Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Meanwhile in Hong Kong a couple of months back.

https://www.telegeography.com/produc...mer-broadband/

Nuts :)

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Big wirry time, Igni.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Sure, but Hong Kong has twice the population density of London.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

The population density thing has been done to death. It explains the suburbs, of course, London is a hugely spread out amalgamation of towns after all not a 'purpose built' city, but not MDUs in the centre of town and especially not new-builds that are getting copper.

Zero reason for any estate to not at least have FTTLA now, and thankfully builders seem to have gotten the message for the most part as increasingly MDUs are getting Hyperoptic FTTB, and MDUs and residential properties being built with VM FTTLA and Openreach or AN Other FTTP. :)

---------- Post added at 14:13 ---------- Previous post was at 14:12 ----------

Indeed. The practicality of it is debatable given a 10Gb NIC is £300, a 10Gb switch £6-700.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Chicken and egg again. If we don't have products to drive uptake of consumer grade 10Gb equipment we won't have any manufacturers mass-producing economical consumer-grade 10Gb equipment.

I ought to also point out the benefit of 10Gb internet is solely in multi-user scenarios right now, given virtually no single desktop will be able to consume that amount of bandwidth; you'd need something on the order of ten hard drives or four SSDs in RAID to sustain 10Gb levels of throughput. And if you can afford a £500+ storage setup to download at that speed you can afford a 10GbE NIC.

And you forget multi-GbE switches with 10Gb uplinks and/or GbE link aggregation are half that price, not to mention second-hand 10GbE NICs ranging from £50 to £150.

---------- Post added at 15:00 ---------- Previous post was at 14:58 ----------

The whole London thing has been done to death.

Nomatter how you twist it, it's cheaper and thus more economically feasible to cover an area considerably smaller than London with FTTH than it is to cover an area the size of Scotland and Northern Ireland combined.

That's the point I was getting at :)

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I said it was impractical. It's a penis enlarger on the part of the telco.

Your point falls down as it begs the obvious question of asking why HK has extensive FTTP while our cities' CBDs and the MDUs within them do not?

The answer is of course that we have a bit of a socialist edge around our broadband, where cities subsidise rural areas and everyone should get the same products. This applies to VM as well - Comcast, Time Warner, etc, offer different tiers in different areas which would be frowned upon here. People bemoan the digital divide and would protest if their £5,000 to pass home didn't have the same services as a £400 to pass MDU.

It is at least being addressed now, thanks in no small part to Hyperoptic's FTTB with small contributions from Openreach and others :)

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Well if you want to get really pernickety about "why our broadband sucks", yes some part of it is caused by social and political factors, but comparing our urban MDUs with that of Hong Kong would still be entirely apples to oranges even if we ignore politics simply because of the geographical economics.

But the matter is somewhat obfuscated by you using the term "MDU". Why do our MDUs have less FTTP? Sure, we have MDUs. Sure, HK has MDUs. Except that evades the difference of their MDUs being five times bigger and three times more densely populated.

How many obscenely high density housing estates like this do you see in Britain? In Hong Kong, practically the entire population lives in them. A third of Bromley, the biggest borough in London, would fit in a single housing estate in HK.

As for our CBDs, I wouldn't call them lacking either, given the prevalence of business fibre products and willy-waving 450Mbps 4G mobile services fed by 10Gbps backhauled masts. Sure, these aren't consumer FTTH services but why on earth would you be bothered about consumer FTTH services in a CBD?

---------- Post added at 18:50 ---------- Previous post was at 18:49 ----------

Could say the same of 300Mbps to 1Gbps services here.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

As with many things in life, I'd rather have Quality over Quantity.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Had an engineer out the other day, he said all of Belfast is already ready for the new upgrades, and they have even pulled some engineers from here to Scotland to work. We are normally one of the last to get upgrades, but we might be one of the first to get it as he said it goes by who upgrades the areas first ?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I wonder if Virgin is using a different tact this time. They seem like they're getting ready to just flick a switch and roll the upgrade out over a few weeks or even days, rather than months.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

LOL

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

maybe hes on about the first upgrade wave :P lol

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Maybe Igni was right and the last wave of major upgrades included a little bit of future-proofing after all.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I thank an announcement will come this week. because we will have Q1 2015 Results from Liberty Global, Good time to announce speed upgrade ?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

The wave that's in progress does indeed - note that the upgrades are additional downstream channels rather than resegmentation on its own.

12 downstreams requires replacement on line cards on one CMTS platform and requires additional SPAs on others. The new tiers won't run so well on 8 downstreams, need 12 as a minimum.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Are we talking Cisco and/or Motorola? With further 3G60 infusion on Cisco and upgrades from 1Gbe to 10Gbe SPA on some Cisco?
I'm still seeking enlightenment as to how this maps to channel plans on node/cable segment in terms of load balancing when you potentially have 15 mac domains on each 3G60 card but Cisco min license (used to be) 16 x 16 blocks?

As a crude example you could perhaps have 16 x 8mhz =128Mhz somewhere between 200MHz and 330MHz below the TV SD+HD spectrum and balance 2 x 8channel domains with higher tier across 16 channels?
Clearly I'm confused as to how D3 load balancing works as well on 12 channels overlaid on legacy 8 channel? Are we looking at 2 mac domains and 20 d/s channels ( 8 + 12) on a cable segment to cover legacy SHubs + SH3?
Perhaps trying to correlate with Cisco licensing is an unnecessary complication but just seems 12 channels is an odd interim stage if 3G60 can accommodate 24?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

The Motorola kit needs new line cards. The original ones can't do more than 8 channels per MAC domain.

The Cisco and Arris platforms move towards CCAP.

The SPA installs would be these 3Gb cards.

You would be using the upstream ports on the card. The downstream dealt with by the SPAs.

Unsure what you are referring to with regard to the rest. The frequencies used are simply working downwards from the existing 323MHz range. Single MAC domain, modems load balanced within that domain.

CMTS load balances within a single MAC domain by changing the MDD modems receive when they come online. With 16 channels simply send some 8 channel modems to the lower 8, some to the upper 8, 16+ channel devices get the whole lot. With 12 channels some get the lower 8, some get the upper 8, and load balancing across the channels takes care of the rest even though 4 of the channels have all modems on them.

They may also try out these bad boys.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I have no real idea what I'm looking at but it looks snazzy. How much does one of them cost, then?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Probably well into six digits including licenses and optional features. Just a set of wireless modules for a run-of-the-mill 6500-series costs as much as a small house.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Cool. Yeah, Cisco equipment is very overpriced depending on which market you're in. My company is just a little SMB, we recently purchased some Ubiquiti switches and honestly couldn't be happier - half the price and super easy to manage.

I'm sure the equivalent Cisco is much more capable in some way, but there's no doubt this is simple.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Got an email today. Email says "Your broadband has been supercharged from up to 120Mb to a whopping up to 152Mb."

Expect it hasn't. Modem is capped to 112640000. Perhaps the email has slippedout too early? Might phone tomorrow...

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I'm more surprised that there are still people out there who've not been upgraded.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Our area was one of the first to be upgraded last time. I used to be on 120 or whatever it was back then and when 152 came to our area I dropped back to 100 as that was more than enough.

Thinking it's an email cock up rather than a new upgrade, looking back it's exactly the same email as early March last year. Although they did test double speeds on our segment last month and had 200mb for a few days.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Oh yeah, it's definitely a cock up, you'll be on the "new" 100mbit tier from the upgrades as opposed to the "old" 100mbit tier from the pre-120Mbit days.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Reading the virgin community forums and including myself on the bank holiday weekend I was getting pretty bad speeds Monday evening, 50mbs on the 156 service, was there a blip in the virgin network over the weekend or as the people put on the 300 trial causing load issues for the network in general? When you read these issues and they say it's being reviewed 6weekd later it does make you lose abit of confidence in the service, I know increasing capacity is alot more difficult, will this new hardware roll out make things abit easier going forward?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

It is going to have to because they cant afford to let the network go back to how it was in 2009 ish and all the negative pr.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I've had peak-time congestion on my 50Mb since about 6months now. It became really noticeable christmas/New-Year week, but looking at TBB graphs it had been building for a few weeks prior I suspect. There's good nights and bad in terms of speed, but...long story short... the third review date is coming up in a week, and I'm absolutely confident of being given yet another date.

It does begin to feel like excuse after excuse, although I'm sure there are valid reasons each and every time it slips. Hopefully this will future-proof the area for another couple of years (like last time we had problems).

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I got an email saying ive been supercharged to 100mb.

Ive been on 152mb for the past year!!!!..

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

my current speed :)

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2015/05/23.png

Upload seems a bit slow today, I've had it at over 800 as well.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Is that a new speed tier there trialing?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

[QUOTE=MagicUK;35775916]And only 99% faster than the rest of the UK!

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

:rolleyes:

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Faster than 99% of the UK. Probably a rounding limitation either way. There'll be a good number of folk on gigabit getting 900+ and then there's jokers like me:

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2015/08/22.png

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Looks like there's congestion in your area, qas - you!

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Kinda. He's on the Papworth FTTP trial.

They started them off on the DOCSIS network using fibre all the way with no coax.

They are also testing GPON. He's now on GPON :)

You will not see 500Mb up on the cable network for a long time.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

It's like he's getting all that extra bandwidth he wanted all these years but in one go.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Correct. FTTH House trial.

Working very well. VM have been doing a great job around here really pleased with everything so far.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Even then, that's considerably faster upload than even BT's GPON FTTP.

Possibly the best upload/download ratio I've ever seen on VM.

---------- Post added at 21:03 ---------- Previous post was at 21:02 ----------

Makes a change...

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Yep. That access network is the most symmetrical one VM have had outside of point to point fibre.

BT's GPON has an intentionally low upload to reduce usage of it as a leased line replacement. 500Mb is appropriate on a 1Gb downstream product using GPON.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I wonder if that's why VM seems to care so little about keeping their "business broadband" service up to date.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

In the Liberty Global results they quote a focus on small and home office services.

I agree with you they seem to always lag with their business broadband services, but hopefully the fact they mention it in their results might indicate some more attention.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

The office building I'm in is right smack bang in the middle of a Virgin serviced area, yet they don't offer services to this building. We can either have crapy ADSL (no FTTC) or pay for a leased line. Suffice it to say, if Virgin did offer services here, we'd have been all over it and I suspect most other offices in this building would have been as well.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Edinburgh city centre is fairly similar, the most central exchange, which serves almost purely rich city centre businesses has no FTTC (or if it does, it was the last to be upgraded).

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Any news on sh3

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Beyond that it's still a way away no.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

"A way away" in cosmological terms or in technological terms? :angel:

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Apologies off topic but certainly a competitor and worth a mention , I've just read the following

Surely they don't have the resources to roll this out across the country ?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Not across the country, but I'm sure they could pass 10m households over a significant period.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Given that they think 1000 divided by 23 is "more than 100" it would seem they have some numeracy issues and I'd take any figures they quote with a pinch of salt.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Talk Talk actually said the following

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

In context, that's quite bloody different.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

When super hub 3 coming out?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Probably when virgin has a faster teir of speed

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Most folk i know haven't even recieved their 152mbps upgrade yet so I'm not holding my breath! :dozey:

(Aint posted in years but still read everyday!!!) ;)

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

A month ending in 'ber'.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

+/- 4 :p:

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Too technical for me. You two carry on talking dirty, please.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

It'll be out by the time I finish this

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

This year?

(Not that I care, apparently I'm getting FTTC in a week, despite having been on an EO line...)

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I'd imagine so.

FTTC is quite possible. Network rearrangement to a cabinet.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

So that basically narrows it down to late Q3 or Q4.

Indeed, I'd suspected that, and we're metres from a cab. Not seen any work taking place though our ADSL was cutting out in the early hours a few weeks ago. Apparently the cab is full anyway, but at least Openreach's database says we have a cabinet now... Quite surprised given I've heard plenty of stories of people on EO's desperate for a reroute and getting point blank refused by OR saying it cannot be done.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

It was probably paid for by Digital Scotland.

Which exchange / cabinet does it say you're on?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Announcements have always been November in the past with rollouts starting in Q1/ the new year

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Aberdeen Denburn, cabinet 11.

Haven't been able to find an up-to-date Openreach cabinet list since '12...

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Ah!

ECI cabinet, enabled since 15th May 2012. Passed 360 premises when enabled so more with you guys being rearranged onto it. Full at the moment. Scheduled to have capacity again 27th May.

Rearrangement was part of BDUK Digital Scotland project phase 13a.

You're welcome :)

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Yes, indeed. When we lived on the other side of the street, we were the very first customer to be connected to the cab.

Thanks :) Good to have it confirmed, there's been a lot of errors on the checkers in this area in the past so I was trying not to get my hopes up!

Also explains the high amount of crosstalk we were getting towards the tail end of last year. Given the <10Mbps ADSL speeds and zero alternatives, I'm not surprised they managed to fill it up!

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Have they started trialing 200mbps in some areas I noticed the other night my news group download was hitting 206mbps and a speed test I just did now hit 192mbps

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2015/05/4.png

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Thanks read the last few pages and didn't see much but that explains it.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Not bad! :D ... I'm still on 120mbps! :(

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I'm still on 12Mbps.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I'm supposed to get upgraded by the end of May but considering it's been constantly put back (for well over 6month now) I'm naturally not holding my breath! :mad::rolleyes:

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Mine's just been put back as well, to the last Wednesday of June. I hope this isn't the start of a trend.

Kinda ironic, spend 6 months being unable to get FTTC because of an EO line and as soon as the goverment pays the cost to have the EO line converted I can't get FTTC because Openreach can't be bothered providing the capacity.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Well according to the VM area checker I'm now on 152mb just a shame my config file is still saying 120! :dozey:

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Assuming you have restarted your SH with no joy, go to the VM site and punch in your postcode. If they have deals at 152Mb in your area that would confirm your suspicion. If your area is activated, time to call CS.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I've seen activated areas where they haven't yet upgraded the infrastructure. One customer reported slow speeds having just upgraded to 152 meg and when he posted his stats, he was still on 4 downstream channels. Imagine what happens in peak times with most people having been duped into upgrading for a few squids per month extra outlay.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

A mate on 120mb just sent a mobile txt telling me he hasn't been upgraded yet either so they've obviously not sent the config files yet! :td:

(I'll give em til Wednesday then I'll go afew rounds with that bloody ***** Indian callcentre of there's! :erm:)

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

The 152 was always available to new customers, didn't mean an area had been upgraded for existing ones.

---------- Post added at 11:23 ---------- Previous post was at 11:23 ----------

Someone messed up some configuration there. There should have been no areas on any less than 6 downstreams when the previous uplift was done, let alone the 152Mb one.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I hadn't forgotten! I was one of those who rang up CS complaining that a guy up my street could get 152Mb cheaper than I could get 120Mb just because he was a new customer. After being pushed from pillar to post, ( onshore call centres ), they sent me the new config straight away. :mad: That's why I'm recommending that guys above should ring CS.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Fingers crossed calling in will get people precisely nowhere in the next round of tier uplifts, that caused a few problems.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Totally agree that we should not have been put in the position that we felt we had to call in to CS. The natural reaction to VM's despicable treatment of existing customers gave them pause for thought and did their reputation no good at all. I don't care that they were trying to avoid an unmanageable stampede for 152Mb. They should have thought that through and been honest with people. Hopefully, they have learned their lesson and will roll out the 200Mb upgrade even-handedly and take care to explain their actions.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

The next upgrade, at least the top tier, will come to new customers first most likely as it'll need new kit.

Hopefully they have learned their lesson and won't give existing ones whatever they want because they call into the retentions team and end up breaking the service for all in their local area.

Customers on 120Mb or 152Mb or whatever are getting what they are paying for.

Customers who sign up for an upcoming tier are getting what they are paying for.

There is no entitlement to free upgrades. Tiers changing and the previous versions of them being grandfathered is perfectly common, as is leaving people on the earlier tiers until they have arranged to receive upgraded CPE.

The next generation services, at least the top one, will have to be approached in a similar manner to the upgrade of tiers from the legacy modems to DOCSIS 3 kit.

I'm hoping the new top tier will be entirely new, not an upgrade, to avoid the disagreements and issues. The other two it's not such a serious problem.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I'd want (don't need, of course) to have an upgrade available to me from 152 meg. I'd expect a charge for the modem and I'd expect to pay whatever new customers will be paying after their enticement period has expired.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

It is very poor customer relations if you penalise existing customers in order to entice new ones. If you upgrade your product, all the customer in a particular area should be entitled to purchase it. There should be no discrimination. The upgrade for existing customers need not necessarily be free and may demand a new contract but that's fair.

If an area isn't upgraded for all then it isn't upgraded ..

Vodafone announce that the new 4G product is available for purchase in your area for new Vodafone customers only. Existing Vodafone customers who are eligable for upgrades or who are out of contract cannot apply .. Wouldn't go down well would it?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Not totally off topic, but "VM Mobile announce that their product has no 4G available neither to new nor existing customers". How did that go down?

Other than that, ianch is correct.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Not well :D We looked VM Mobile but when I asked them about 4G, the CS rep was unable to give any information whatsoever. Maybe EE won't give them consumer 4G and they are too embaressed to tell anyone :D

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

More like VM Mobile won't pay for 4G because they try to cut subscription prices and still make a profit.

On the 200 meg thing, Igni is more or less saying that he hopes VM have learned their lessons from the 152 meg upgrade.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I agree. In any case a customer would be able to get the new service anyway, by cancelling their existing one and signing up as a new customer. Yet forcing someone to do so causes more costs and inconvenience to both the customer and VM for absolutely zero benefit to either party...

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

You are correct, he is spot on about how they handled the 152M roll out

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Giving existing customers what they are paying for isn't penalising them. No-one's talking about refusing to allow them to upgrade. Makes perfect sense to allow existing customers to upgrade for a price. That price being somewhat more than a phone call to threaten to leave a 152Mb service because you want a xxxMb service for free else you'll go to BT's 76Mb.

Ideally there'd be no release of the product in areas that aren't fully ready at all, either to existing or new customers, but then people would complain and it'd be bad marketing.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I agree about your free upgrade point. I thought you were saying that they couldn't upgrade even if they were happy to pay the same price as a new customer and also were happy to enter a new contract

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I know I'm just out of contract now but I'm going to wait and see what retentions can do when the new tiers come out, especially if it needs a new modem.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

What lesson will they learn? Charging the likes of me more for 120Mb than new customers were charged for 152Mb was not on, whichever way you look at it. They knew they could have been taken to the ombudsman over that. As it is, folk may remember, the downside to getting 152Mb as an existing customer was having to enter into a new contract. The upside, apart from the speed, was being charged less than I was for 120Mb.

When 200Mb comes I am not expecting a free upgrade, ( It will cost more surely.) , only to be treated equally with new customers.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Errrr.....

No they couldn't? What they charge you is a contract between you and them, it has nothing to do with what they charge others. It's not uncommon for new customers to get sweeter deals than existing customers, especially with the likes of 6-12-18months half price or whatever.

I remember it very differently. I phoned up, asked nicely and got 152Mbit without having to sign a new contract. So did most people, much to the dismay of some who seen their area get overutilised as a result.

All that happened was you signed a new contract, with new terms, just like the "new" customers you begrudge. There's nothing illegal about having two different contract terms for two different people, especially old and new customers.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

The reason CS caved in to polite or indignant existing customers was because treating new and existing customers differently is, regardless of common practice, against natural justice.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Is this a serious response? Like, for real? Do you genuinely think that the CS agents give a crap about "natural justice"?

Trust me - I used to work for Virgin myself, I assure you that the vast majority of people on the phone don't give a shiny ***** about natural justice or otherwise. Virgin has a lot of control over their internal systems, they can define as and when a "code" (which is what all the services are defined by) change requires a new contract. It has nothing to do with the agent's moral compass or whatever, it's purely down to Virgin.

I really don't get your issue. You say that virgin were terribly mean to you by treating you differently to a new customer, yet all you had to do was ask and you'd get the same tier as them before your area was upgraded and you'd get it anyway. So Virgin didn't roll the upgrade out universally and cripple the network overnight - that's a good thing and the right move by them. They also didn't block anyone getting the upgrade early if they really wanted it.

Some people are never happy.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Kush! Your acceptance that VM staff couldn't give a monkey's about natural justice, preferring instead commercial advantage, is jaw-dropping. Your description of VM's 'lack pf moral compass' , effectively makes my point. I also do wonder at their collective intelligences.

Until their 152Mb upgrade debacle over the 152Mb upgrade I did assume that VM had an ethical brain cell between them. Couldn't they just have stopped at offering new customers a lower initial prices, say for 6 months? You find this practice all over the commercial world. Instead they offered a whole new superior service solely to new customers. How morally dumb is that? They could easily have been upfront about the network considerations. Naturally, folk like me would take exception! People, like me, in the know made the phone call and got what they wanted. Those that weren't, didn't. How shambolic is that? Your accepting attitude, jaw-dropping as it is, is probably right in terms of commercial outcomes. It appears that VM are commercially intelligent, but emotionally and morally retarded. It appears that this culture has infected Virgin's staffs and its other enterprises.

I was once a member of Virgin Active, by default. Our Esporta gym, where we had been members for 15 years, was taken over. Within a year of the re-branding the main gym was upgraded with state of the art equipment and a luxury refurbishment. Many new members were taken on with low initial fees. Meanwhile those of us who used classes like body combat and body pump found classes being whittled down until their wasn't any choice at times people wanted. Trainers over the age of 50 were retired with just one week notice, apparently because older age didn't equate with the healthy, fit and fresh image Virgin required. Many existing members, including my family, departed for other gyms, leaving old friends behind. VM couldn't give a damn about existing members just as long as new members kept pouring in.

How is it OK to behave like this? People's feelings, preferences and well-being are placed well behind short-term commercial considerations. Just because they are a global corporation VM think they are immune to the need to provide a good service with continuity over time to new and old customers. Sadly, you are right. They are immune.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Woah, woah, woah - let's be clear here, there's a huge difference between what the bigwig execs at VM think and feel and what the paid-barely-minimum-wage CS agent thinks and feels. Frankly, they're not paid enough to give a crap about anything other than their phone targets. If it takes a few seconds to change a code on a system, that's one happy customer and a few seconds off their AHT - the only thing they really will care about.


I didn't say anything about Virgin lacking a moral compass?

What debacle? Anyone that asked got the upgrade for free, existing customer or not, in contract or not and without having to sign anything. There was no debacle. You're quite simply wrong about this one.

No. They. Didn't.

They rolled out that service to everyone without anyone having to lift a finger. It took time, some people still haven't got the upgrade, but all customers are getting it and anyone who phones up and asks can get it early and always could.

How dumb is it that no matter how many times you're told, you're not getting it!

They were up front! They had an entire are of their site dedicated to the upgrade and when it would be coming.


What on earth would you rather they did? Roll out the upgrade network wide and cripple it for everyone? There's only so many ways you can roll out an upgrade. As has been proven repeatedly in this forum, the pace of the rollouts wasn't up to scratch and plenty of areas got congested due to too many people upgrading early. What you call shambolic would have been considerably worse had it been done any other way. The mere fact that the upgrades are still rolling out shows just how big a job it was and it's good that they had something in place to limit the uptake.

As tempting as it is to make a comment on who or what is retarded, I'll say this - it's not a bloody moral issue we're dealing with here. There's nothing immoral about it, you signed a contract with them some years ago, that contract was for a certain speed at a certain price per month for a certain period. You didn't have to sign it, you weren't obliged to sign it but you decided those terms were fair and you signed it.

Virgin media has got nothing to do with the Virgin parent that owns the name......

If you have a problem with it, then leave. Take your money elsewhere. This is how it works - you pay whomever you think can provide you the service you want at the best price you can get. When your contract is up, you can go elsewhere. This applies to all ISPs and, in fact, most businesses. This is why everything is geared towards new customers and you can take complete advantage of that by calling up retentions and demanding a better deal. You can get those same deals the newer customers get once your contract is up.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

We are clearly not going to agree over this, and we are fast moving into being off-topic.

We started with a relatively minor annoyance over VM practice, but moved into a realisation, by me at least, that the Virgin brand comes with a culture that pervades all its associated companies. There is a price that comes with being able to operate under that name you know. This culture puts commerce before people, including staff and customers. This is by no means unique in the corporate world. Don't get me started!

Meanwhile I am not going to pick your responses apart here. If we wish to continue this conversation elsewhere, that's fine.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I completely agree and they continue to demonstrate this to us time and time again