Anybody with Virgin Media?

[harderfaster]

Just about to sign up to VM broadband and I was wondering if anybody would recommend (against) it?

Also, I noticed this:

http://shop.virginmedia.com/existing-customers/connect-a-friend.html

£50 off your bill if you want to recommend it to me? PM if you wanted to!

[eFestivals]

I have the 50mb service (I get an average of 48mb when connected via Ethernet cable) and it is awesome and destroys BT woeful offering...

it depends which BT offering you're talking about, as the contention ratio* and who exactly a user 'shares' their bandwidth with are what counts the most for anyone's download speed.

The one thing that, I think, VM does blow the competition away on is upload speed - or at least it should. Being cable it's able to run a synchronous service where upload speed matches the download speed, which isn't possible on asynchronous ADSL. But few people use the upload side of things for much (I'd have more cause than most, but it's rare it's a problem for me), so that's an irrelevance for most people.

(* the standard contention ratio for all broadband services is 50:1 - so if you're unlucky enough to share your service with 49 other heavy users you'll have a shit download speed. Business Broadband from BT has a contention ratio of 20:1, and there's a VERY noticeable difference in speed over the standard 'home' offering.)

Edited August 23, 2011 by eFestivals

[Greeny_Musicchild]

I've had no problems with them. Even had to use their customer service for the first time a few weeks ago and it all went fine. I pay for (up to) 30mb and I get it most of the time.

If you want I'll recommend you, I could use saving £50!

Edited August 23, 2011 by Greeny_Musicchild

[Yoghurt on a Stick]

I've used them for a few years now and haven't had a single problem.

[eFestivals]

You can get up 100mb with Virgin (Fastest BT service is 40mb and then I challenge anyone to show they are actually getting that speed)....

You get a 100Mb line with Virgin. Unless the other 49 people you share that line with have all died, you don't stand a shit in hell's chance of actually getting 100Mb.

Virgin service does not suffer from the contention ratio as much as BT seem to... I hear of very few people complaining they can't get the speeds out of Virgin.

There's 49 other people sharing everyone's service. If you don't hear of problems then that can be for any number of reasons, absolutely nothing to do with "Virgin service does not suffer from the contention ratio as much as BT seem to".

There is a very big reason why Virgin want companies to publish the real download speeds there users are getting instead of the maximum possible. Virgin wins on both counts...

they do, as fibre optics are hugely better than copper.

But from the numbers I've seen (a while back now, but it's unlikely that anything has changed very much) VM users suffer a greater proportional fall from that top-line figure than just about all the offerings that run on the BT network - but that's an average, and things will vary with each person's connection dependent on what load the others sharing the service are putting on that service.

Upload speeds are great... I get a constant 4mb upload stream with mine... and its going up to 5mb soon...

PMSL at VM not knowing what the f**k they're doing. If that's all you're getting then they're running an asynchronous service and so only giving their customers 10%* of the upload speed that they could have.

(* based on the numbers you've yourself given).

[eFestivals]

Lots of people have started using online backup services for their photos, videos etc. You get a free and unlimited one with Virgin on certain packages.

true. But it's a crap idea IMO, as the possibility of that backup service failing is greater than with a personal disk for backing up. Plus, some of us don't like giving our data away; for some, security is everything, not nothing.

You notice it also while playing online games..

you're having a laugh. There's no human-detectable difference in speed once you get beyond a certain threshold. The uploaded packets from gaming are tiny.

There is a difference in speed, but you'd only know of it via electronic measuring.

[eFestivals]

You dipstick... Off site backup is about having the data in more than one place... You still persist your local copy...

As for security you trade off the risks againsts the risks of having a fire / theft which could result in you losing a lot of stuff you wouldn't like to lose...

I've been properly trained in how to do safe backups, matey. You don't get paid £100K+ pa for knowing shit.

[eFestivals]

I just posted a link to prove your bullshit wrong Neil...

http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/discover-broadband/improvements-to-our-cable-network.html

Ofcom think you talk shit for a starter...

I think you need a reading lesson. Try reading what I posted again.

I read your link after I'd made that post, and did consider going back and editing it - but as I'd put what I'd said in the correct context I didn't bother.

Where I did get it wrong was with saying "it's unlikely that anything has changed very much" - it's of course the case that the speeds available have increased by far more than the usage, causing the proportional fall from the top-figure speed to decrease. I should have joined up the dots better than I did do.

There's also another factor which has caused the VM service to improve very significantly over recent years. It was the case that the laws the govt passed to encourage the cabling of the UK meant that the small (in comparison to the one nationwide company we have now) companies scrimped where they could - which was on the equipment attached to the cables, as there were few other possibilities. They bought the cheapest shittest stuff they could, so that their investment was at the minimum, pretty sure that they'd be someone like NTL to buy them out a few years down the line (which is of course what happened). As NTL (and then VM) patched those separate services into one big system, and with the upgrades for faster speed over those years, that shit equipment has been replaced, leading to a more robust system with fewer hardware failures (as well as better backup systems).

It's probably now the case that VM are the clear leader from all angles except with service in the case of a fault - from my own experiences BT blow them away (tho that might be limited to business customers, I'm not sure). I had the power supply on my router fail last week, and I had a replacement delivered at my door within about 15 minutes of getting off the phone to BT.

[eFestivals]

Yet you miss the bleeding obvious in your post... Congratulations...

just because I didn't post "and take the backups off-site" doesn't mean it doesn't happen.

It's your presumption - wrong as ever - that I only have a "local copy".

Who paid you £100k pa + ? I smell bullshit

Man goes from £100K pa to National Minimum Wage... Quite a story...

A number of blue-chips, who still come back to me now - there's not a year of the last 12 (when I've worked for myself) when I've not had at least one job offer in excess of £100k.

What you're failing to grasp is that for some of us money is not everything. Been there, done that, got the t-shirt. There's only so many years of working with w*nkers I could stand.

Care to tell me how many world-firsts you've got to your name for your technical achievements? I've only got one, but one big enough to justify that sort of pay-packet. Google and you shall find.

Edited August 23, 2011 by eFestivals

[sifi]

A number of blue-chips, who still come back to me now - there's not a year of the last 12 (when I've worked for myself) when I've not had at least one job offer in excess of £100k.

Edited August 23, 2011 by sifi

[eFestivals]

Your a big mixed bag Neil... You slam people who earn those amounts while you have taken the money for yourself... Its the same mixed bag you talk about when it comes to business and taking advantage...

I did what I did, then I wised up. It's nothing unusual or strange, even if not chasing every shiny penny is beyond your own limited comprehension.

As for Worlds First... I know of one I was involved in, but not one I could take direct credit for as it was a team achievement... Talking in the sort of name in the papers type thing... Although my name wasn't... the company was...

Working in the software field most things I do are "world firsts" because what's the point in writing software that already exists...

writing software is in nearly all cases merely re-inventing the wheel. I very much doubt that there's any thing you've ever done in software that hasn't been done previously by someone else, tho perhaps in a different way.

That was certainly the case with what I did, tho I chose a very different path from the obvious windoze, and opened up a whole new income stream for IBM as a result. As far as I'm aware it's not something that lasted for them - tho amusingly it was killed off by the unimaginative programmers, the same ones who are today urging software writers to revert back to much the same idea I implemented about 15 years ago.

The computer world is so short-term in its outlook that it's highly amusing - I can see things going round the same loop with developments now that it's already done twice before. And more than that, it's making all of the exact same mistakes as it made in those two previous cycles, because know-nothing* kids are the ones driving things.

(* 'know-nothing' about the history of computer developments so that they're able to avoid the same mistakes).

[eFestivals]

100k in central London isn't a massive wage these days. I know that sounds sick, but the average wage where I work is 75k.

There's no amount that would have me work in London today. Some things are worth more than money.

[eFestivals]

Finally, three weeks after moving, I seem to have the BT Broadband service I'm paying for. The whole thing has been a right 'mare, with the order being continually cocked up right thru to my broadband dropping every time I received a phone call.

Things had got so bad with it that I'd given up complaining and planned to switch to Virgin. If it hadn't been for BT complaints department following up on things I'd have moved providers.

So anyway, BT finally caved in and sent out an engineer at their own cost this morning - who found faults on the line at the exchange, and faults made in my house by the engineer who connected the line up here. Hopefully these are now sorted.

As it happened it turned out that the engineer is an avid efests user, so a gift of an efests mug for him has ensured he's bent over backwards to get everything as good as it possibly could be.

[5co77ie]

glad it's sorted, because I wouldn't recommend a move to Virgin whilst their speeds are as advertised they now have too many users on the service are desperately trying to upgrade lines and have a woeful gain and ping rate - making access as sluggish as the old 56.6 days. I've spent a month complaining - and been told the fix date in my area will be 29th February.

[fred quimby]

so a gift of an efests mug for him has ensured he's bent over backwards to get everything as good as it possibly could be.

[eFestivals]

glad it's sorted, because I wouldn't recommend a move to Virgin whilst their speeds are as advertised they now have too many users on the service are desperately trying to upgrade lines and have a woeful gain and ping rate - making access as sluggish as the old 56.6 days. I've spent a month complaining - and been told the fix date in my area will be 29th February.

if for no other reasons I'm glad I've not moved to VM because of the hideously expensive prices they have.

And as I know you're currently getting to discover, there's much more to broadband speeds than just the base broadband speed. It's naff all use having (say) 40Mb download speed if the less visible technical parts are so naff that it makes the whole thing as good as useless for many uses.

As you now know, your 'much faster' VM service is far far slower than my slower BT service (even when it was very poorly configured as it has been for the last few weeks).

[eFestivals]

BT are a nightmare

oh, I know.....

The completely screwed up my order for my house move. It took about 15 hours of talking to them for them to get the order right.

Then they didn't actually fulfil the order when they were meant to. I finally got all my services back 4 days after it should have been done.

And even then they managed to screw up the connections, so that my broadband dropped each time I got a phone call. The customer service answer to that was to tell me that I had to run a test for 48 hours and wouldn't be able to use my broadband during that time. I told them to fuck off with that.

Anyone who might be mild and meek with them would never succeed in getting the faults they've caused corrected. It's only because I'm unafraid to shout at idiots that I've (hopefully) finally got things resolved.

[Paul ™]

glad it's sorted, because I wouldn't recommend a move to Virgin whilst their speeds are as advertised they now have too many users on the service are desperately trying to upgrade lines and have a woeful gain and ping rate - making access as sluggish as the old 56.6 days. I've spent a month complaining - and been told the fix date in my area will be 29th February.

[5co77ie]

yeah I'm reasonably okay now - but then the kids around here are out at school:

when they get home, and the digital tellies go on too:

Edited February 7, 2012 by 5co77ie

[eFestivals]

Bye again scottie.

"reasonably OK" means that if he's lucky he might get skype to run for 20 minutes before the poor quality of his line has it disconnect.

Even the shit BT connection I had till this morning was far FAR better than that.

[Paul ™]

Have they said what the issue is Scott?

Never seen that pingtest site before, here is mine though.

Edited to change image as tested on IE9

Edited February 7, 2012 by Paul ™

[5co77ie]

They're taking out the cabling and replacing it with bigger and better cabling and putting in a new exchange apparently. I get a better connection going through my mobile phone!

[Paul ™]

They're taking out the cabling and replacing it with bigger and better cabling and putting in a new exchange apparently. I get a better connection going through my mobile phone!

[eFestivals]

There is clearly something of an issue in your local area.

There is ... and VM say it might get fixed before the end of the month.

Which is a shameful level of customer service, which makes my fun with BT over the last month have BT look wildly competent.