Assuming there will be a relative upstream increase aswell, high-end users will reap the benefits. 20mbit connections will fulfil the potential of the internet which people in the UK have yet to experience. The way the market is gearing, a super-speed cable internet will be more than apt for a-lá-carte TV/Movies and will shift UK based users in-line with the likes of the French (who are already light years ahead of us).
Virgin ups the stakes with superfast broadband
As the Virgin Media Vs Sky row rumbles on, Branson has upped the stakes by targetting high-end users with a new 20Mb service which will cost £2 more a month than the 10Mb it offers at the moment. Sky's top speed is 16Mb and it has recently launched an aggressive marketing campaign to win customers from Virgin Media after the two rivals couldn't agree on a price for Virgin to pay for basic Sky TV channels including Sky One which resulted in Virgin customers losing these channels. The new Virgin service, which will come into effect by the end of May, will potentially allow users to download an MP3 song in about two seconds, or a DVD-quality film in about half an hour, if everything works at the optimal speed. But, once you get above about 10Mb, how much difference does speed make? Will users really notice the difference? Tell us what you think.
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i read somewhere that they have crap servers, this was from a member of Virgin Media customer support team who also said they are told to lie to customers who ask for help about slow speeds and high ping. so i doubt if it would make any difference.
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what a joke they can't even manage 10mb as it is, I've had 10mb since it came out and it rarely gets above 3mb!
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i have had real good conection speed with virgin and when it was telewest had all packages and never had trouble with any of them since broadband started with telewest round here and still have same relibility now it is virgin media and probally the 20 meg conection will be as good as rest i yet have to find a dsl provider that has relible conection speed that does not inpose download speed limit peak time cap or download/upload caps and fup policys i have not found one dsl provider in uk that is a relible as virgin and sky can do wat they want with packages but sky and every othe dsl provider is limited to how far the customer is from telephone exchange
were i am the max i can get on dsl is 3 meg conection downstream and 256k upstream it far suppased by virgin at 10 mes down -
All I can say is:
http://tinyurl.com/396csa
I thank you. -
I have to reply to the poster called slowspeed.
I have Both Telewest (Virgin) cable 4Mb service and Sky ADSL max service.
Therefore I am in a position to test both
The time for pings on Telewest/Virgin is roughly three times faster than sky.
average 60ms on sky to a london server becomes 21ms on virgin.
likewise over to ireland 150ms sky and 50ms TW/Virgin
measured using ping command from the dos prompt. very similar results from speed testing sites.
Throughput is about the same for both providers depending on the ADSL connection which varies slightly and Sky seems to slow at peak times while TW is constant.
Reliability TW is a stable service bar the odd fault once or twice a year. Sky seems to disconnect and come back mysteriously about once a day
price difference £25 a month for TW £10 for sky -
Totally agree John! As an IT professional Ive tested every broadband provider in the country and I still maintain that Telewest (Virgin) broadband is far superior to everyone else. the best part is no need to install any software to use it. Just plug into your ethernet port and watch it go.....Fantastic Service I also have no problem paying a premium for this level of service, stability and reliability, it ticks all the boxes as far as Im concerned. Also Slowspeed buddy, I think your mate is the same as a lot of tech staff at telewest, an idiot! I was an IT manager for them last year and I can assure you that he hasnt got a clue!!!!!!!
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I have 10 meg Virgin and it is rubish. I get about 4 meg out of it. So even with the 20 meg upgrade I have to pay an extra £2 for a month im still not going to be hitting 10 meg speeds which I have been paying for over 1 year now ill only be hitting 8. Makes no sense at all.
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ive just changed over to sky and yes it has higher ping for sure,but the problem i had with telewest was its not stable,pings change from peak to off peak and it very frustrating wen i only use pc at peak times with heavy packetlosses too,ive not tested the sky properly yet so not sure just how stable it is,so far im disapointed with them both :(
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I have had NTL (virgin) since they started their 1 meg service. I have always had their top internet package. I am not too sure what everyone is going on about when they are talking about pinging and packet sizes (although my missus has never complained) Anyway, i use newsgroups and have done for about 3 years. My internet connection has always maxed out and is still downloading strong at 1100 - 1250 kbps on a 10 mbit connection. Never had any problems, works a treat.
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What a scam! Im paying £37.00 for 10mb and im getting capped to 1-4.5mb between 4pm and midnight because I online game every night and stream down internet radio, as soon as the downloaded data reaches 3gb (a month) the Virgin Traffic Management comes into operation limiting all web use to a fluctuating speed of between 1 and 4.5mb making it useless for gaming, the ping is reaching 400 at times..20mb....dream on Virgin...come back NTL...
Just FYI ive had the modem flash upgraded, the modem address (mac) switched to two other servers with no better connection..
Virgin Media has now become pretty much useless for me now every evening. -
Now that Virgin Media have anounced on their website that they are capping their Broadband service i can now deduce that the customer service staff have been lying to me for the last week I have had a rock steady speed of 10 MBit since it came out. But now despite Virgins clam the speed will only be halved my speed is all over the place. People on Skype sound like drowned rats due to the lag time. As for online game playing its a joke. We have a little comunity of game players here in norwich most of us on Virgin but now because of eratic speeds game play is non existant.
This is one customer that will be looking around for another provider -
If the Virgin servers cant handle the data transfer of only 5% of people using it to full capacity then in my eyes they are not offering anybody the service they are paying for or claim they have in place.
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i think vergin media needs to upgrade every thing to fall in line with other service providers
If the Virgin servers cant handle the data transfer of only 5% of people using it to full capacity then in my eyes it shows there service is poor the the people paying nearly £40.00 a mounth for a preminum service......
y cap at peak times is this a money making scam or just to get people to leave..????
i think virgin has made a bad mistake in this move....
they say you can stream video play games e.c.t.....
but the truth of the matter is you can`t it`s a joke
i hope for there sake they sort it out sooner than later for there good reputation up thill christmass or is good buy from me........
and welcome sky.....
i have a 10 meg conection and x box live (((bet they wont refund me any money for these services i pay for as well as my broadband connection and the games i bought to play on line...!!!! -
dont know what you guys are talkin about i have never had any problems with my broadband speeds with ntl i have a wireless network with 3 pcs connected and all connect at just under 10meg somewere about 9.5/9.7 what alot of people dont understand is having a very fast computer will allso help ur broadband connection speeds maybe you should bin all those scrap pcs and build a good gaming system,,, and stop using symantec software it will grind ur connection to a halt..
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slippmal .. I guess we and others are just making it all up then.. as for the pc, i can assure you that its far more than up to the task and i dont use symantec.
virgin have contacted a bunch of us around norwich today by phone and have admitted that they do have a problem with the connections..it's on going but lets hope they can get things to run smoothly, i currently have a 19.5mb download but it doesnt last more than 20mins before the 4.5 cap comes into effect..must live in hope that the engineers can fix the speed to around 20mb as they have said they can do..we will see. -
all i can say i`ve got a fast gaming machine
take a look at this site and you might understand.......what all the fuss is about....
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html -
i am suprised to find out a 10 meg conection can connect
3 pcs connected and all connect at just under 10meg somewere about 9.5/9.7
so some people have a 30 meg connection on a 10 meg conection {{{{strange lol }}}
i think it impossible lol....!!!!!!!!!!!! -
WOW i have now got 20MB downloads O wait after 20 mins i am back down to 4 to 5 MB Nice 1 Sir Richard
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hi,ive been reading alot of posts and all i can say is if those of you who are experiancing slow problems have you tested in safe mode where all firewall and anti virus programs arent running so net flow isnt filtered in any way because ive been running ntl/virgin for many years and have the 10meg since it came out and i download at max speeds all or most times and online gameing is sweet,my max speeds downloading are between 1.0-1.3 ish mb/s.most connection issues are with your pc.
cant wait to test the 20 meg connection -
by the way i also run sky's so called up to 8meg,pft,the connection disconnects daily,the upload is descent but download-well it varies but maxes out at just over 350kb/s and my exchange which is a bonus is in the next street to me.SKY's ADSL has no comparison to virgings cable
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I don't see how 'higher expectations' would explain Virgin Media's seemingly calculated decision to hike rates from £18 to £25 for users of the most basic 512k connection as a standalone service, without even notifying the customer. If you look at the Virgin Media website explaining these new prices, the bundle aspect of the new tariffs isn't even mentioned. Virgin Media simply assumes that you want TV and fries, when you only want Virgin broadband and to keep your BT line.
Let's say one fifth of Virgin's appoximately 4.9 million customers are using just a 512k connection alone.
This would mean that Virgin Media has made something like £7 million by automatically 'upgrading' 512k customers (incidentally without increasing the speed to 2MB) in just one month, knowing that most of these customers will not bother to challenge such a huge company and push for a refund -
ive spent 3nights in a row with games crashing on xbox live with my 360.
its a brand new machine sent by microsoft because my old on had fulty drive.
but the reason for thease crashes are poor broadband service in other words speed cap at peak time.
i play halo2 online and since virgin have come along ive been experancing extreme lag also had my gamertag banned 3weeks ago as my connection was so bad that bungie banned me for stand bying my modem im still banned now.
thease problems are just the tip of the iceburge the implacations of this are xbox live pc gamers ect ect its not good i pay £37.00 for my 10meg 40quid to xbox live and the games new router ect ect.
all for a completely messed up service how come before virgin came along my internet was brillant now its crap.
i got a tec comming out today to check the problem for the 5th time in 8 days im downloading files at between 270kbps and yeasterday at peak times i was downloading a 6meg file at 27kbps widely.
to put this in perspective.
i was before the change over downloading a file at 2.2meg thats good now its terrible.
and it makes me laugh there trying to get a good lot of people to join them haha.
people i know come round, yeah ok there with bt there not that good either,
but anyway they come round and laugh at my broadband my friends online get very heated because they cant play xbox live properly because of this crap service i must admit fantastic way to gain customers.
customer services is quicker but no help really like i said 5tec visits to ma home first visit never happened been told lie after lie.
im starting to loss hope in virgin media i expect better from such a top brand. -
IM still on 10meg with Virgin waiting for the upgrade,,, hmmm not sure if i want it now with this capping thingy, but i have been reading these posts and i would like to say that i havent had any problems playing on-line games or downloading .... I have always hit speeds over the 10 meg , have maxed out at 12meg still going well.So im more than happy with their service, but if we gonna get caped at peak time thats no good for most of us high downloaders...we want what we pay for, or rather we should get what we pay for, seems like we are gonna get ripped off.
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Great to see that this website is still here, and including some great postings. Thanx for letting me know and maybe you want to exchange links with me?
http://voip.watdoenwijmet.nl/skype-zwarte-handleiding-2007/
With lovely greetings,
Frank -
Well I must admit I have had it up to my eyes with Virgin broadband. Been with them now for about 4 years and in the last 6 months the service has gone absolutly rubish. I live quite a way from the exchange and to start with could only get a 512k connection but was having constant 30-40ms ping times then they upgraded so a 1meg connection and still great ping times. A year ago ADSL max came about and whoopie a 2 meg connection which was great. Well for 3 months it was then the speed started to drop and drop and drop ending up in a 256k connection. after much time spent talking to customer services they recomended a fixed 1 meg connection. Well 1 meg and great ping times are common during off peak times but as soon as 4pm comes the connection hits dial up speeds with 200-500ms pings. Sometimes if i disconec and reconect tens of times a i can get a good connection for a while but soon it decends back to 3 minutes to load a web page. After many more conversations with virgin I managed to talk to a decent guy who gave me the truth. Basicaly virgin dont have the equiptment to supply their subscribers and allthough they say they will upgrade they havent said when. So they cant cope however they are still selling this product. Me personaly I am looking for another supplier and have my mac code at the ready.
Basicaly virgin will continue to advertise and gain subscribers without investing in their service because most people dont know how bad they are intill they have subcribed -
think iv sussed out whats with the slow downloads.me and my neighbour r both on 10 meg, i have a webstar dpx100 modem an i usually connect at around 4 / 5 meg. she has a surfboard sb5100 and is always connected at 10 meg. i even tried her modem on my computer and mine conected at 10 meg, put mine back on and bac down to 4 / 5. i think the webstar modems cant handle the speed. i may be wrong but thats what happend to me
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Iv'e been with Telewest since it started it's dial-up service, and was one of the first to get their 512meg broadband. Through the years gradualy got up to their XL package. A few pros and cons since going to Virgin.
Firstly as Telewest Blueyonder i never had any down time and superb download and upload specs, expetional customer service, i.e they stated what areas had downtime so I didn't have to wait ages for IT support just to confirm it.
Once they changed to Virgin I did notice a loss in download speeds. I was going to phone technical support but at 25p a min when it used to be free was a joke.
So through the virgin Mediawebsite i decided to e-mail my problems and current specs. Yes the old cable modem an SB3000 or something like that was not capable of supporting those speeds. It did take 2 weeks for an e-mail reply, but they then sent me a new modem within 24 hours of the e-mail being sent. Rather pleased with that result. Basically I think a lot of old Telewest Customers haven't been sent a new modem for the faster speed.
Speeds doubled,from what I was getting, but I have notice the capping. Still not 10meg even though i'm on a 20meg XL Service. I don't download gigs a night but probably at most 5 gig a month in total. Speeds down to 4.5Meg if i am lucky! Ping times are consistantly low though and does help my online gameing.
I can't see how they justify capping if you do that in a month, downloading that a night yes i can see a reason why.
A review or tweaking of their policy may be in order. Everyone once in a while has to download either a large game patch/demo or MS patch. Doesn't seem fair they get lumbered with the 15 gig a night lot. -
runs at 15M then gets capped to 4.5M bring back telewest.... virgin suck
its not the pc or the antivirus its the connection from virgin -
I only have 2meg, but i always get full speed and never have any probs while running 2 or 3 online machines at once daily for up to 5hrs each. one running mmorpg, one multiplayer fps and one just surfing wirelessly. no lag or anything. 25p/min is a rip though. I rang customer services first and they credited me with 8 quid to start and the promise to cover cost since i said problem i last had was their fault!! (turned out to be my linksys router)
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Looks like a whole host of 20Meg XL users are getting ripped off, 24/7 5meg download speeds!! Not just the 18:00 to 24:00 time slot they dictate.
Been reading several sites and more than just a few users getting capped 24/7.
And don't even mention the number of times I get dropped off, every 30 seconds.
I even had a tech friend test my hardware, not one problem, It's all at VM's end. Oh why oh why did they have to do such a hatchet job on Telewest and Blueyonder. -
Upgraded to VM's 8meg speed, ever since i've had nothing but problems, cannot get online gaming via ps3 because of it, seemed to work fine on 1meg speed before....
If it's not sorted by the end of the week i going to change to BT!!!!!! -
i have been with nynex ntl telewest now virgin media for years now first with a 1meg connection as my network has grown so has my need for a larger bandwidth all was fine untill about a month ago when they capped my 4meg connection, how can this be right i ask you pay for 4 meg and get 1meg WTF! so i bit the bullet and upgraded to there XL 20 meg connection and i have to say what a pile of turd it is. never i all my life has my gaming been so unstable i get 30 seconds then massive lagg if im lucky then my connection drops out if you ring them all you get is fobbed off. how can this be right from a company with as much resorses as virgin cable broardband used to be the best by far how have this bunch of monkeys got it so wrong now and what the hell can we do about it as they strive to cap us all and increase there prophets and make it fair lolololololol fair for all users what a joke
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i think its about time virginmedia pulled their finger out and sacked who ever came up with the capping idea i think they are just robbing us and its about time they give us what we are payin for the are **********
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virgins 20meg broadband is bull***t , i was using it for over a year and only ever got speeds of 4meg max , i grew so sick of it i downgraded to the 4meg package where im still getting 4meg for half the price, virgin can stick there 20meg where the sun dont shine
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