News - Virgin Media launches 50Mbps broadband

[Stewart]

I live in Birmingham, have been on Virgin Media for years, always get great speeds, no issues. 10/10 service.

Nice to see everyone moaning as per usual on HEXUS.

Almost everyone on these forums has to be seen to be too clever for this, far too smart for that. Don't trust them. Smart arse quote about getting throttled. Moan, moan. Blah. Moan.

Make me laugh some of you.

[matty-hodgson]

instead of releasing 50mbit.. why don't they release 20mbit first?

[mehmeh]

I myself am from Plymouth (although live in London now) and a lot of friends who still live there are on VM....all say the same, download speeds are fine.

Am in Paignton myself on Newton Abbot exchange and always get a steady 10MB/512K. Only time I curse VM is when I'm STM'd which seems to be happening more frequently lately, yet my online habits havent really changed, just there STM policy.. hmmmm

Theres soooo many reasons why I wont be upgrading. Its a rip off. It will be STM'd, if not now, its only a matter of time. No way anything I do could put that kinda download speed to use and the distinct lack of any information about upload speed is meh and makes me wonder just how pathetic it will be. LOL just goes to show how much VM suck, I'm one of the few customers who recieves what they're promise and I'm still counting the days untill I can jump ship.

[JimmyBoy]

virgin have almost always been really good for me, ive had a few days when it went down and some days when speed has dropped but other than that i cant complain, as for the 50mb service i hear it has its own bandwith allocation and works differently to the rest of their network somehow so the usual virgin problems shouldnt effect it, they've been busy beavers preparing for this and there is a really good chance it'll acturally do what it says on the tin! fingers crossed for those who take the plunge eh? lol

[rover214]

Has anyone noticed that on the "legal stuff" part, it says that there will be a minimum of £30 installation and a one off Activation fee of £50

[Jay]

They always say that.

[finnrogers]

and the distinct lack of any information about upload speed is meh and makes me wonder just how pathetic it will be. LOL

Upload is 1.5Mb/sec

[Solex]

i doubt that anyone can even reach 50Mb (unless your really close to the exchange) since every neighbour that is connected to cable broadband around the neighbourhood will be sharing the same line + factor in the amount of residents living in the area will determine the final speed you will get.

[mehmeh]

Upload is 1.5Mb/sec

Yeah read that in the thread in networking & broadband. Discussion there mentions ACK overheads etc, goes over my head tbh, but no doubt its a pathetic upstream! IMO they've missed a trick, as ADSL2 catches up with cable speeds they're lossing that advertising advantage and pimping the biggest upstreams or maybe even more symtetrical connections could of left the ADSL2 boys playing catchup again. Will be interesting to see what they do over the coming months.


Off topic.. Couldnt VM do something like 25Mb down/25Mb up or does the technology work similar to ADSL. Obviously they're not in a rush as headline figures of 50MB sell more packages, but am interested to know?

[Brewster0101]

i doubt that anyone can even reach 50Mb (unless your really close to the exchange) since every neighbour that is connected to cable broadband around the neighbourhood will be sharing the same line + factor in the amount of residents living in the area will determine the final speed you will get.

Bit negative aren't we. At least there are trying unlike some national telecomms company... Cough cough BT

Be greatful you can even get cable.

[miniyazz]

Bit negative aren't we. At least there are trying unlike some national telecomms company... Cough cough BT

Be greatful you can even get cable.

Justifiably negative in my opinion. I'm currently on Virgin's 20MB deal, and my typical upload speed is less than 1 megabit/s. All well and good when you're web browsing or downloading photos, but try and upload those same photos and not only are you there all day, you can't even surf the web while waiting cos of the upload bottleneck. Sure, it's better than any current alternative, but it's not good, especially compared to places like Japan, where the speeds are starting to threaten the write speeds of the slower 1.8" laptop hard drives *dreams*

Anyway, BT now have plans to pilot their 40MB fibre this summer. Copper from homes to the exchanges, don't know what sort of impact that'll have on speeds, but I heard that since this is actually fibreoptic cable, uploads won't be limited in the same way..