reduced but not sure on what to say to them.

The last time i tried, all they ofered me was a 1 month of free Sky Movies. The only way they would drop the price was to downgrade to a lower package deal and felt it was not worth it
 
It's tied in on a TV, BB and phone package.

Keep meaning to give it another go at getting the price reduced but not sure on what to say to them.

The last time i tried, all they ofered me was a 1 month of free Sky Movies. The only way they would drop the price was to downgrade to a lower package deal and felt it was not worth it
Basically just phone and cancel when 30 days left on contract. Typically a few days if not a week or two later you get a call and get better prices.

Its what I do. For example the deal they offered me when I was cancelling was not as good as or same as what new customers get online from comparison sites. Funny thing was when I said nah, cancel it, she said they would not be able to offer that price again. In my head I was like yeah I know, you will offer me a better price in a few days. Sure as **** they did :cry:

I could have pushed more, but as the fastest speed I can get is 40 meg from the phone line, I did not want to push it. Hopefully I will have fiber to home by the time my 17 months are up, as then I can push more.
 
Basically just phone and cancel when 30 days left on contract. Typically a few days if not a week or two later you get a call and get better prices.

Its what I do. For example the deal they offered me when I was cancelling was not as good as or same as what new customers get online from comparison sites. Funny thing was when I said nah, cancel it, she said they would not be able to offer that price again. In my head I was like yeah I know, you will offer me a better price in a few days. Sure as **** they did :cry:

I could have pushed more, but as the fastest speed I can get is 40 meg from the phone line, I did not want to push it. Hopefully I will have fiber to home by the time my 17 months are up, as then I can push more.

Thanks for the tip. :)

My Xmas holidays start next Monday so will try then.
 
My Superhub 5 arrived late last night, so I installed it today. Despite some multiple contradictory texts from VM's automated service to provision the hub onto the Docsis 3.1 network, it was pretty straight forward. From a quick look around the UI, it seems it's a more capable bit of kit than my SH3, with many more network options and some useful diagnostic stuff. Some of the obvious ones (such as selecting your own DNS servers) seem to be missing, as VM obviously don't want you changing those. The UI is the same sort of open, lightweight pastel style, and the firmware still labelled itself as a SH3 until the first firmware update.

It's a nice bit of kit, the UI is still a little clunky, and it still seems to be early in it's development eg. one of the reasons it's not being offered to 1 gig customers is the pods/boosters that you get for free on that tier don't yet work with the SH5, and neither do some of the VM apps. It's physically slimmer, but also taller, and is a perforated black box with a grey fabric front and a very subtle status light that shines from the corner and leaves a little spot of light on the surface in front of it.

It's a few years newer, gets away from the Puma chipsets, and better than previous hardware, though the firmware/software probably still needs a little refining. It's probably more than enough for the average user to use it as a router, though high end users will stick it in modem mode and connect a dedicated router to get more functionality, and take advantage of the 2.5 gb port on a 1 gb or higher tier by upgrading after you get hold of a SH5.
 
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Great review, thanks @Steampunk. I'm hoping to get offered it to replace my SH2ac, which although does the job, could do with bit better wifi coverage without the need for another AP.

I don't know what the wifi is like (I put the SH5 into modem mode) but the spec offers better capabilities, dual channels, guest network, etc. I'm sure there will still be people having wifi issues whatever bit of kit VM brings out, as some people just don't have wifi friendly environments with a single router. I would expect a newer device to be better, but you never can tell without testing.
 
Nice write up @Steampunk. Do you fancy booting into a Linux live USB and giving us some feedback on bufferbloat using Flent? In theory, moving away from Puma may have helped somewhat. I'm happy to provide step by step over PM/email/Signal if you fancy playing guinea pig and want the extra directions.
 
Nice write up @Steampunk. Do you fancy booting into a Linux live USB and giving us some feedback on bufferbloat using Flent? In theory, moving away from Puma may have helped somewhat. I'm happy to provide step by step over PM/email/Signal if you fancy playing guinea pig and want the extra directions.

TBH with you, that's probably more work than I'm willing to do right now, but I did connect directly to the modem and run a bufferbloat test at Waveform if that is any use for you.
 
All you need to do now with the hub4 is replace your existing hub leave it for 10/15mins so it downloads and installs the firmware once it's finished you will see a steady white light and that's it full speed straight away, that's if you don't encount any problems.
 
All you need to do now with the hub4 is replace your existing hub leave it for 10/15mins so it downloads and installs the firmware once it's finished you will see a steady white light and that's it full speed straight away, that's if you don't encount any problems.

Cheers. If it goes trouble free I’ll take it but as updating my Synology NAS to DSM7, the other day, went far from smoothly for my Plex server, I doubt I’ll be that lucky.
 
I found the max latency & average latency to be improved with the SHub 5, although its hard to tell conclusively if thats down to the extra 3.1 channels giving it some breathing room or anything specifically to do with the chipset change. Min latency is the same and I run it in modem mode as well so I couldn't provide any useful info about the actual router features. Certainly have no issues recommending one on that basis, if VM will actually let you have one...
 
Cheers. If it goes trouble free I’ll take it but as updating my Synology NAS to DSM7, the other day, went far from smoothly for my Plex server, I doubt I’ll be that lucky.

I have a DS-214+ it's been updated to DSM7 for a month or so and had no problems at all with it, put my hub4 in just over a week ago and it's running fine.

Probably been asked but thread is massive,
Would the uswitch £6 O2 sim give me the virgin speed upgrade from 500 to the highest?(1 gig available here now) Thank in advance :D

I tried this but was told no it won't work because your purchasing it from a 3rd party, plus it doesn't say anything about volt when you try and purchase that sim, I could be wrong but I got told no.
 
I tried this but was told no it won't work because your purchasing it from a 3rd party, plus it doesn't say anything about volt when you try and purchase that sim, I could be wrong but I got told no.

I got an £8 sim from Uswitch and although I've had fun getting both upgrades (still waiting for them to double my mobile data), got my Virgin 500Mb connection upgraded to 1Gb Saturday just gone.
 
Like I said Rabtech, I got told no but we were already with o2 but under the wife's name, I asked o2 if I purchased from uswitch would I be ok and I was told no, I didn't believe them it was mainly because I was asking for a much cheaper package. It didn't make any difference in the end I got 2 x 30GB packages for £24 instead of £30.

It's good to know it can be done.
 
My Superhub 5 arrived late last night, so I installed it today. Despite some multiple contradictory texts from VM's automated service to provision the hub onto the Docsis 3.1 network, it was pretty straight forward. From a quick look around the UI, it seems it's a more capable bit of kit than my SH3, with many more network options and some useful diagnostic stuff. Some of the obvious ones (such as selecting your own DNS servers) seem to be missing, as VM obviously don't want you changing those. The UI is the same sort of open, lightweight pastel style, and the firmware still labelled itself as a SH3 until the first firmware update.

It's a nice bit of kit, the UI is still a little clunky, and it still seems to be early in it's development eg. one of the reasons it's not being offered to 1 gig customers is the pods/boosters that you get for free on that tier don't yet work with the SH5, and neither do some of the VM apps. It's physically slimmer, but also taller, and is a perforated black box with a grey fabric front and a very subtle status light that shines from the corner and leaves a little spot of light on the surface in front of it.

It's a few years newer, gets away from the Puma chipsets, and better than previous hardware, though the firmware/software probably still needs a little refining. It's probably more than enough for the average user to use it as a router, though high end users will stick it in modem mode and connect a dedicated router to get more functionality, and take advantage of the 2.5 gb port on a 1 gb or higher tier by upgrading after you get hold of a SH5.

Thanks for the info. I should get getting my SH5 tomorrow. I take it here is nothing even loosely related to QoS in the settings then?

I got an £8 sim from Uswitch and although I've had fun getting both upgrades (still waiting for them to double my mobile data), got my Virgin 500Mb connection upgraded to 1Gb Saturday just gone.

I got the 8gb Sim from Uswitch on the 25th Nov, still not received either double data or broadband speed increase. Spoke to VM yesterday and was told my broadband speed bump should happen when I get my SH5 tomorrow. So we shall see. Not spoke to O2 yet regarding the double data as tbh 15gb is more than enough for me but will happily take 30gb if I can get it ;)
 
:mad: so VM decided to activate my Gig package, despite not being able to use the Hub 4 yet(wrong PSU), now the Hub 3 is borked and I have no internet, despite being on the phone half the day no resolution other than waiting for this PSU to arrive.....could be a week..:mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad::mad:

Though they did suggest I use my phone as a hotspot and offered me £10.....
 
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