News - BT slams Virgin's 'high price' broadband service

[miniyazz]

As you say - opinions are based on experience. The way that VM implement (at least in my area) their FUP is fine. Speaking to a VM techie (not the Asian-hosted script readers) was interesting - apparently the traffic shaping only bites if you exceed the "limit" and then start hitting the net during peak traffic periods. So if you do that mega download during the day and then do some mails and light web browsing at night then you probably won't see the shaping hit. I just wish that they had the courage to make the FUP details a little easier to find on that mess of a website.
On the other hand, my mobile has a monthly usage cap, and I'm forever checking how much of that precious resource I'm using.

Hmm, that wasn't my understanding of VM's traffic shaping according to their web page on it, but I could be wrong. Also, it's become more complicated compared to this time last year

[rabbid]

according to that page http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/tra...nt-policy.html the 50Mb product is uncapped

however they ALSO still apply an overall fair usage policy between 9am and 9pm, i dont know if this applies to the 50Mb uncapped product but from reports it certainly applies to the 10-20mb products and is probably a legacy from their 2/10/20Mb tiers before the 10/20/50Mb rollout.

So, will all the products be doubled/increased or a 100Mb added/used to replace the 50Mb?

Their throttling is ok @ 75% but it lasts for 5hours, so if you get it wrong you can be throttled for 4hr 59mins of unlimited time! It would be better up to 5 hours and reset on the unlimited times.

VM are not transparent with your usage. Any service throttling, shaping or restricting you on usage should IMHO give you accurate reports of your usage in near real time. You are not able to see it and have to trust them and their monitoring.

[miniyazz]

VM are not transparent with your usage. Any service throttling, shaping or restricting you on usage should IMHO give you accurate reports of your usage in near real time. You are not able to see it and have to trust them and their monitoring.

This, x100.

[spoon_]

however they ALSO still apply an overall fair usage policy between 9am and 9pm, i dont know if this applies to the 50Mb uncapped product but from reports it certainly applies to the 10-20mb products and is probably a legacy from their 2/10/20Mb tiers before the 10/20/50Mb rollout.

It does not.

[crossy]

VM are not transparent with your usage. Any service throttling, shaping or restricting you on usage should IMHO give you accurate reports of your usage in near real time. You are not able to see it and have to trust them and their monitoring.

Yes, I couldn't agree more - some account page that you could login to check out technical stuff would be great, (usage stats, capped/non-capped, etc). Here's a daft idea ... why don't we try and find a contact and suggest this? Certainly they seemed to be receptive to suggestions (for their new VoD service) when I tried.

I tried contacting customer services and while they weren't able to give exact figures, they were certainly able to give a rounded-up value.

And as you rightly say, we're reliant on them to monitor correctly. Like you, I'd be happier if I could see the figures - my mobile's on Three and I get a "you're approaching your limit" warning from them about every two months - and when I check I'm nowhere near the limit. Anything rather than have to deal with Three's helldesk (imho way worse than Virgin's!)