Question Thinking of ditching BT landline/BB and going Virgin Media, am I mad?

I've been with BT for years and constantly get a good 70Mbs download, no issues with two Xbox's and PC's playing at the same time etc.

There will always be people who have a good/bad story of anything..best thing to do is ask your neighbors...they will be the ones connecting to the same exchange as you and so can comment on speeds and any issues at your local exchange.
 
What problems did it solve for you? My Virgin Hub seems to have throughput issues when ethernet cables are plugged in (even when those connections are not active)

Wireless range and speed/consistency in particular plus a much better UI for fine tuning my network and attached devices.
 
Interesting to see this gain some more traction! By way of an update, BT have refunded me over £110 for not meeting the guaranteed speed on my line. OFCOM enforce an £8 a day rebate which was pretty darn dandy.

BT are now in the process of offering me this BT Halo (rebranded Infinity) and guess what, the guaranteed speed is nearly 10Mb lower than what I am getting now!! So now they are offering a poorer guaranteed service for the same price.

Appreciate all the comments and yeah, it does depend on the area you live what your experience will be like. I think my mind is made up. :thumbsup:
 
VM broadband is fast and reliable, been with them since the NTL days. But they have a price increase twice a year so even if you haggle, it's not long before the price is bumped up again.

It's been more than 12 months since my last haggle and my bills up by £7 so I need to call them again at some point.
 
In my area VM broadband is woeful. I've tried it a couple of times, on the most recent occasion the engineer installing couldn't get 70% of the advertised speed and couldn't explain it. This has been true for two different properties.

I'm with BT and recently upgraded to the FTTP Ultrafast 2 for speeds of 300 Mbps and a guarantee of 150 Mbps. It's been cracking, really happy with it. Not using the BT router though, I have a Linksys Velop mesh I'm very happy with.

However, not far away I know people who have had terrible experiences with BT and receive excellent performance from Virgin. I would suggest you browse the support forums for BT and Virgin to try and find reports from users in your area. The nature of the networks mean experiences can be very localised.
 
In my area VM broadband is woeful. I've tried it a couple of times, on the most recent occasion the engineer installing couldn't get 70% of the advertised speed and couldn't explain it. This has been true for two different properties.

I'm with BT and recently upgraded to the FTTP Ultrafast 2 for speeds of 300 Mbps and a guarantee of 150 Mbps. It's been cracking, really happy with it. Not using the BT router though, I have a Linksys Velop mesh I'm very happy with.

However, not far away I know people who have had terrible experiences with BT and receive excellent performance from Virgin. I would suggest you browse the support forums for BT and Virgin to try and find reports from users in your area. The nature of the networks mean experiences can be very localised.
That's a good idea. I've got a local Facebook group where I can ask the people in my local area what they think. :smashin:
 
I have just changed over to virgin media as my new build has no BT connection yet , I have gone for the 200mb package plus sky movies and sky entertainment package, only £63 a month the same as I was paying for nowtv plus bt.

I have used virgin media over 20 years ago when they were still NTL and when virgin media bought them out.

I will report back after I have had it installed on Wednesday and played around with it for a couple of days.

I am hotspotting my phone at the moment until that is installed.
 
Speed are very good were I live my download speeds are 216.09mbps :thumbsup: that a little bit over the speeds on my virgin media package. Very happy so far. :)
 
Broadband quality and speed is very much a local thing. By its very nature, VM's technology has ever so slightly higher latency (in my case, about 6ms for Zen FTTC ~65Mbps compared to about 12ms for VM 100Mbps), but it's capable of higher end user speeds. The fact that the upload speed on VM tends to be relatively lower than what you get on FTTC is mostly down to how VM have chosen to spec their subscriptions - the technology can support higher upload speeds, but usually at the cost of download speeds. And since most users and traffic care much more about download speeds, there you go!

The number and type of users sharing a DSLAM for FTTC or a node for VM usually determine the end user experience - live in an area with lots of students and you'll possibly end up with a not great experience unless the provider upgrades their capacity. With FTTC, if your physical line is degraded or maybe it has aluminium wires on the path, you'll also end up suffering.

Most FTTC providers will have data carrying connections in the local exchange (their own, or provided by Openreach, etc) - so the only bit you're really sharing is from your modem to the exchange. In fact, the bit from your modem to the DSLAM in your local cabinet is the most sensitive, since after that point it's most likely all on fibre and should have plenty of capacity (not always...).

Got carried away a bit... In short, yes definitely worth at least trying a FTTC provider, doesn't have to be BT though!
 
Just one warning if your going to use virginmedia their support is a bit shifty and i have run into a few teething problems when I first signed up and after numerous phones calls, I did manage to get my issue resolve. But it been very frustrating I must of spoke to 6 different people before I got my issue resolved.

Am forced into using them as their is no BT were I live. But that not a real issue for me as I have been wanting to sign up for VirginMeda for ages, but were I use to live before their was no VirginMedia.

But now it's all working properly it's great!!! :clap:
 
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Ho ho ho! By means of an update I've taken the plunge and I'm up and running with Virgin M350. I could have gone for M500 but that seemed overkill. I'm getting download speeds of 370Mb compared to my struggling BT Broadband at 30Mb. I'm now trying to work out where I've got enough disk space to install Destiny 2!
 

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