Rant Virgin Twotting Media

Yeah, the network is in dire need of an upgrade (which has just been done! lol), but thats costs money. And who is going to pay any more for a service that is now being throttled so heavily. Quite a hole to dig out of for the ISPs.

I don't care though, I'm out from 12:00-23:30 every day to the throttling doesn't affect me.

 

They are upgrading it now. 21cn network. but they are still using old wire wrap connections in the exchanges and the contractors are struggling to get the work done properly. It's happening, but slowly.

 

I bet its being upgraded to a "will suffice" standard. They should upgrade it massively with the intention of never having to do it again - which they will have to at some point, but would be a good process.

 

Never having to do it again - lol
they wouldn't need to upgrade it now if all they offered were the same old services and you wouldn't want that.

http://www.btplc.com/21cn/

 

http://www.ukfsn.org/home/internet/adsl/maxallowance.html

we use The 2nd option @ £19.99 a month & never gone over.. And IMHO £20 a month is fair !

 

I can understand both view points and 800mb for 5 hours use I guess is 'fair' but there are exceptions... I live in a house with 4 other people, 2 avid TF2 players (I'm one), 1 utorrent monkey (the swine!) and 2 youtube fanatics. The utorrenter only has his program on over night after consistently pulling his cable for not being able to web surf... so that's not a problem. The youtubers (well that's what URL filtering is for on the router haha) and TF2 is just an essential necessity. As well as all of us downloading lecture notes/emails from uni servers at that time (due to us being on campus during the day) it easily adds up to way way over that.
Surely we can't be penalised for living in a house with more people? Have you ever tried 5 people web surfing on a 1mb connection? Doesn't help the anger issues, considering this is the first I've ever heard of it, not impressed.

 

I haven't noticed any throttling on my BT connection, it's just **** all the time.

 

iirc the VM TOS only allow for 4 PCs to a connection (NTL's certainly did) so technically you would be in breach of contract.
If there are 5 of you sharing the cost then you should be able to afford a service more closely attuned to your needs.

 

As far as I can tell, there is nothing in the ToS/T+Cs that mentions anything about the number of people connected to the network. They do mention about activities that aren't intended for the network but that is more for commercial use and how you will be automatically switched service.
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/legal/terms_of_use.html If anyone can spot it please let me know

It appears it's all to do with bandwidth consumption now so it's down to us to limit that. The 'youtubers' didn't want to collectively spend over £15 a month on internet, (that's £3 a month ffs) brings a whole new meaning to tight arse student bums! They are willing to abuse the service but not pay for it, they just don't understand the implications of watching videos over the net.
Ah well only a few more weeks of term left, that reminds me (and all you other students out there) one months notice to cancel all your contracts is required.

 

& therein is the problem for everyone ...

 

I don't really see how expecting your "unlimited" connection to be "unlimited" and caning it is abuse, tbh.

The "top x% of users" measure is a total farce, because all it takes is one linux distro upgrade (550+mb last time I did it) and a film download (700), or as in my case and a few posts up - multiple residents - and suddenly you're on the list, guilty of "abusing everyone else's bandwidth." YOU CAPITALIST SWINE! How about the ISPs just don't sell more sodding bandwidth than they can provide, and actually have an incentive to upgrade, instead of gradually increasing the "traffic management" (how lovely it sounds) so they can squeeze more people in. It's a total farce, and what are your options? Get a commercial line or sod off, basically.

 

Overselling bandwitch should be considered illegal, just as overselling cinema/plane/train tickets.


"abusing everyone else's bandwidth." is one of the biggest b**sh*t imaginable, another way to say "we are a f**kin group of incompetent a**holes."

 

Spot on

Was saying something similar to my friend a while back. I'd love the opportunity to buy a slightly slower line, but one that is free to do what ever you liked with...
and while they're at it they can increase the upload speed too, it's been essentially stagnated for the last 5+ years at least

A bit like broadband used to be before the ISP's realised they could traffic-manage the hell out of everyone and get more people on the service without having to upgrade their bandwidth...

No wonder the ISP's are whining about things such as the iplayer service and youtube: "people actually want to use the bandwidth we're offering them? the swines!"
Add in the fact that online video tv/rental services are bound to explode in popularity big time any time soon and it's plain to see ISP's are going to get in big trouble very quickly

 

Wow.. in the states this would be an outrage! Throttled bandwidth would be like saying you only get 10 channels of your cable when your paying for 20 in certain times of the day and you still pay the same.

Utter BS, go complain and then drop them. Do it the American way and you might get better service.

 

i'm never too sure if it's a good idea to comment on these things (seeing as i work for said company!) but hey, why not...

WM's network is the combined limited network of both xNTL & xTelewest, yes it has higher native capacity than BT's phone network, but it is a finite resource. For those complaining that its unfair that it is throttled read into the contract a bit deeper, Yes i hate it too, but the quatity of data you transfer is "Unlimited" the speed however is not. You are not entitled to turn all your taps on in your house and leave them that way, you'd have the water Co's calling at your door pretty sharpish... so why do we expect to accumulate such large amounts of data constantly?

What Do you download/upload - where do you store it all? If it is that vital you have an uninterupted service then stump for a line.

If its for net, voip, gaming, fine i'd like to see you try and hit those caps, if you're downloading files, Just schedule it, no "Linux Distro" is THAT vital you must have it now...

BT is investing in 21cnetwoks now, a tad too late imho, the uptake of iptv is already stretching their network to it's limits, and with IPTV-Boxes on the market, do you really expect the freeforall to continue? At least virgin offer you a broardband conection at the rated speed, that you should expect to see 90- 95% of the time, outside of that your limited to what us off-net bt-only poor sods would only be too hapy to get! Instead we are coerced into "UP TO 16MEG!!!" packages that bearly hit 2 (and i live in a new build) then conveniently forget about the £15 we're forced to pay to BT for the line tax, sorry rental...

I hate being taken for a ride, i hate rip-off britain, i hate small print, i've just become desensitised and more realistic in my expectations.

man that was a whole lotta rantin... sorry! Oh and BTW, i need to dump tiscali like the dead weight it is... anyone have any suggestions? And yes i'd go cable if i could!

 

I strongly suspect that you will find that at least some US ISPs do it too.

Be/O2

 

In Poland throttling is illegal and no ISPs do it... some small providers block certain ports, but this is not a problem.

 

I disagree, and being too lazy to read the whole thread, I imagine I'm not the only one.

It doesn't matter what they base their prices from. If I sign a contract for X speed at Y price, they don't get the right to change the terms of that contract after the fact. I realize that business contracts are designed these days to screw customers, but (at least in the US) a contract is, to my knowledge, invalid if it's deemed unfair to either side. So these "start at some speed for some price, but at any point we like we can drop the speed, throttle it, or raise your rates and you have no recourse in any form" contracts are BS in every sense of the word.

If the contract had said X speed but it may boost to Y speed if usage in the area is low and you go back to X, fine. This is very clearly one party being unable to fulfill their end of the contract, and the legal system screwing the guy on the other end (while that party continues to fulfill the terms, which is to say paying the monthly bill).

And I don't buy into the concept of fair use clauses, since they're designed to be as vague as possible in order to give the ISP a loophole/out. Unless my terms of service make it very clear that during some hours or past a certain amount of monthly transfer or while using certain protocols my connection may be slower, then as far as I'm concerned I'm entitled to 100% of my bandwidth 24/7, the server on the other side permitting.

 

Try living in New Zealand. My ISP claims "Max" speeds, which is supposed to be approx 7.5MBit. The fastest we get at home is approx 800KBits. When the fastest your download goes is 100Kb/s, that's when it sucks. And if we go over our cap it slows down to 64KBits. Which sucks when there is 6 computers on the network

 

im not defending the ISPs here but surely you sign a contract for X speed at Y price subject to usage terms Z. Those usage terms in most cases say how much you can download and also say that you may be throttled for excessive use?