Thinking of switching to Virgin

Dizzle77

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I'm currently with Be. They have been great over the years, but for what i'm paying I feel as if I can get a better deal elsewhere.

At the moment I pay £28pm and get about 16mb. £10 of that is for a telephone line that I dont even use. Its only there for the net and i dont even have a phone connected

I've been looking around and think Virgin 30mb fibre optic could be the way to go. I'm not interested in their tv or phone bundles, just solely the net

What i'd like to know is

1. Do you get close to the quoted fibre optic speeds?

2. Are they truly unlimited? If I use say up to 100gb a month will they send me a warning or cap speeds?

3. Can i disable the wireless on the superhub and continue using my dual band airport extreme as router?

4. Is the 60mb worth paying extra for for gaming?

Thanks
 
1. Do you get close to the quoted fibre optic speeds?

Yes over a wired connection. Over wifi, it's about 16-26MB depending on the laptop, other congestion and how far away you're sitting


2. Are they truly unlimited? If I use say up to 100gb a month will they send me a warning or cap speeds?

Yes, they are truly unlimited but they will throttle your speed by 75% if you go over the threshold. See the traffic management policy here


3. Can i disable the wireless on the superhub and continue using my dual band airport extreme as router?

Yes, you can, Many people do this because the the SuperHub wireless is not very good.

4. Is the 60mb worth paying extra for for gaming?

On the 30MB service, I was playing Mario Kart Wii online without any problems or lag. What platform will you be online gaming for? With online gaming, it's the ping that matters more than the actual speed.
 
On the 30MB service, I was playing Mario Kart Wii online without any problems or lag. What platform will you be online gaming for? With online gaming, it's the ping that matters more than the actual speed.

Thanks for the info.

Currently I have a PS3. I don't go play games online on it that often. Currently just Gran Turismo now and again. Currently this is what I get over 802.11n 5ghz wifi on Be. It can go as low as about 14-16mb in the evenings though.

 
Been with NTL / Virgin broadband for a long time and whilst in general it's good, don't expect to get the advertised speed 100% of the time, due to their oversubscription on their services and UBRs.

If you're smart, their throttling policies won't affect you, but I don't see why you should be penalised for downloading legit content during normal hours, such as an Xbox demo that could be bigger than the limit, when the pirates can go wild after midnight and not get penalised.
 
I would look at various sites and forums regarding speed and usage I have not been a VM customer for some years now, however I left after a year and will not return due to speed usage and line management If you are into watching video online , you need to be aware of current latency and peering issues, this will no doubt effect any online gaming too.


Virgin Media Failing to Fix Peak Time Broadband Latency and Peering Woes - ISPreview UK
 
It can be a pain, because not only do you have the down- and upload limits that affect throttling, they also shape traffic on the fly based on what services you're using.

It has been quite solid for a while, but lately we've been getting around 2 MB from the 10 MB service around 10pm at night, which is very poor. The weird thing is, when it's like this it performs worse than when it was actually a 2 MB product.
 
It has been quite solid for a while, but lately we've been getting around 2 MB from the 10 MB service around 10pm at night, which is very poor. The weird thing is, when it's like this it performs worse than when it was actually a 2 MB product.

Mmmm, brings back unhappy memories.
 
These speed management issues and the fact that they can 'shape traffic' depending on what you're using are kind of worrying.


It has been quite solid for a while, but lately we've been getting around 2 MB from the 10 MB service around 10pm at night, which is very poor. The weird thing is, when it's like this it performs worse than when it was actually a 2 MB product.

What package are you subscribed to? 30/60mb?

Even my Be Broadband never goes a low as that even at peak times. Regardless of whether i was using the net a lot at after 10pm, it would still bug me that I wasn't getting a good enough service during these periods.

hmmmm....what to do. Are there any other fibre optic alternatives worth considering?
 
What package are you subscribed to? 30/60mb?

We're on the old L package (10 MB), but I noticed today that we have finally had our speed doubled, Virgin Media Broadband Doubling Speed, and a quick test just confirmed 20 MB down, and YouTube still doesn't buffer fast enough, but still 1 MB up. I assumed the up speed would also be doubled in this upgrade. I guess our recent disruption to our service was this upgrade. I'll keep an eye on it and see how it performs now it has been doubled.

Edit: L upgrades only had down speed doubled and the thresholds before throttling were also increased (http://www.virginmedia.com/images/STM_20Mb_below_800pxB.jpg).
 
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but if you able to get bt fibre you best going for that as they unlimited with no limit to speed but with virgin you will get slowed down

im on 100mb max package but i never go past limit so im happy but it depends what you download each day
 
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I'm still with virgin, just remember is your on the 30mb package you can only download 7GB at daytime until they throttle your speed down to 7.5mb then in the evening your allowed 3GB until your throttled again until midnight

Not ideal really giving what ya can do on the net these days

Contracts over in 4 months and it'll be hello infinity
 
This is just my own personal experience, but if I were switching to VM fibre, I'd only go with a smaller package. I signed up to the 100mb package is May, and since then, and I've never once got the claimed download speed (and ping) that was meant to.

By that I mean, I'm fully aware that it was advertised as upto 100mb, but since May, I've averaged 50mb (most evenings after 6pm I get around 2mb down), and my ping varies from 40ms - 300ms. This is due to a massive over utilisation issue affecting my area (Bristol), which isn't being fixed until Dec/Jan (though others have had issues since Nov 2011 that haven't been addressed).

If you're able to get BT fibre (be it with BT, or through wholesale), then I'd recommend that. BT, whilst not perfect, seem to build their infrastructure in a way that services customers before they're signed up, and not after. VM have lots of customers signed up, and are being charged, for a service that isn't working properly due to it not actually being in place yet.

Just to add, this is how my 100mb service currently looks with regard to ping and packet loss (not very good for gaming, which was my primary reason for signing up to VM)

 
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I've got 10Mb/s service from VM and that's pretty much what I get..

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YouTube doesn't work well unfortunately and I'm forced to watch videos in lower quality. Any attempts to watch anything in 720p or 1080p end very quickly.
 
but if you able to get bt fibre you best going for that as they unlimited with no limit to speed but with virgin you will get slowed down

im on 100mb max package but i never go past limit so im happy but it depends what you download each day

How does YouTube work on 100Mb? Can you watch HD videos without problems?
 
It could be different with 100mb


But in on 30mb and my streaming speed is capped at 13-14 mb according to the iplayer tester.

13-14mb is plenty anyway for HD streaming
 
It could be different with 100mb


But in on 30mb and my streaming speed is capped at 13-14 mb according to the iplayer tester.

13-14mb is plenty anyway for HD streaming

I just did the test..

Download speed: 9884 kbps
Streaming speed (1): 10138 kbps
Streaming speed (2): 10276 kbps
Streaming speed (3): 10166 kbps

iPlayer works fine and we've never had problems with it.
But YouTube doesn't work so well.
 
ApriliaNutter said:
I've got 10Mb/s service from VM and that's pretty much what I get..

YouTube doesn't work well unfortunately and I'm forced to watch videos in lower quality. Any attempts to watch anything in 720p or 1080p end very quickly.

There is a massive thread on VM's support forum about the issues with video playback on their services.

Even after our speed being doubled, YouTube is still bad, particularly on my Xoom using the official app.

I did a comparison on my desktop and opened a video directly on YouTube's site and the same video going through a YouTube specific proxy in a different tab and the difference in download speed was huge. Bypassing whatever VM do to YouTube traffic at least doubled the speed of the download.
 
Yep YouTube is unusable for me here - 60mb service and YT buffers every few seconds - my work 5mb ADSL line manages fine - time to move ISP again for me :(
 
Yep YouTube is unusable for me here - 60mb service and YT buffers every few seconds - my work 5mb ADSL line manages fine - time to move ISP again for me :(

Well in that case I'll stick with my 10Mb service and wait for the promised upgrade to 20Mb.

For a moment I was thinking about upgrading to 60Mb because of the YouTube.
 
ApriliaNutter said:
Well in that case I'll stick with my 10Mb service and wait for the promised upgrade to 20Mb.

For a moment I was thinking about upgrading to 60Mb because of the YouTube.

Your speed will go to 30mb

(10mb customers get their speed tripled)

Virgin will only have 30mb, 60mb, 100mb & 120mb teirs
 
No.. I will get 20Mb

Your area isn't ready yet

Our engineers are still upgrading the network area by area so that you can enjoy more of the UK's fastest broadband.

Find out when we're upgrading your area. Check my area
Here's what you're on now and what you'll get after you've been upgraded:

Your current speed is up to 10Mb

Your new speed is up to 20Mb

I haven't got SuperHub and I think it's essential for 20Mb+ service.
 
ApriliaNutter said:
No.. I will get 20Mb

I haven't got SuperHub and I think it's essential for 20Mb+ service.

Ahh. My bad, think its the 20mb and 30mb both get doubled to 60 that case the 20mb gets tripled
 
The 10 MB download speed is doubled, but not the upload speed.
 
Virgin claim that they've employed some fixes to help the YouTube situation which should gradually improve over the next few days. Early days but my streaming is waaaay better tonight!
 

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