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

well I used LiveChat and got my 152mb upgrade! :D

(Sooo glad I never had to phone the Indian callcentre) :p:

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

My 200Mb trial now over, I did have an outage just before 4am
My config now back to 100/6:-

The Broadband ping monitor started working at least

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...05-06-2015.png

At least I do get what I pay for - by wireless to E3000 wired to RT-N66U!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2015/06/9.png

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

Spoke too soon, but doubt it due to upgrades? Couple of long outtages last couple of days

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...10-06-2015.png

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/ping/s...11-06-2015.png

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

I've just commited to 18 months with Virgin in the new house, I couldn't talk to anyone about my mates rate deal, I'm paying the sane as new customers anyway, £48.99 plus line rental for big kahuna plus additional v box, £67.99 a month, obv I get XL phone but we don't use it anyway, did I make the right decision, I'm looking forward to 300mbs rollout, hopefully we get an announcement this year.

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

Not according to what i was told when i signed up yesterday for 152mb broadband & big khuna sports & movies.
Eventually the tiers will be 100mb, 200mb & 300mb.
The gist of it is trying to get in line with Europe.
152mb will be upgraded to 200mb & eventually to 300mb with 100mb being the bottom teir.

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

Griffin part of what u r saying is right from what i am told by a principle technician.

60mb will become 100mb
152mb will become 200mb
300mb will be a completely new tier costing around £10 more a month.

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

Keep in mind that the phone monkies aren't usually told much more than the public are, but they do hear all sorts of rumours and conjecture.

Hmm, this doesn't sound right. 60 is becoming 100 as part of the last speed increase (Most people already have this), the current tiers are already 50, 100 and 152. Anything else is legacy, so to say that 60 is going to 100 as part of this upgrade makes no sense. Are you sure they didn't mean 50 to 100? Even if this were true, where does that leave those on 50? Are the tiers going to be 50, 100, 200? Doesn't seem like a big leap, really, not when they could drum up much more publicity going 100/200/300 by doubling everyone again.

I can't see them bringing out another tier, they seemed to go to great lengths to consolidate the 4 tiers into 3 before, why move people from a higher paying tier to a lower paying one, only to release a new higher-paying tier again?

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

The joys of asking HFC technicians questions about things that are in no way relevant to their job. Alongside listening to call centre / sales people discussing things they haven't been briefed on. I'd have hoped after all these years people would be using the appropriate quantity of sodium chloride.

Both are quoting from the rumour mill. Things are TBC.

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

But if you was a betting man what would your money be on ha

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

My contract is set to expire at the end of August. I guess the time frame for this stuff is later than that?

Renegotiate and stick to 152 then probably.

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

You guess correctly and retentions should have absolutely no ability to mess with the upgrade cycle this time around anyway.

Sadly no threatening to go to Sky for, err, 'up to 76Mb' if VM don't upgrade you from 152 to 300, send you new kit for free and reduce your bill :angel:

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

Seems Talk Talk has priced its York ultra fast residential broadband service at £21.70 with no extra for line rental , wonder if we'll see this extended to anymore areas ?

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/n...broadband.html

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

There are no plans to deploy outside of York just yet, however there are a bunch of areas they 'might' go to. They also have a bunch more build to do in York.

Anywhere with a CityFibre ring and distribution network, a 'Gigabit City' is a possibility.

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

Not even for new contracts? :(

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

New contracts? Retentions?

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

Yes?

"I want to leave, give me a better deal or I will"
"aww gee, well, if you sign up for a new 12 month contract, I can do this...", etc.

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

Ooh, Edinburgh and Aberdeen both listed.

None of the actual links go anywhere useful though :-/

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

When the response should actually be:

"Certainly... if you could just show me who else can provide you the broadband speed you have now, let alone the one you want to be moved to, early, and at a discount."

This upgrade cycle is somewhat more complex than the previous ones. It will be interesting to see if they do hold their nerve and tell people who try to bargain/blag to go forth.

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

But that just brings us back to driving customers to cancel their contracts, disconnect, and sign up again as a new customer. Which is more hassle, more work, and more costs for everybody, including VM.

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

There's a 6 month period where you can't do that, and as I mentioned this time around is a little more complicated.

I imagine existing and new customers will not have a massive amount of difference between them beyond perhaps that new customers will have an initial discount period.

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

6 months where you can't sign up with the same name. Nothing preventing another person in a shared household signing up the day you cancel.

We're talking about the speed uplift though, which historically was offered to new customers prior to existing ones. Pricing aside, acquisition and admin costs are significant enough on their own to make an argument against having to close and re-open an account when the same could be achieved by... just upgrading an existing customer to the same tariffs as new customers get.

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

I'll repeat that this time around it won't be so simple.

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

Things were never simple to begin with!

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

We both get what you're saying and I know there's things in place to stop people just leaving and coming back. However, Virgin in the past have always been decent when it came to retentions so far as to give at least the equivalent offers for new customers to existing ones provided they agree to a new contract period - for the same logic Qasi just mention, from the customer's perspective if they're out of contract, why couldn't they just leave and come back?

Anything that keeps a customer locked in is a good thing for Virgin and I doubt there's a huge difference between a new customer and an existing one signing a new contract. From what you're saying, it'll be different this time and I can only presume that it's more than a new Hub that's needed, but it wouldn't be the first time Virgin has sent an Install tech for an existing customer.

Just have to wait and see I suppose.

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

Sadly you don't get what I'm saying and I'd be strung up if I explained myself more fully. Sorry.

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

Simple solution: Don't offer services to new customers that you don't offer to existing customers. By all means offer cheaper enticement deals, if you think anyone is fooled by that, but please show some loyalty to loyal customers.

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

I challenge this notion of loyalty, Roughie.

VM charge for their services and try to maintain the income for the same basic reason as "loyal customers" want the cheapest price; money retention.

If you could get a faster service for the same price from someone else, why wouldn't you do it?

I suppose there might be customers who can get a cheaper service for a lower price but can't be arsed. They're not loyal - they just can't be arsed.

Hope you don't mind that analysis!

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

Don't mind at all. We differ on this as you probably surmised from earlier exchanges on the subject.

Call me old-fashioned, but when someone has been with a company since the year zero, that means something regardless of the service offered. This hasn't been inertia on my part, but a feeling, backed up by experience, that VM, despite its faults, is the best ISP in my area. This is partly emotive and is focused on the brand too. I remain tempted by BT's 80/20 non-contended service, particularly the upspeed, but hopes of something better have kept me hanging on to VM.

VM has changed in it's attitude since the early days. Up until 5 years ago I received a number of unrequested TV upgrades, including all the sports channels, purely because I had subscribed to the full multi-platform thingy for over a year. That is rewarding my loyalty/sustained investment. Recently attitudes have changed. Long-standing customers get left to last when it comes to upgrades, or at least that is what it feels like.

Really, there is no commercial advantage to offering upgrades like 152Mb, 200Mb, 300Mb to existing customers last, is there? New customers can still be enticed with discounted months. Roll outs can be managed on a regional basis, surely, if overloading admin and engineers is an issue!

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

If it's the upload speed that interests you so much you may find yourself hanging on for a while.

BT's service isn't uncontended though. People can and do see quite severe slowdowns.

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

There digging up at fountainpark towards cowgate

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

That said, the upstream on Openreach is practically uncontended.

---------- Post added at 10:23 ---------- Previous post was at 10:23 ----------

Now all I need is to buy up one of the many empty office buildings around there and move in :D

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

I'm not talking about the Openreach network. There is precisely zero visible contention on the Openreach GEA network. :)

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

So, at what stage is the contention? There's no contention at street level because of individualised line from the box, so the only reduction in the headline service comes from crosstalk etc. You must be talking about the exchange to street box section.

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

I said visible contention.

I also mentioned only the Openreach GEA network. Awful lot between the edge of that network in the exchange handovers and punters :)

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

That is the Openreach GEA section. Where there's practically zero actual contention on the upstream, visible or otherwise ;)

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

With the current tiers it is actually zero. There's enough backhaul from each cabinet for every single customer to max out their upload simultaneously.

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

That was my point :) Their service target results in them having that much capacity but it's not an ironclad guarantee.

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

virgin media not heard the phrase "learn to walk before you run"?

They cannot even supply their existing service yet, and want to do marketing speed upgrades.