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Thread: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

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    News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    Taking a ride on the Silicon Roundabout.
    Read more.

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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    Whats the point of them upgrading the network when they will not repair streets where the ducts have been damaged for over 6 years allowing no new installs? (I can see the virgin cabinet from my house but they cannot do an install!) This is just gloss virgin are really running the infrastructure into the ground. Oh well Be* is better anyway, gives me a static IP something virgin found impossible to do.
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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    Whish though companies would invest more in other areas though.
    It seem we get this constant stream of I can go this fast but only in certain ares whilst my speed hasn't changed for about 4 years.

    Were getting a bigger divide i reckon.

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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    see, I've found VM to be good on teh constant upgrades front. I live in a village and adsl is a terrible option here, yet i'm being offered 50mb from Virgin, with the prospect of 100mb within the next few months.
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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    Quote Originally Posted by oolon View Post
    ......This is just gloss virgin are really running the infrastructure into the ground. Oh well Be* is better anyway, gives me a static IP something virgin found impossible to do.
    Qft - They should spend/invest money in upgrading network capacity, releasing hardware that actually works/works well (SuperHub & V+) & better customer care, (Steve from Mumbai, reading off a script in language he doesn't fully understand is not customer care!) rather than running useless trials that the majority of customers couldn't give a crap about.

    Oh and less confusing, more user friendly traffic management policies would be a welcome bonus

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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    i worked for them for 3 years.. some good things to say some bad things but on the whole the speed race between BT and virgin can only be good for the consumer.

    As for the slow areas vs fast well serviced areas, unfortunately VM aren't given government hand outs like BT so they will only upgrade if profitable. Complain about the area you live in sure, but the solution is easy... move home to a better serviced area, wait or pay for the infrastructure yourself.

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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    Quote Originally Posted by jimborae View Post
    Qft - [snipped], releasing hardware that actually works/works well (SuperHub & V+) & better customer care, (Steve from Mumbai, reading off a script in language he doesn't fully understand is not customer care!)
    +1 on this. Damned V+ box is better than the older one we upgraded from, but still seems to lose it's EPG every month and need a reboot. (Did a customer survey for VM this week, and bitched heartily about this).
    And I'm less than impressed with the "SuperHub" I just got a wee while ago - sure I'm getting 16Mb+ (and this is a 30Mb rated line), but the SH itself isn't silent (defective?) and I'm totally unimpressed that it's got to reboot every time you add a fixed DHCP lease (unlike the ancient Netgear router it replaced).
    Anyone know if there's a way to feedback this kind of complaint to them - and no, I don't want to waste half my life speaking to Ranjit - sorry "Roger" - in 'technical support'?! (No racism intended - half my team at work is based in India).
    Last thing - although VM's technical support isn't the best, at least it's better than Three's!
    Quote Originally Posted by jimborae View Post
    Oh and less confusing, more user friendly traffic management policies would be a welcome bonus
    http://shop.virginmedia.com/help/tra...nt-policy.html seemed pretty clear to me.

    I wonder why they're testing in London since, from comments here and elsewhere, it would appear that the London area infrastructure is stretched hair-thin. Still, I suppose - as was ably pointed out in the article - because VM are funding this themselves then it's commercial considerations that are uppermost (after some government cash eventually?). Okay, the fact that if they get this working then they'll be able to bitch-slap BT (again!) probably is an incidental benefit.

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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    don't forget that is 1.5Gbps within their own network, I don't see it being that hard to do if they are only testing it as a POC within the network.
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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    Peak-Times on virgin in south london is pretty much unusable and not even being fixed till June, a date which could slip away and be delayed as its has been multiple times multiple months already, at 'least' they are giving me 1/2 price on my broadband line rental until then.

    My area doesn't even had a planned date for the upload speed increase yet they are piling more and more customers and marketing super fast connections and not even setting there broadband status for areas as not working properly even when they are having long standing unusable connections in that area which is quite terrible.

    If it wasn't for the price and BT being way to slow to roll out Infinity in my area I would switch away from them asap.

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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    Quote Originally Posted by crossy View Post
    Unfortunately that chart is also misleading, as it doesn't include any info on the restrictions imposed on services like P2P and NNTP.

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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    I have had their 10mb service for the last 5 years, only been down a couple of times,

    Seeing as I can only get 3.5 mb from other providers, I stayed with Virgin as none of the others can offer any improvements in speed from the last 5 years

    I thought this country was picking it's feet up with broadband technology only to see it shuffle nowhere in the last 5 years in terms of speed improvements, obviously from my service point of view, that is!

    I would try another provider if they could show a better deal and service but, at the moment that provider is Virgin and it will stay that way for the forseeable future

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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    Quote Originally Posted by j1979 View Post
    i worked for them for 3 years.. some good things to say some bad things but on the whole the speed race between BT and virgin can only be good for the consumer.
    That argument works for some things, for example the competition between AMD and Intel keeps processors fast and cheap. However, it doesn't apply to cases like the megapixel wars where companies continued to one-up each other for the benefit of marketing spiel.

    I think part of the issue is that above a certain point - say, 20Mb - consumers can't tell the difference. Once you can stream pretty much anything the web has to offer instantly and download a DVD sized document in around half an hour, speed becomes fairly irrelevant. Aside from the day when uncompressed HD footage begins streaming, there isn't much demand for hyper-fast home broadband.

    To compare to the megapixel argument, most people don't really need much more than 6Mp photos, that's enough to print a picture almost a metre wide. The majority of people only upload to Facebook where photos are automatically resized to around 1MP and then compressed further. Nowadays most companies, notably including Olympus, have said that they're going to stop at 12MP and concentrate on improving other parts of the camera, like low light performance and so on.

    I hope this is the way that broadband providers end up, but right now we're where the camera industry was 5 years ago.

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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    I want more upload! 2.5Mbps just doesn't cut it these days I want around 10Mbps up without having to pay £700 a month on a leased line.
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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    Quote Originally Posted by Acute View Post
    Peak-Times on virgin in south london is pretty much unusable and not even being fixed till June
    Rather a sweeping statement. Sounds like an isolated case, all fine here in South London for me, and others I know in the area (and not just general usage, we been playing alot of DOD recently as well )

    Personally find them much better than the bad old days of BT and various other providers I used to have. In regards to all these new speeds they offering i don't really need, doubt I will upgrade until I get upgraded for free again like last time.

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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    Quote Originally Posted by Whiternoise View Post
    I think part of the issue is that above a certain point - say, 20Mb - consumers can't tell the difference. Once you can stream pretty much anything the web has to offer instantly and download a DVD sized document in around half an hour, speed becomes fairly irrelevant. Aside from the day when uncompressed HD footage begins streaming, there isn't much demand for hyper-fast home broadband.
    I'd agree with the point general - but I'd suggest that your tipping point is a bit on the low side. 20Mb is fine for a single use, but these days the typical family seems to be heavier users. So you "need" higher bandwidths to ensure that everyone gets a respectable shot. Especially with the rise of IPTV services like iPlayer, and various online/cloud backup offerings. Based on what I've seen, a 50Mb service is probably ample for your typical 2.2 nuclear family - anything over that is probably just showing off. As Jay said, maybe it's time for them to stop looking at headline download figures and bring up the upload speeds?
    Quote Originally Posted by Whiternoise View Post
    Nowadays most companies, notably including Olympus, have said that they're going to stop at 12MP and concentrate on improving other parts of the camera, like low light performance and so on.
    Didn't know that - although it sounds very sensible - too many times I've looked at a digicam review only to see that it's super-mega-pixel CCD was reported as being afflicted with terrible chromatic abberation, etc - and therefore unusable. Sorry others that this is off-topic.

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    Re: News - Virgin Media testing 1.5Gbps broadband in London

    Quote Originally Posted by crossy View Post
    As Jay said, maybe it's time for them to stop looking at headline download figures and bring up the upload speeds?
    Couldn't agree more. Don't they realise that the C in ICT is communication; and that implies two-way movement of "I" (information)?

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