Broadband: Consumer Advice

Could do with some help if anyone has the knowledge, ordered Phone, TV, Broadband from VirginMedia over a month ago and they came and installed it on Saturday 21st Feb.

For a couple of days all was good (168Mbps down, 15Mbps up) then last night got home and broadband wasn't working. Called them up and they ran some tests but said they couldn't find a fault.

It's still not working today. (It's starting to bring back the horror I had with them a few years ago at a different address when I without internet for 4 months and that only ended because I finally got them to release me from my contract early with no charge. I really don't fancy going through that again!)

How long I have got before I'm locked into the 18 month contract? I think its 2 weeks from install but would welcome confirmation of this cause if it's only 7 days I have to move quickly!

As I work from home a fair bit I need some internet access so if I have to start a long fight with them to get out of this contract I will to pay for another line and broadband in the meantime anyway so if I don't have long to exit then I need to get started ASAP.

Broadband T&Cs - http://store.virginmedia.com/the-leg...broadband.html

But I'm sure 168Mps down is classed as broadband, sounds more like fibre?

Fibre T&Cs - http://store.virginmedia.com/the-leg...es.html#ending

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Originally Posted by Kanoe

168Mbps down, 15Mbps up

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HOLY.......!!!

My down is 0.7Mbps on a good day - The best I've ever heard of is a consistent 75Mbps.
How the heck are you on that much??!!

Well its advertised as up to 150 down 30 up.

Speedtest wont even finish the test and Pingtest gives the following:

http://www.pingtest.net/result/118024441.png

It's a joke! Which I hadn't of switched!

Does this help:
http://www.simplifydigital.co.uk/faq...ng-off-period/

I hope thats not the case cause it says 7 days from order which was over a month ago and it was only installed 6 days ago.

Having read the VirginMedia T&C it pretty much says I'm locked in for 18 months already but that is absurd given that you have no idea how good something is going to be until they actually install it.

Need to do more digging.

I'm not in till the weekend but pm me your Mac address and I'll check it it out

This may sound obvious but have you tried rebooting your router? My BT connection slowed to a crawl recently, from my usual of ~6Mbps (very rural area so I can't really complain) to 1 if I was lucky. After cursing them for about a day, I rebooted my router and all was fine again. It might not be that, but I'd give it a go just to rule it out.

I would echo what mbrown suggested (reboot).

It's just possible your router got a firmware upgrade over the wan connection (broadband) so it now needs a hard reset... low probability but it may solve it, I had something similar on plus-net ADSL once.

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Originally Posted by Millennium

I would echo what mbrown suggested (reboot).

It's just possible your router got a firmware upgrade over the wan connection (broadband) so it now needs a hard reset... low probability but it may solve it, I had something similar on plus-net ADSL once.

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Yeah done hard resets, soft resets, different PC's, wired, wireless, different cables, reseated the virgin cable all to no avail.

The problem seems to with the upstream it doesn't seem to actually get a lot of the data to VM the speed is 0.0 Mbps with a fair amount of T3 errors, the download is choppy but I think thats being caused by the T3 threshold being exceeded and it soft resetting the connection from what i've read online.

I might phone the citizens advise to see what I can do cause so far in 7 days of having the connection 4 have been OK and 3 have been useless.

Dareos works at VM, see his post above...

Is there not typically an initial 'bedding in' period with new installs?

Going to try and convince them to send an engineer first to see if they can do anything as the phone tech support still reckon there is nothing wrong with it. Failing that i'll be in touch Dareos. (Many thanks for the offer!)

Well they have now admitted there is an issue in the area and they will send someone out. Hopefully this will do the job, they said utilisation in the area is 6% (apparently not enough to be called an outage) but this dropped off and if anyone is interested its a load of FEC errors on the upstream.

When Virgin are good, I dare say they are flawless... But when an error pops up, well glhf.

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Originally Posted by DannyM

When Virgin are good, I dare say they are flawless... But when an error pops up, well glhf.

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They are a prime example of how buying + re-branding a company and sinking millions into marketing, does not fix the core problems. Still shocking customer service, unreliable broadband connections and awful TV set top boxes.

Still, I hope they sort it for you Kanoe - its not a nice problem to have!

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Originally Posted by DannyM

When Virgin are good, I dare say they are flawless... But when an error pops up, well glhf.

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I'd say the same about BT - When their service is working, it's exactly what they say you'll get (even if the bar stewards won't give me FTTC/FTTP). But getting set up usually has teething problems and on the odd occasion when something goes down, it's hell-and-back trying to find out what the issue is... although experience has taught me it's invariably a fault at the exchange!!

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Originally Posted by DannyM

When Virgin are good, I dare say they are flawless... But when an error pops up, well glhf.

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I can relate. I had years of perfect service until all of a sudden it cut out. Then the hell started, 4 months of numerous calls(when they didnt hang up on me)they kept promising a resolution once they find the problem.

Eventually found out the cabinet servicing my area had self combusted.

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Originally Posted by Ttaskmaster

I'd say the same about BT - When their service is working, it's exactly what they say you'll get (even if the bar stewards won't give me FTTC/FTTP). But getting set up usually has teething problems and on the odd occasion when something goes down, it's hell-and-back trying to find out what the issue is... although experience has taught me it's invariably a fault at the exchange!!

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I disagree. My BT broadband is awful. I'm lucky if I get more than 4MB from anything (steam, origin, uplay, geforce experience etc). Problem is, router says sync speed is 67Mb down, so as far as BT are concerned, nothing is wrong and it must be the server. To put it into perspective, my father whom is also with BT on 38Mb down gets 4.5 MB down with steam.

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Originally Posted by MrRockliffe

I disagree. My BT broadband is awful. I'm lucky if I get more than 4MB from anything

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Oh, lucky you!!
I'm on a whopping 0.5Mbps... maybe 0.7Mpbs if America is still asleep! :)

However, for all its lack of speed, the service is still consistent, continual and hassle-free.

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Originally Posted by MrRockliffe

To put it into perspective, my father whom is also with BT on 38Mb down gets 4.5 MB down with steam.

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So... do I read this correct - You get 67Mbps and your father gets 38Mbps, yet you're both blaming BT for a poor performance that only occurs with Steam?

Steam is rather shocking on download speed. Even with 150mb BB I average only 4mb download from steam :(.

Then again steam most likely is constantly hammered by users downloading games.

No, what I'm saying is that he has a slower package, yet gets faster speed on steam, origin, uplay (basically when I take my laptop down I test everything).

Sure, the speed could be slower, but I'm not getting the speed I was told I'd be getting, at least not in their speed test.

I still think there's a fundamental issue with how they sell broadband speeds. They can deliver a 1/10 of what they advertise and they're still legally supplying the service and you're locked into contract.

It should be made law that they have to be within say 20% of what they advertise or if that is indeed the best they can offer in your area allow you to reduce the cost to the basic package that covers what you get.

If that makes sense.

BT was on watchdogs a few months back about not supplying the full speed. Apparently, the law is that they HAVE to provide you with their estimated download speed. For me, it was 61-71 ish. So, according to BTs own speed test and speed test.net, they do. However, every thing else shows less. Even on Xbox one I get 4. Yet, at my old house I got 9 down consistently with steam (same broadband package, same cabinet and exchange, and I'm now closer to it).

Getting onto OPs problem though, I'd give them 48 hours to sort the problem, or tell them you're legally able to leave them, and will.

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Originally Posted by MrRockliffe

No, what I'm saying is that he has a slower package, yet gets faster speed on steam, origin, uplay (basically when I take my laptop down I test everything).

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Is that still not down to Steam, though, rather than BT?
What are the results like on other things like YouTube?

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Originally Posted by MrRockliffe

Apparently, the law is that they HAVE to provide you with their estimated download speed.

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It's only an estimate, though and there are a myriad different things that can affect your speed, which they likely cannot factor all of into their estimate - Line quality, number of other users sharing the cables, distance, variable ground conditions, which servers you're connecting to... I'd have rather thought the law would insist you get something between their minimum and maximum expected values.

As is, I'm actually getting more than what BT estimate I should get, according to Speedtest... just a shame it's still crappy Countryside speeds!

You're in Reading I thought the entire borough had been fitted with superfast now. I got the speed boost from 60 to 150mb a month ago. Didnt even know we had countryside in Reading lol(clearly I need to get out the house more :D).

You raise a good point about the hurdles facing broadband speed but I would at least like to see an option in packages for example if BT had a 50mb and 25mb packages currently afaik if I opt for the 50mb and receive only 10mb I am locked into paying for the 50mb. It would be beautiful to be allowed to drop to the 25mb package as I'm clearly not receiving the higher package speeds.

YouTube reports a download speed of 38000 ish Kbps.

If it was steam, then why is EVERYTHING else as slow, except speed tests. When I do a test to see if they're throttling, it sometimes says they are (strange, because it doesn't say it every time).

I understand that there are other factors, but even if I run the tests wired, at peak and non peak times etc I still get the same results.

Steam has ALWAYS been quick for me. When testing, I always make sure the same server is selected.

As mentioned before, since speed test results show that the speed is 67 down consistently, as far as BT are concerned it's all running fine.

I've even carried out the tests on different computers, tried different routers...

6 percent utilisation is incredibly low, its a good thing. T3 timeouts, bad thing, might be caused by low snr, poor power levels on either upstream or downstream.

If a low area snr is spotted, network engineer will sort it, usually done within 4 days, it affects a lot of people, its not easy to sort
if a downstream/upstream snr issue, or poor power levels, tech booked, sorted usually within 2-3 working days (depends on engineer quota in area, seen it done on same day before).
Any queries on it, pm me your shub mac, i'll look into it, back in on thursday.

Virgin have generally been pretty quick to sort problems for me, most of which seem to have arisen due to other engineers adding splitters or moving us to a lower tap a few years back (no idea why). Anyway, after reporting a problem they'd generally be out within a couple of days and have it sorted.

BT on the other hand...
I have no first hand experience but a friend of mine has recently moved house, only a few doors down the same street but on the same VDSL DSLAM and is getting terrible speeds. It sounds a lot like a wiring issue but BT keep sending generic 'wireless help' rubbish even though he's clearly stated he's using wired, has tried rebooting etc etc. And from what I've heard the waiting list to get an OR engineer out to fault-find can be approaching a month.

WRT Xbox speed complaints - I'm not sure if the ISP is to blame there as I've seen the same on Virgin and time of day (hence utilisation) doesn't seem to matter at all - it seems more like a deliberate speed cap but I've no idea who implements it.

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Originally Posted by Ttaskmaster

Is there not typically an initial 'bedding in' period with new installs?

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They recommend 72 hours.....thats what I was told on the phone this evening. In fact I was warned not to turn it off or reset within the first 72 hours.

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Originally Posted by Mynight

You're in Reading I thought the entire borough had been fitted with superfast now. I got the speed boost from 60 to 150mb a month ago. Didnt even know we had countryside in Reading lol(clearly I need to get out the house more :D).

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I daresay all of Reading's exchanges are now Fibre-enabled, yes...
However, as their website says, it doesn't mean that they are accepting orders for your area/cabinet/whatever.
As is, our exchange is less than 2 miles away and has been enabled since 2010, yet they're still not able to get anything even approaching basic Broadband. The kicker is that only BT will even supply us. None of the other companies will even offer us service, else I'd have switched long ago!

As for Reading Countryside - We're technically part of Reading according to everything else, but actually governed by Wokingham Borough Coucil (one of the three authorities that collectively cover Reading Urban Area).
We're South of the M4 which, despite being only 2-3 minutes from Madejski Stadium, probably means we're considered as rural and remote as Stornoway. We don't get busses main sewerage or even gas out here, yet a 4 minute walk away the Spencers Wood area gets it all. Very weird.

Biggest kicker is that AWE (Atomic Weapons Engineering) are 400yds behind my house and, unsurprisingly, they *definitely* get everything!!

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Originally Posted by MrRockliffe

If it was steam, then why is EVERYTHING else as slow, except speed tests.

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That's what I was asking - From what you wrote, I thought it was only Steam that was 4Mbps and everything else was 60+.

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Originally Posted by Mynight

I still think there's a fundamental issue with how they sell broadband speeds.

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I think most of the issue is that people dont understand how it works and why they cant get the maximum speeds. There were changes made in the past, which is why they all give you an estimate of the highest speed youre likely to get, based on values pertinent to the line.

It is made worse by national advertising that neglects, because its in the tiny unreadable text on the bottom of the screen, that the product theyre flogging isnt available everywhere.
They definitely should be required to read the small print out during the advert!

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Originally Posted by Mynight

It should be made law that they have to be within say 20% of what they advertise or if that is indeed the best they can offer in your area allow you to reduce the cost to the basic package that covers what you get.

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All that will happen then is they will remove the maximum speeds from the adverts, switch to just saying "super fast" only, and charge you the same for something that is within 20% of a calculated rate for your line when you enter it in the pre-purchase speed check.

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Originally Posted by Ttaskmaster

Biggest kicker is that AWE (Atomic Weapons Engineering) are 400yds behind my house and, unsurprisingly, they *definitely* get everything!!

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They probably arent using DSL or Cable.

If youre paying for it, you can get some exceedingly fast stuff, but its not cheap.

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Originally Posted by BobF64

They probably arent using DSL or Cable.

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Yeah, they're probably using hyper-secret space-age neural gel lines or something!! :D

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Originally Posted by BobF64

If youre paying for it, you can get some exceedingly fast stuff, but its not cheap.

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Apparently not... I did ask how much it would cost for them to lay fibre lines to the cabinet or property but even when I said money was no object and I'd be paying for the whole village to be connected, they simply told me, "That isn't a service we are able to offer at this time".

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Originally Posted by Ttaskmaster

Apparently not... I did ask how much it would cost for them to lay fibre lines to the cabinet or property but even when I said money was no object and I'd be paying for the whole village to be connected, they simply told me, "That isn't a service we are able to offer at this time".

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Ahh no, persuading someone to lay fibre is one thing, although some place up in the north did it iirc.

What you could get is something like the BTnet Leased Line, those are pricey and fast, BTs site says theyre available in speeds between 2Mbps and 10Gbps. Thats 1:1, uncontended and symmetrical.

Looking at their pricing examples, because theres several factors involved in the cost, a 100Mbps line, 5 year contract, is only a mildly wallet lightening £667 (ex VAT) per month. But hey, its all yours!

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Originally Posted by MrRockliffe

I've even carried out the tests on different computers, tried different routers...

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4MB/s is actually a pretty darn fast speed and is good for fibre. Your Theoretical top speed is 8MB/s, if you have no congestion in your area, there is no load on the network, your phone line is in good condition (and made of copper), and crucially you are on a gigabit WIRED network with a decent network card.

Realistic speeds will vary between 2 and 6MB/s, although you may see 8 overnight when its really quiet.
I have a very similar connection and the above is based both on logic/fact, and also on my personal experience.

If I had to put money on the cause, I would suggest its a combination of your phone line quality (most likely internal wiring) and general load on the network. BT won't agree there is an issue as you've found.

Also, which Hub have you got? If its a HH4 then that may well be your issue, its terrible. Get hold of a HH3 or HH5 and you'll have a faster, more reliable connection anyway. What does the official BT speed test site say? As others have mentioned, game download services can be awful for download speeds and are not a good indicator.

edit: I must be getting old, I can't get my head around 4MB/s being SLOW! Wasn't long ago I was super excited at how fast my new 56kbps modem was (approx 5 KB/s download speed). Ah the days when a 120ms ping was a good thing ;)

When living in Spain I was used to 0.5 down so, yes, it's not slow, but it's not what I'm paying for also.

BT's site suggests a speed of 67 down (Mb). Steam, origin etc have always been reliable download speed indicators for me, often providing greater throughput than a torrent.

I'm using a HH5 wireless on the 5GHz frequency (I've split the SSIDs so I can force the two different frequencies). Even on wired, however, I'm receiving the same results, so as you've stated, lower speeds must be as a result of external factors.

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Originally Posted by Spud1

4MB/s is actually a pretty darn fast speed and is good for fibre.

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Is that 4MB/s actually megabits (Mb), or megabytes (MB)?

The national average is apparently now pushing 16-20Mb/s (which is why I'm so upset at only getting 0.5-0.7), although a nearby friend of mine gets a consistent 75+Mb/s.

If you're getting actual megabytes of speed, I wll be stunned... and looking to move in next door!!

I get between 6 and 8 MegaBytes per second in Steam, in general, BUT if there are large new releases, speeds do drop to 4 or less.

This is on Fibre, syncing at roughly 74/19.

Just a quick thought on BT users getting slower than expected speeds on the fibre service. I recently had plusnet fibre installed and was quoted to get 77mb down and 16mb up. When the contractor working for kelly communications installed the fibre Modem and the plusnet router i was disappointed to find i was only getting 24meg, which then dropped down to 7.

After phoning plusnet and arranging for a proper BT engineer to come out, it turned out the contractor had put in the wrong Modem. They have 2, one for FTTC and one for FTTH. I cant remember which one had been put into my flat, but the BT guy swapped them and hey presto, i had 77meg down and 17meg up.

If anyone has a similar type of issue it may be worth looking into.

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Originally Posted by Ttaskmaster

Is that 4MB/s actually megabits (Mb), or megabytes (MB)?
The national average is apparently now pushing 16-20Mb/s (which is why I'm so upset at only getting 0.5-0.7), although a nearby friend of mine gets a consistent 75+Mb/s.
If you're getting actual megabytes of speed, I wll be stunned... and looking to move in next door!!

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I currently have a 69 Megabit connection, which gives me a download rate of 4-8 Megabytes per second. The connection speed varies occasionally and will push higher than that. That is pretty typical of a BT infinity/fibre connection :)

It gets confusing but you don't tend to express connection speed in "per second" - only download/upload speeds, which are different. you can convert roughly between the two by dividing my 8. So my 69MB connection gives me a theortical max download speed of around 8MB/s. Real world I get 4-8 depending on network load/router/switch etc.

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Originally Posted by Spud1

I currently have a 69 Megabit connection, which gives me a download rate of 4-8 Megabytes per second. The connection speed varies occasionally and will push higher than that. That is pretty typical of a BT infinity/fibre connection :)

It gets confusing but you don't tend to express connection speed in "per second" - only download/upload speeds, which are different. you can convert roughly between the two by dividing my 8. So my 69MB connection gives me a theortical max download speed of around 8MB/s. Real world I get 4-8 depending on network load/router/switch etc.

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And ping ;)

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Originally Posted by Spud1

It gets confusing but you don't tend to express connection speed in "per second" - only download/upload speeds, which are different. you can convert roughly between the two by dividing my 8.

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Yep, that works precisely on my recorded performances.
I usually hear about peoples' line doing Mbps, so it always confuses when they then talk about MBps.... or in my case Kbps!! :(

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Originally Posted by MrRockliffe

And ping ;)

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My ping is usually good enough, TBH. It's just the line speed that has me wanting to go postal on BT. We're like an island of slow!

I think (but don't quote me) that FTTC has a 15mbps minimum per connection from cab. This is shared so you still have the issue if you live in a high torrent area :P

Then you have contention at the exchange, which I understand if the BT standard 50-1.
Then you have another level of contention from pop > internet at large.

I'd be suprized if anyone with residential broadband gets more than 10-20kbps if you averaged it all out. (I know in the old adsl1 days of 512kbps, most ISPs had a ratio so that the per user speed was about 1-2kbps.

But in reality providing openreach have provided you with >15mbps to the cab, they have done all they need to do. If you get 0.00002bytes / sec from a certain website, why should they care, it's a third party.

Noting that speedtests are useless as most isps would natually prioritise that traffic.

Basically what I'm saying is that, you get what you are given! And providing the ISP is giving you >64kbps (ofcom broadband definition) they are not breaking contract.

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Originally Posted by abaxas

Basically what I'm saying is that, you get what you are given!

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I prefer to say you get what you pay for!

Having been on 2 previous FTTC suppliers, the move to Zen showed that ALL the problems I had had were not to do with the BT OpenReach infrastructure.
In fact the last switch-over I could move between ISPs for a few days by changing the username/password on my router, on one ISP the slow speeds and disconnects were rife, on the other they were gone.

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Originally Posted by shaithis

I prefer to say you get what you pay for!

Having been on 2 previous FTTC suppliers, the move to Zen showed that ALL the problems I had had were not to do with the BT OpenReach infrastructure.
In fact the last switch-over I could move between ISPs for a few days by changing the username/password on my router, on one ISP the slow speeds and disconnects were rife, on the other they were gone.

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I would tend to agree with that. I used to pay for a 40 quid PM for a standard adsl (8bmps) connection via plusnet. Instead of being the elcraaapo residential I went business.

Now I have 2bmps wireless broadband from a local COOP. It works and when it breaks I get to speak with Wendy who tells me what's wrong, how long it's going to take to fix it, then rings me back when it's fixed.

Service is what I need, not ultimate speed.

EDIT : it's 7.99 PM :P