the basic rule of virgin media if you dont stream tv / film or download / play games at peak times its fine otherwise prepare to have your traffic shapped. Bt are no better in this matter. Ive had both Bt broadband and virgins cable service both give countless issues with pings when gaming during peak hours. Since joining Bethere about 3 years ago those issues have dissapeared.
I find their basic broadband to be better than the basic service I had from BT at my last address. I'll be upgrading to the fastest in the new year. Only problem I ever have with them is the TV service occassioally fails (and tells me constantly that I have an invalid card!), but that doesn;t affect the broadband
Running 30mb on there "Super Hub" No problems, been with them right from the NTL days. next to zero down time over countless years. Customer service is ok when your talking to an over sea's operator, but you only have to ask once to be put though to within the UK with no questioning. UK operators are very helpful and happy to do a bit of good old haggling ( i got my self 10mb extra and no contract at all at no extra cost!) My ping is constantly excellent (always below 30-ping in EU gaming servers, some times in the teens) and always max my download speed so long the server is good where im downloading from. I can recommend them. but im fully aware some people can not stand VM for what ever reason.
Running 120mb service. Upload speed is actually better than indicated on the speedtest server though still not great..
I pay significantly less than £42 a month and that gets me 30 Meg broadband, a decent TV package, Tivo/HD Box, a phoneline, and free evening/weekend calls. Is anyone actually paying £40+ just for internet??
12MB i think. I am not sure if my package is different as i have the employee package of top tv/phone/broadband for much cheapness.
I would like to get VM, but apparently they don't have it where I live. Which is odd as I have been receiving mail from them for 6-7 years saying I can. If they spent their marketing budget (probably 00's to 000's over 7 years) in our area on actually laying the damn cable they might have had more success.
VM is great up until your area become over subscribed then thinks really do start to suck and VM do very little to solve it 2 years ago VM give everyone a free upload upgrade, soon as they did this my area started to suffer with upstream utilisation issues, the problem has only recently be resolved (past few months) and now my area is due to get the double the speed upgrade. hopefully this won't cause issues. Traffic management: I don't find this a problem at all. I send anything I want to download to my server and its downloaded of a night or out of the peak hours. Pricing you need to keep on top of VM's pricing they will charge you prices from 5 years ago if you don't keep asking for the best deal I ring 150 and choose I am thinking of leaving (customer relations uk call center) almost every year, I don't think its fair that a new customer gets a better deal and VM always match what the new customer is getting at the moment I pay about £43 for 60Mb and large TV and a HD box with the phone line ( this is not by DD its £38 if you pay by DD) I am thinking of paying for the phone line once a year because you can save £55 by doing this. I really could not do ADSL myself.
I wouldn't trust the Speedtest.net site as most of the servers struggle but if you do want to use one, then try the Bournemouth server because it's nearly always fine on there. http://www.speedtest.net/result/2368117581.png If I choose Manchester which is closer to me it's bad real bad, so bad that it doesn't even appear on there anymore instead it's Liverpool. http://www.speedtest.net/result/2368122193.png Just look at the ping to see the difference. If I choose Maidenhead it's better than Bournemouth. http://www.speedtest.net/result/2368125355.png Now for speed testing I use Firefox with the Downthemall add on and I download a driver from Nvidia and it always tells me my speed fully, and gives a more stable read out 99% of the times compared to Speedtest.net. They all look fine but other servers are just shockingly poor, only giving 1Mb or less speed results and then I will choose another and I will get full speed.
Turns out the Asus AI suite softwares networking thingy was gimping my upload speed. I get this now i have disabled it. Not too shabby.
Virgin are ****ing useless. I had to drop out of a BF3 clan match earlier today because it was unplayable due to high latency. Now I'm trying to get some help on the phone and some ****wit in has just put me on hold for so long that I had to hang up and call again.
The sites hosted by xilo are better then most- Sheffield/Maidenhead, though would recommend the speed test on thinkbroadband.com Its interesting how everyone mentions FTTC as being BT Infinity but then its just down to BT retail having the most effective advertising of their FTTC product. Their are numerous isps that offer FTTC services aside from the main provides ie BT/Sk/TT/Plus Net/EE/Zen/Vivacity/ASDL24, so many providers yet always reffered to as Infinity. The next few years will be interesting as VM cable has about 48% UK home coverage which is mostly urban areas, If Openreach win all the BDUK tenders their FTTC/FTTP network will reach to 90% of UK households. Add on FTTP on demand, currently about £500-£1500+ to get a full fibre connection to the home will be interesting to see how many people take it up. VM cable is worth going with if its a low capcity area, otherwise its best to avoid and go with either a good asdl+2 provider or FTTC if its avalaible.
Depending on how well you know your locals you could simply ask who has cable. If you see a sky dish outside of the house you can assume they most likely dont. We cant even get VM cable up here and it will never arive.
