Virgin Media BB rant

[pendulum666]

Im starting to hit more issues gradually. generally been ok. I been on 4meg package for years since it was 512kb. However I want to leave now mainly due to price of ntl/virgin, but i keep being told if I leave and go with sky or some adsl provider, that I will have to pay BT like £125 or so, just to get my house "BT Enabled" again, even though its all plumbe in from many years ago in my house when someone was on it before ntl came about.
Is that true I have to pay that? Currently BT is not setup in my house, however, the BT phone socket points and wiring is all there and into the house.

[Gazza4354]

I'm in the same boat Virgin Media is poor. When it was Blueyonder I hardly ever had any problems and they use to contact you to let you know in advance when there was going to be a major upgrade and a long downtime also they use to give you free upgrades when they upgraded all the packages . I only just manage to get over 1Mbps once in a blue moon.

[Avalon]

Gent's while some of the posts here relate to cable others (namely those mentioning 18 month contracts and 8mbit) are ADSL, I know it's the same company as you guy's see it but as someone who at one point worked for them it's not. The systems behind each broadband system relate to totally different hardware and as such a problem with poor performance on the ADSL side of things will have nothing to do with a problem with the cable product. Also the NTL Broadband system as yet hasn't been converted over to interface with the normal customer management system so as such the old TW and NTL systems are independent, the ADSL system is again a totally different set-up.

pendulum666 : Yes BT will charge you £100+ for a 'reinstall' as an engineer turns up and reattatches the pair in in the cab and checks the cable to the property and internally. It's expensive and way ott but if the property has been without BT for 6+ months that's what they charge and they won't budge on it.

I'd never recommend Virgin ADSL to anyone however in general I would recommend a cable connection as in general for the majority they are reliable.

*goes to get the asbestos overalls and waits for the flames to begin*

[pendulum666]

Cheers. Right rip off that BT charge.

[Rabs]

Hi this is my first post I was with Telewest before the Virgin takeover.I had no problems before but on Friday 30th Nov and Sunday 2nd Dec after 6-0pm the internet connections were so slow it was nearly inert and I pay £25 per month for a system that is unuseable at certain times of the day.I am in the Preston Lancs area has anybody else had these problems at these times in this area.I see from other posts it seems to be a problem in many areas.

Im in Preston and connected to UBR 4, my speeds (even at 4am) are appalling. Once my contracts up I'm off to the BE Value - mainly due to line length as the max I can get is around 5.5Mb on ADSL.

Anything is faster than this, what winds me up even more is that I vnc to a pals pc in Preston but on UBR 1 and he has no issues

Even run identical speedtests (multithreaded download) of the same file from the same site which can handle silly speeds and his is 4 x faster than mine

I do know my UBR is congested as I called to get a TV fault sorted and the guy had a look on the system for me and it had 'High TX load' with no dates for an upgrade.

I used to love the service and recommend it to all my friends but its gone down the pan...

[DougMcDonald]

Whilst I completely understand and totally sympathise with many of the frustrations vented here, a thought should be spared for some of us who live so far from the rest of the world, that the maximum we can get is <1MB!

My place is about 2-3 miles from the exchange and I can get 1MB, but the misses is so far into the back and beyond, she can only get a 512KB service! (Very frustrating after coming from a faultless 8MB Pipex connection!)

So this leads on to my main point, would you rather have a connection limited to 1Mb but never any higher (and realistically never any lower (I live around a load of OAP's!!)) or something which might hit 4-5Mb, but drop to 512 etc during peak periods?

Would you sacrifice speed for consistency?

[Rabs]

Whilst I completely understand and totally sympathise with many of the frustrations vented here, a thought should be spared for some of us who live so far from the rest of the world, that the maximum we can get is <1MB!

My place is about 2-3 miles from the exchange and I can get 1MB, but the misses is so far into the back and beyond, she can only get a 512KB service! (Very frustrating after coming from a faultless 8MB Pipex connection!)

So this leads on to my main point, would you rather have a connection limited to 1Mb but never any higher (and realistically never any lower (I live around a load of OAP's!!)) or something which might hit 4-5Mb, but drop to 512 etc during peak periods?

Would you sacrifice speed for consistency?

My point is that its not consistent, ping times are 50-60 to google/bbc and borderline pings to multiple gaming hosts (multiplay etc). Even downloading from Virgins gaming ftp server is poor.

Your points about line length arent really valid here, as cable doesn't suffer too much from line length issues as the network is FTTC (Fibre to the cabinet) and coax from there. And the fact that Virgin 20Mb cable users pay a massive price premium over other ISP's ADSL2/upto 24Mb offerings.

As per my post if I was limited by line length for ADSL (which I am to an extent), I can happily pick a product to suit my needs at a certain price point, with a certain supplier. The service then depends on that supplier - on cable you dont get a choice.

I'm not a heavy downloader (anymore) but I do expect a quality service on the top tier package. 25p a minute scripted overseas broadband customer service, I dont think so -to be told 'switch your cable modem off', 'shut your computer down for 30 seconds' etc - grrrrrr

If they sort it I'll happily stay with them, in the current state (where they dont really give a hoot, bring back the Telewest days....) - it looks like I'll be leaving at the end of my contract.

[DougMcDonald]

Fair comment on the cable side of things obviously, it is ridiculous that such a charge is applied to a poor service.

My generic question still stands though, out of curiosity more than anything. Who would be prepared to have their service limited to 1MB for example cable or adsl, but have it consistent?

[Rabs]

As long as latency etc is low then yes - however I'd expect the price point to match that speed too.

[Blitzen]

Im starting to hit more issues gradually. generally been ok. I been on 4meg package for years since it was 512kb. However I want to leave now mainly due to price of ntl/virgin, but i keep being told if I leave and go with sky or some adsl provider, that I will have to pay BT like £125 or so, just to get my house "BT Enabled" again, even though its all plumbe in from many years ago in my house when someone was on it before ntl came about.
Is that true I have to pay that? Currently BT is not setup in my house, however, the BT phone socket points and wiring is all there and into the house.

The price is £129.99 but that only applies if you have NO BT LINE INSTALLED.

If you have then its free to have BT re-enabled.

I know because i just moved into a house that had no BT line so paid the bucks so i could go back to SKY BB rather than use the crappy VM line that was already there,

[Teh_Evil_Cupcak]

You shouldn't have to be paying for the customer support phone calls, are you dialing 150?

[soopahfly]

How does this look for absolutely diabolical service.
I'm in headingley, leeds. 200 meters from the exchange, and on a supposed 8mb service.
I've not downloaded anything at all today bar a couple of windows updates this morning.

I want to punch Richard Branson in the face, and snipe his balloon next time he tries a round the world trip.

[capt_cornflake]

The price is £129.99 but that only applies if you have NO BT LINE INSTALLED.

If you have then its free to have BT re-enabled.

I know because i just moved into a house that had no BT line so paid the bucks so i could go back to SKY BB rather than use the crappy VM line that was already there,

Not necesarily...

There have been a few news stories in the Guardian recently about BT charging people moving house even if the previous residents had a BT line.

The charges seem to originate from Open reach (recently spun out of BT) so BT can't do much about it.

See here for the most recent story

[j1979]

.....

[manwithnoname]

Just to let you all know Virgin Media does not do non cable broardband!!

it's done by a company call virgin.net, it does'nt change the fact its slow tho

In what way is Virgin Media non cable broadband not provided by Virgin Media?

Probably nit picking as cable broadband is different to non cable broadband, but what point are you making?

[j1979]

When Virgin Media happened, Telewest & Nlt were merged (sort of) but Virgin.net is still separate from the merger. All adsl under the Virgin media branding is still separate from VM. It is impossible for someone to have cable TV and ADSL broadband from virgin media. Because Virgin.net only operate in non cable areas. they are a totaly separate company, that only has links because they are owned by the same parent company.