Migrating to Virgin Media Business

[tfboy]

Well, I've decided to migrate to VM business as I qualify running my business from home.

Went for their intermediate package with phone line for £50/month + VAT.

I'm currently paying around that for a 100Mb + Telephone. Yes, that pricing includes VAT, but I wasn't claiming it back as it wasn't in my business' name.

New setup will come with a Hitron WiFi router (need to read up on that). 350Mb down, 15Mb up. 24 hour response time. No contention / limits whatsoever.

I didn't go to for extra features like static IPs, etc, as I don't need them.

Let's see what it ends up being like.

[Millennium]

Sounds like a good deal. Have you checked the SLA?

[tfboy]

They claim a 24 hour fault response time, so it's better than what's advertised for residential. I'm not too bothered as I have unlimited 4G with Three so can always tether if in need. Also, I'd hope if you do need support, you skip the first level or two asking you to reboot your computer, "have you tried resetting your router?", etc.

[ik9000]

Nice. I've been toying with doing the same as I have to remote work quite a bit. I wasn't sure if that would qualify me for a business line though. Darn annoying though as upload kind of matters when you're working on VPN all day.

[Millennium]

I have it on good authority that in the US the major firms are looking to monetise internet access like they did with cable, since everyone is cable cutting now, so super low monthly limits (think 20gb on a fast broadband connection) and superusage charges coupled with additional monthlies for access to certain services (Netflix etc).

We are so lucky we are not going to have to deal with such crud, as is Canada and I believe much of the EU. I don't understand how the US authorities can just sit back and let this happen. Sure certain states are fighting back, but look what just happened with state vs federal cannabis law there? It's a mess and I feel sorry for them.

In parts of Russia the competition is so fierce you can get gigabit broadband for well under £10 a month. Things will not go well for the US if they don't sort their act out. They even paid the major telcos many billions for superfast country-wide broadband many times over the last 2 decades. What happened? The telcos pocketed the money. Scandalous.

I think the margins are still pretty high for a cable based package that charges at £50 a month in the UK, in an already cabled area, assuming things go wrong rarely. Still it's something I would pay.

[Hoonigan]

I get these speeds (see sig) on Virgin Media Vivid 300. You should be more than happy

We pay £60 a month, inc. VAT, for Vivid 300, phoneline and a decent selection of TV channels.

[Unique]

i recently upgraded to the vivid 300 from 200 and just after swapping the modem over ran a speedcheck and got 387mbps down and 21.05 up on the first test. i had two discounts on my account which came to an end, and they wouldn't shift on it. i asked for the new customer deal (12 months discount) for the 300mb which two different people refused. instead they offered a tenner off for 18 months, which was both cheaper and longer than the new customer deal (just tied into 12 months but discount longer - i have no intention of leaving). so they gave me it cheaper than i asked for but wouldn't give me the higher price, so £38 a month instead of £42. i agreed to it if they gave the modem free instead of £20 charge, after waiting for 5 minutes they came back and told me i couldn't get it for free, but they would give me £20 credit instead. i was literally thinking they don't have a clue, i would have came back and said yes it's free, we will show £20 charge then £20 credit so it's free. obviously they have some customer service issues. fortunately in all the years with virgin i've had a great service from them that's only been down about 3 times i've noticed in about 12 years, and never down for more than a day. a few years ago it went down on either xmas day or NY day and they had guys in the street on the day itself fixing the cabs and it was working later, so i can't fault the service. the wifi on the router isn't good but nothing a £10 repeater can't solve, and i use cables and homeplugs anyways as i live in a non wifi friendly old building

anyway i did hear they are testing a vidid 350 package that connects at 400mb and they were putting new customers on that, with an intention of moving 300mb customers to 350mb, so looks like that's what they did for me. i got about 232mb on the 200 package which was pretty good. to be honest the speeds are that fast at this level you don't really notice much difference, but i'm not sharing the service with anyone else. i did notice uploading was much better as that's nearly twice as fast. it's still a relatively slow upload speed compared to download though, but i suppose compared with what most people get in the uk it's pretty decent

[ik9000]

i recently upgraded to the vivid 300 from 200 and just after swapping the modem over ran a speedcheck and got 387mbps down and 21.05 up on the first test. i had two discounts on my account which came to an end, and they wouldn't shift on it. i asked for the new customer deal (12 months discount) for the 300mb which two different people refused. instead they offered a tenner off for 18 months, which was both cheaper and longer than the new customer deal (just tied into 12 months but discount longer - i have no intention of leaving). so they gave me it cheaper than i asked for but wouldn't give me the higher price, so £38 a month instead of £42. i agreed to it if they gave the modem free instead of £20 charge, after waiting for 5 minutes they came back and told me i couldn't get it for free, but they would give me £20 credit instead. i was literally thinking they don't have a clue, i would have came back and said yes it's free, we will show £20 charge then £20 credit so it's free. obviously they have some customer service issues. fortunately in all the years with virgin i've had a great service from them that's only been down about 3 times i've noticed in about 12 years, and never down for more than a day. a few years ago it went down on either xmas day or NY day and they had guys in the street on the day itself fixing the cabs and it was working later, so i can't fault the service. the wifi on the router isn't good but nothing a £10 repeater can't solve, and i use cables and homeplugs anyways as i live in a non wifi friendly old building

anyway i did hear they are testing a vidid 350 package that connects at 400mb and they were putting new customers on that, with an intention of moving 300mb customers to 350mb, so looks like that's what they did for me. i got about 232mb on the 200 package which was pretty good. to be honest the speeds are that fast at this level you don't really notice much difference, but i'm not sharing the service with anyone else. i did notice uploading was much better as that's nearly twice as fast. it's still a relatively slow upload speed compared to download though, but i suppose compared with what most people get in the uk it's pretty decent

which hub are you on? I had to downgrade from hub3 to hub2.5 just to get stable service

[Hoonigan]

which hub are you on? I had to downgrade from hub3 to hub2.5 just to get stable service

I'm using the Hub 3.0, works absolutely fine.

[ik9000]

you run a packet loss check on it?

[Unique]

which hub are you on? I had to downgrade from hub3 to hub2.5 just to get stable service

hub 3, the latest one. i had the hub2ac which i thought ran at 300mb as i thought they were saying at launch it could run much faster than the fastest current speeds. it works fine

[ik9000]

so the issue: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2016/12..._firmware_fix/
It's been due a fix for ever, but VM never updated the firmware for over a year. Last I heard (June 2017) it still hasn't been released. That's when I gave up and got VM to activate a hub2.5 so I could actually run Alexa. Until it gets sorted the hub3 is staying in its box and I stay on the hub2.5 https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...-loss-bug.html

and then the DoS comedy problem too - which from my router's log file I might have been suffering from too:
http://www.techradar.com/news/virgin...-its-a-big-one

Bascially despite downgrading speed-wise to a 200mb connection everything is runner smoother, with fewer drop outs and it is much more like what it should be.

[tfboy]

I guess I'm fortunate being on a much older superhub. I probably could have negotiated a better deal without jumping over to a business package, but I'm hoping the Hitron router is better debugged!