Re: ASA bans 'Stop the Broadband Con' campaign
 

Agreed, in theory it's capable of doing just that, in reality it's only allowed for 10 hrs a day, and is heavily reliant on not living in an oversubscribed area to do so.

What with STM, application throttling, and threats to cut you off if you hit an (as yet) undefined limit during peak hours, Virgin Media is in danger of loosing the ground it once held without any effort, to the very companies it keeps slinging mud at.

I guess what I'm saying is, that I would like to drive VM's Ferrari like connection with petrol in the tank, and air in the tyres for more than just 10 hrs a day, and also not be expected to do so when I should be in bed fast asleep :)

Re: ASA bans 'Stop the Broadband Con' campaign
 

The 10mb service has a 1500mb download limit between 4-9pm meaning if you streamed a movie in HD at 4pm by 6pm you would be throttled right down to 2.5mb.

And if it's ok I'll stick to my Fiat 500 ;)

Re: ASA bans 'Stop the Broadband Con' campaign
 

And the problem with averages is ... that they are averages!

Several years ago I got fed up with the ATM at my local bank being out of order when I visited it. I went into the bank and asked to see the manager, his response to my complaint was that the average availability of their ATMs was 98%. My reply to this was that although an ATM may be available at 3am it is no good to me if it is unavailable at 3pm!

And by the same reasoning if I wish to use the full capacity of my broadband service at 5pm and it is only delivering download speeds of 2Mb/s and e.g. can't deliver a YouTube video without stalling, something which my neighbour next door can achieve on BT "up to 8Mb", I don't wish to be told that I can do it at 5am when magically my broadband will deliver 10Mb/s and YouTube streams faultlessly!!!!!!!

Re: ASA bans 'Stop the Broadband Con' campaign
 

Conning people is pretty common nowerdays, companies suck you in with false & misleading promises, then screw you with price increases whilst your tied into a 12 month contrick, (Sorry, contract!)

Re: ASA bans 'Stop the Broadband Con' campaign
 

If Virgin are so superior perhaps they would be good enough to remove the traffic shaping and throttling from their network, as surely being so superior they cope without it?

Failing that if they are assured of their superiority why don't they have a rate guarantee as another cable company do?

No 'up to', a maximum and a minimum.

I do hope you're getting paid for spreading the good word on here.

---------- Post added at 21:40 ---------- Previous post was at 21:40 ----------

Yup this is what they all do.

---------- Post added at 21:42 ---------- Previous post was at 21:40 ----------

Bit optimistic hoping people will actually read the adjudication. The usual suspects with tongues in Virgin Media's orifices will say it's all grossly unfair, the usual people who loathe the company will say that it's great and proves their point that they murder babies.

The adjudication itself is perfectly sensible on all points. Whatever the fundamental message and its validity it was lost in hyperbole and mud slinging.

Re: ASA bans 'Stop the Broadband Con' campaign
 

That's the problem with negative advertising - sooner or later it will come back and bite you in the ass.....

Naughty VM.

Re: ASA bans 'Stop the Broadband Con' campaign
 

Absolutely.

Dragging others through the mud for "Up to" advertising when most of the "Up to" is out of their control, and when your own service is just as much clearly "Up to" (and all the speed drops are entirely within your control) is just plain hypocrisy.

Re: ASA bans 'Stop the Broadband Con' campaign
 

The other 20% of Virgin customers are probably not using any anti-virus software and or using an old 486! :D

I have never found the speed test to give me less than 29MB on my 30MB connection.

Re: ASA bans 'Stop the Broadband Con' campaign
 

I don't have an issue with an "upto" as sometimes speed is out of control of the provider. Where it's not acceptable is to simply use "upto" as a means to sell a service that will never be able to provide that speed.

Re: ASA bans 'Stop the Broadband Con' campaign
 

Very true :D My car can go up to 118MPH but I'am only allowed to do a maximum of 70MPH on the motorway:erm:

Was 'Stop The Broadband Con' Campaign a Con?
 

Re: Was 'Stop The Broadband Con' Campaign a Con?
 

More of a bluff i'd say

Re: Was 'Stop The Broadband Con' Campaign a Con?
 

That article refers to Virgin's HFC as FTTP and fibre?

Virgin referring to their products as 'fibre' is a far greater con. That the ASA didn't stop them calling their product 'fibre optic' originally is disgusting. :(

Re: Was 'Stop The Broadband Con' Campaign a Con?
 

The thing is right, is Virgin's broadband fibre or not?

Answer yes it is the whole backbone is Fibre.

Could BT and Sky and other companies advertise saying "our fibre optic broadband" simply put yes they could because there backbone is fibre.

Also why shouldn't Virgin be able to stop other companies advertising at those speed's considering probably about 30% if that of there customers, actually get anything above 2mb - 4mb where as I am guessing here at the pecentages but I reckon atleast 80+ of Virgin's customers get there max speed.

Not to mention that Virgin have or are curretly trialing 1.5gb connection's using fibre to the home so, if and when that get's released are you then going to say the same thing.

The funny thing I see is when companies including Virgin advertise "Unlimited Broadband" when they all and we all know it is not truly unlimited because of the traffic shaping.

I don't think any company should be able to advertise super fast broadband unless they are selling 100mb and upwards, simply because I don't consider anything less as superfast.

All the advertising I see from Sky and BT etc is false advertisment when it comes to speed, and from them all when they say unlimited especially when some companies will charge you per gb if you download more than 300gb a month.

Re: Was 'Stop The Broadband Con' Campaign a Con?
 

By this reasoning, back when people were using dialup or ISDN it could have been marketed as 'fibre internet' because the entire backbone at that point was quite likely fibre.

The last mile matters. HFC has different performance characteristics to FTTH. Virgin's last mile is not fibre. They shouldn't be able to call it such.

For what it's worth, I'm also very annoyed by BT's VDSL2 (and resellers) being marketed as fibre. It's also clearly not.

If/when Virgin start actually running fibre to people's homes then of course I'm not going to say the same thing... because it wouldn't be true? It'd be brilliant if they did this on a broader scale!

Hangon, I just googled this and it's 1.5gb down and 150meg up, which sounds suspiciously like massive amounts of channel bonding on DOCSIS3? Prossibly not fibre.