Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

you will replace the router yourselves unless there are problems with power levels, frequencies etc, virgin will send an engineer for free to sort it in those situations.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Just to point out modem security is completely indepedent to this speed increase

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

but it does come into play when you put everything together (the whole upgrade process) ?

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Nope. Modem security is already in place, these upgrades are independent of it

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

getting rid of old modems is in my opinion part of security.

also if thats the case then it sucks and still needs tightening.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

How many times. The modems that need replacing for security reasons have been replaced. The rest can all do the same security

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

no they haven't

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Yes they have and yes they can. However as I've said before, not everywhere has had the security switched on yet because not everywhere has had the upstream increase. That will shortly change.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

you've not said that before.. unless I've somehow missed it

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

I found it here. Seems like most areas are complete and the rest should be within six months.

"not" because "cannot" or "not" because "don't want"? :) One FTTC ISP has reported two successful trials of 20Mbit upload today. If 20Mbit upload becomes generally available to FTTC users within three months, for example, Virgin Media are going to look a little slow (offering a maximum of 50% of that, until 120:12Mbit is rolled out and then still 8Mbit slower). I will be interested to see if BT point this out when advertising their Infinity service later this year. VM might then feel compelled to do something, particularly as I suspect the forthcoming 120Mbit tariff is partially designed so VM can say "we offer the fastest download speeds in the UK".

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

---------- Post added at 23:20 ---------- Previous post was at 23:16 ----------

Just because it's technically possible to do 20Mbit upload doesn't mean it's financially doable

Virgin have just spend over a year getting the network to a point where it can support 10:1. I would expect making the whole network support a higher upload to download ratio is another big bit of work

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Accepted. Perhaps they could consider charging a premium? :)

I'd have hoped that they spent enough to allow it to go well beyond 10:1 rather than just up to 10:1. :) We know VM are going to have to do some work before they can offer 120Mbit download in the summer, otherwise they'd probably start offering it quicker. All I am saying is they might like to think about improving upload speeds more than they have because they're likely to be overtaken within the next few months by a substantial number of ISPs offering FTTC. I have a feeling that upload speeds are going to start mattering a lot more in the future.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

now VM are upgrading broadband, maybe should start looking at changing the phone service, reduce line rental and include evening calls without paying the £4.00, if they want to compete with SKY !

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

nah, virgin should start giving out voip phones to new customers, that would really heat things up in the telecoms world to be the 1st mainstream telecoms company to roll out voip, amazing audio quality. My annoyance of vm phones is the charge for 0845 calls, those are free on sky. So many businesses use 0845 :(

It wouldn't surprise me if virgin made the 120mb tier a 20mb upload too in a few months time, they would gain rather a lot of users with that, especially small businesses.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

I should add regarding STM.

Some people said that they think people wont downgrade from 50 to 30 because they pay to have no STM. However in congested areas STM has little effect anyway as natural speeds drop below its threshold or are not much above it. eg. last night I got about 9mbit/sec, STM rate is 7.5mbit/sec. My neighbour on 100mbit a few doors away got just over 10mbit/sec. So what is he paying extra for?

---------- Post added at 05:49 ---------- Previous post was at 05:44 ----------

Ben do you honestly think VMs network is capable of 10:1 for all areas that have it activated?

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

You have missed it just like you seem to have missed ALL the other posts on this subject.

So for you i will say it AGAIN and i apologise for those not hard of hearing

Cloning is no longer the issue it was before.
Cloning is NOT the reason for the issues you have.
The security systems that are in place will prevent clone's in the areas where the uplifts in upload have accord.

Has your area had the upload uplift yet ????

Finally has you have a perceived hearing problem because you have not listened to a word you have been told may i suggest this company for your hearing issue https://www.betterhearing.org/ and this for your ability to see posts you say you have not seen on this forum http://www.specsavers.co.uk/

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Yes l totally agree but there will always be the moan moan brigade who will moan about even the slightest thing.:)

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

This may be of use for in front of the computer.

http://www.cultura.gov.br/site/wp-co...deira-real.jpg

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

To be fair, Virgin has never really been known for having faster upload speeds. Before the 10:1 rollout (which isn't even complete in some areas), upload speeds were pretty limited. The 10meg had a measly 512kbps upload and the 20meg did 768kbps. Even the 50meg only had 1.5Mbit upload.

Meanwhile, just about anyone on ADSL2 could get about 1meg up, with the odd ISP offering 2Meg. Sure, there's the usual issues of distance and stuff, but the point is it was never really something Virgin tried to grab headlines with.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Obviously people have there own opinion of the state of VM's network, so I really don't want to get into a back and forth on it again, but overall yes I do

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

It is only relatively recently that VM decided that they needed to improve their upload speeds to 10:1 having offered 1.5Mbit upload or less for many years. ADSL2+ users with a short line length have been able to achieve around 1Mbit upload and some, on Be Pro for example, have been able to achieve better. FTTC roll out is starting to change that and BT Wholesale ISPs are imminently going to be pulling away from VM with near 20Mbit upload speeds. The next few months, once 80/20 is released, will possibly be the first time that VM's upload speeds will have been significantly less than products available from multiple competitors.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Show me a low jitter network without ping spikes and I'll be impressed

Never mind top upload/download speeds

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

This is one hell of a long thread & I might well have missed something of significance...

From various sources I've been hearing about VM doubling speeds for a # of weeks. To confirm I've phoned VM CC today, the lady I spoke with said they've only received official confirmation today, the X2 of speeds is generic & not a selected few. :D



Opps quick edit.

The roll out apparently take a few months

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

The proper info site is now up at www.virginmedia.com/doublespeed

---------- Post added at 11:10 ---------- Previous post was at 11:10 ----------

Yes, you missed the press release yesterday ;) http://mediacentre.virginmedia.com/S...eeds-2322.aspx

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

in that case whats your explanation for areas like mine that have poor performance?

Slow speed ticket closed (surprise surprise), I prompt and its re opened again as "utilisation creeping back up".

Do you shut your eyes to it or what?

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

July onwards for Blackburn, very nice :)

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

On the previous site (the tickle one), it said my Area was July-December 2012. On the new site, it says "July onwards" so in my case, it was somewhat on the ball.
Still, be nice to have a more specific time frame.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Technical capability to do the speeds and capacity to do the speeds are not the same thing.

However I'm not going to discuss it further as it's not really relevent to this thread and the upload increases have their own thread where I'm pretty sure you've already made your point several times http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12...anagement.html

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

October onwards :)

Love the site showing you when your update will happen.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

March/April here.. As I get my 50Mb installed in March that's perfect timing

virgin media double speed website now live
 

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

I just bring it whenever someone misleads that all.

If an area doesnt have the capacity then it isnt technically capable. Nothing complex about that.

What were you doing talking about 10:1 in this thread if its off topic?

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

July onwards for me, will this require a changed Router? :confused:

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Perhaps answering another poster's question?

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

You may need a new modem if you're on 20meg at the moment and don't have a superhub. You'll get one free of charge in this case.

You won't need a new router, either you can use your old router or if you happen to get a superhub, you can use that but you'll have a choice.

I'm not sure if you're genuinely asking about routers, or if you've got modems and routers mixed up so I apologise if I sound a bit patronising.

There will always be areas that are over capacity, it'd be impossible to keep every inch of the country ahead of the curve. One thing I will say is that Virgin are definitely making an effort to do something about areas with high utilisation, which is more than I can say about them a few years ago.

Re: virgin media double speed website now live
 

and it does not work :P

Re: virgin media double speed website now live
 

Does from here (Leeds) - my date is July onwards.

Re: virgin media double speed website now live
 

just shows a white screen after entering postcode :(

Re: virgin media double speed website now live
 

and here - Surrey

Re: virgin media double speed website now live
 

and here - Belfast . We are scheduled for July onwards.....

Re: virgin media double speed website now live
 

It is working

Attachment 22995

Attachment 22996

Re: virgin media double speed website now live
 

works here, but they overplayed the richard branson part.

Re: virgin media double speed website now live
 

LOL :)

Re: virgin media double speed website now live
 

lol I saved the video to my comp and now I can see it, typical

July onwards, onwards to what it does not say :D

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Visibly that doesnt seem to be the case, having tickets closed without resolution is still happening to various people. Do they count areas with utilisation just below the thresholds as high eg.?

Re: virgin media double speed website now live
 

http://doublespeed.virginmedia.com/a...o/version5.jpg

You can monkey about with the number at the end of the filename to see all of the alternates. First two are "in progress" and "completed". Liverpool appears to be July-Some indeterminate point in the future.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Kushan don't you worry about the possibility of sounding patronising

I always get the damned things mixed up :) However I'm too old now to do embarrassment :) I'm on 10Mbs & I alway call the first box where VMs coax goes in the modem, is this correct?

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Yes that's correct and by the sounds of it you won't need any new kit at all. Your modem will handle the increase to 20Mbit.

Re: virgin media double speed website now live
 

It says my area of London will be April, so currently i'm on 20mb, does that mean they will give me 40mb automatically?

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

I can't speak for every individual ticket and I haven't worked for the company for over 6 months now, but about February/march last year there was a noticeable jump in high-utilisation tickets actually getting fixed and that trend continued until I left.

EDIT: The high-utilisation was counted differently between DOCSIS1 and DOCSIS3 . I can't remember the statistics exactly, but on DOCSIS3 it was classed as high-utilisation if it was over 90% utilised for I think 10% of the time in any given week. It was something like that, anyway. There was a bit more to it than that, but that was the rule of thumb it went by. The problem is that some tickets would get left for ages, then utilisation would drop just enough (say all the students went home) that it wouldn't be high-util.

Yup, that's the modem. It used to be you'd have a modem for your connection in, then a router to share that connection with multiple devices (usually wirelessly). These days, Virgin supplies all-in-one units (aka the Superhubs) that do both (so it's technically a modem/router combined, but some people will just refer to it as a modem or a "hub"), but some people still prefer a dedicated router.
Since you're on 10meg, you won't need any new equipment unless you happen to have a REALLLY old modem, but chances are you'll be fine. One day your connection speed will double and that'll be that.

Re: virgin media double speed website now live
 

July :( Ill be on a 100meg before then anyhow.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

:o:

we'll see when all the areas upgraded. Croydon hasn't been upgraded yet :shocked: that is shocking. anywho my areas had the up upgraded for ages yet.. (different thread though)

April-July 2012... not far off yesterdays prediction via tickles...

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

LOL , looks like a beast dont it :D

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Re: virgin media double speed website now live
 

No, you'll get 60. If you don't have a superhub, they'll give you one.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

:bigcry:

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

[img]Download Failed (1)[/img]

:PP:

As above ;)

Not only are they claiming to be doubling speeds for all their customers, they want to double speeds for everyone in the world! Yipee!

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

I can hear a Oh **** in the website design team :LOL:

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

To be fair, he also claims he's Richard Branson when he's clearly not :p:

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

as i'm connected through staverton and am still waiting for faster uploads, i was pleasantly surprised to see i'm due for the upgrade between april-july. hopefully it will be april when the faster uploads are due but i won't hold my breath. :D

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Looks like Northamptonshire is set for the upgrade from October 2012 to June 2013.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Technically it's correct in that everyone that site applies to will get their speed doubled.

Plus it does say at the bottom of the page:

100Mb customers will see price-cut instead of speed doubling.

Plus further into the site it says:

If you have our up to 100Mb connection, you've already got the fastest widely available broadband in the UK. So we'll be taking a bit off your monthly bill, instead. And as an extra thank you, we'll be boosting your speeds up to 120Mb. Your upgrades start this summer. We'll be in touch to let you know.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

For those waiting on faster uploads still, and in the name of fairness to Virgin, it should be noted that parts of the upgrades to faster uploads in those areas requiring the overbuild means that they'll be near as damnit good to go for the speed doubling.

They're receiving the capacity upgrades as part of the upstream uplift project.

My own area I can probably now say is due for upload uplift by the first week of February with 100Mb release 2 weeks after that in mid-late February and the doubling during March and 1st week of April.

Subject to change, of course. I had to get that bit in.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

So while they know that not everyone is getting doubled speeds, they're still very clearly trying to convey the impression that they are.

---------- Post added at 12:56 ---------- Previous post was at 12:54 ----------

Interesting, VM's schedule in my area (yes, we both know how much that's worth) is claiming March for upstream, April/May for 100mb, and "October onwards" for the speed "doubling"...

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

well Bolt said it and if you want to have it out with him you'll have to catch him first :D

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Not really. "That site" applies to everyone. It's published on links from the VM homepage and isn't specific to any particular tariff or tier.

(The virginmedia.com homepage advertises increased speeds with a link to here which in turn links to "that site" to "Find out when" for all customers. On that page they also clearly bolded the line containing "doubling all our customers’ broadband speeds" before unbolding the bit about "actually, we're not")

It's like the whole Unlimited* and Up to <insert superfast broadband speed>Mb* business all over again.

* But not actually unlimited or for everyone or all the time

Except this is infinitely worse since when advertising Unlimited or Up to one naturally assumes it's not necessarily applicable to everyone and there's no claim as such. Yet here they're clearly advertising everyone*

*Not actually everyone

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

You still have to have a giggle at it :)

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

I have tried this postcode checker on 4 different browsers (IE8, Webkit, Opera Mini, Opera Mobile) and on 2 different internet connections and it just refuses to work. Why a simple area list wasn't posted I've no idea. It really didn't need to be this hard.

Can someone who has the one browser that works with the checker check the SO31 area out for me please? Otherwise I'll just have to remain in the dark. Thanks Pals.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Need a complete postscode, it won't accept just SO31.

P.S. It plays an HTML video available in MP4, OGM and WEBM. Not sure why yours won't play, adblock perhaps?

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

That's using SO31 4NB and SO31 1ZT as examples.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

To be extra pedantic, over 40% of tariffs aren't actually getting their speeds doubled, some are more, some are less:

Broadband Size : S (up to 2Mb) Up to 5Mb Not doubling
Broadband Size : M (up to 10Mb) Up to 20Mb
Broadband Size : L (up to 10Mb) Up to 20Mb
Broadband Size : XL (up to 20Mb) Up to 60Mb Not doubling
Broadband Size : XL (up to 30Mb) Up to 60Mb
Broadband Size : XXL (up to 50Mb) Up to 100Mb
Broadband Size : 100 (up to 100Mb) Up to 120Mb Not doubling

So even the doubling everyone*

* Except 100mb

is still technically incorrect :PP:

(Also, I wonder what's happening to the poor folk on 512k or 1mb...)

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Try leaving out the space i.e. SO314NB

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

I couldn't get it either until I cleared my cache, Told me my post code wasn't covered, maybe worth a try.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Probably because the list wouldn't be that simple.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

What is the discount on 100Mbit without phone line?

If I upgrade now, will I recieve the discount still?

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

I've just PMed the two people who tried to check for me with my postcode. Fingers crossed...

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Details of the discount haven't been announced yet, and yes I would expect you would get it if you upgrade now

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Yep the exact problem I am mentioning.

The first been that 90% is a very high threshold in the first place, the second been that VM doing things like leaving tickets waiting for students to go home so they can say its fixed. A policy where they just cancel tickets if utilisation "temporarily" drops is wrong. Because students going home then coming back is only a temporary event. As well as most other reasons why utilisation would drop for a short term time.

I suspect that timeframe you mentioned was a lot of issues getting fixed by the uplift work rather than VM actively running around specifically fixing utilisation issues, my own area went from dire to very good between jan and march 2011. That improvement lasting even until now although its been a progressive decline since june onwards so the improvement at this point is now much smaller.

Thanks for the openness.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

For SO31 ***

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Thanks man, much appreciated.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Ah, he beat me to it.

I have the feeling then that "October onwards" for me is just the same "Being planned" aka "We don't have a flipping clue" malarkey that the upstream uplift and 100mb upgrades sat at for nearly a year while their engineers sat around scratching their nuts.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

I don't mind being open about it. I'm a very harsh critic of Virgin, especially since many of my friends are being made redundant after being given no pay rise for nearly a decade (As well as bunch of other crap Virgin threw at their outsourced employees), however I will give them credit where it's due and there was definitely a lot of work being done to utilisation tickets last year (That was separate from the upload speed increase, as areas got their utilisation sorted long before they got their upload increase, while other areas got their upload increased but were still highly utilised). I only say "last year" because I can't be sure if it's still ongoing or not, but there were definitely a lot more issues getting fixed than the previous year - properly fixed with new hardware, not just "resegmentation" which is the usual thing they do (i.e. rejigging people around onto different cables because the load balancing doesn't work very well - of course, a lot of the time this would just cause the utilisation to shift around, or only dip enough to mark it as resolved).

Of course, the ticket-closing thing does happen. It happens not just to utilisation tickets, but to SNR tickets, fault tickets - you name it. There's a particular department that has a fantastic habit of doing this to tickets because their bonus is affected by how quickly they get issues fixed. A new ticket means it's a "new" issue and they've got a whole new SLA to play with. It's hard to say if this is a fault with that department, or if it's a fault with how their bonus is calculated - after all, it's not really their fault if they can't get an engineer to a site quickly enough, or if they can't get the go-ahead to upgrade a cab.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

So basically lying and claiming something's been fixed when it hasn't so they can get a bigger bonus while customers suffer.

Great work ethic there :)

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

@Kushan: Well it's clear that VM senior management deserve a kick in the nuts for treating staff like that. It's ruddy rude behaviour for any staff, let alone the dedicated types at VM.

Personally I'd give up the upgrade and have the money go to a pay increase to the VM front line workers. Anyone else?

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

That'd be Access NMC then.

They did it to a ticket raised from a fault of mine twice. On the 3rd try once the CEO's office were giving them heat it was fixed within 48 hours.

---------- Post added at 14:03 ---------- Previous post was at 14:00 ----------

Nope. They're completely different budgets and the money is being spent for purely commercial reasons. It would be found from somewhere whatever.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

If only it were that simple, a lot of it comes from the fact that Virgin outsourced a lot of their staff to IBM, who outsourced further to companies like Manpower and Adecco (and, of course, the lovely Offshore). There's certainly plenty of blame to go Virgin's way, though, as they wouldn't listen to many of the complaints staff had and just said "Go talk to your employer".

Well it depends on what you class as "Fixed". Sometimes, taking an SNR ticket as an example, it's really intermittent - a lot of noise for an hour or two in the morning, then fine again - maybe even for a day or two. There's not a lot that can be done while the fault is "gone" so chances are the ticket will get closed until it happens again. Sometimes it won't happen again, which is why they'll happily close tickets like that. Sometimes it happens and someone notices a pattern (say it's always on a wednesday at 8am, for example) and someone will specifically try to catch it, but yeah there are instances where closing tickets as "fixed" when nothing has been done is a perfectly valid things to do.

However, we're talking about utilisation and although there are instances when a high-util ticket is legitimately closed without any work being done (Sometimes, low SNR can cause utilisation to spike due to it falling back to a poor-bandwidth, but more error tolerant modulation), a lot of the time it seems to happen because they can't fix it and rather than just leaving the ticket in limbo, their preference is to close it. It's certainly naughty and it shouldn't be done, but it happens. I can't say who's really responsible for it, as we all know the saying - **** runs down hill - and I was very much near the bottom of said hill.

Nothing like a bit of ticket tennis with the ANMC crew.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Playing Chinese walls with budgets is no excuse for treating workers that poorly. They are the engines of profit and should be treated as such. Claiming you don't have the money 'cause you've left it in your other pinstripe jacket is not going to fool anyone.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

seems that bonus system needs changing to if a fault reccours pay is deducted.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Neither is suggesting that VM are doing this out of the kindness of their own hearts and it's coming off the payroll budget. It's being funded from a one-off income not from operating income, and is considered essential to compete with BT et al.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

It's not quite that simple - budgets are split between Operational Expenditure (non-pay), Operational Expenditure (pay), and Capital Expenditure for very good reasons, amongst which are better control and tracking of expenditure, and amortisation and deprecation (you can depreciate Capital Expenditure (which can include the pay part of discrete projects) over a period of time, which you cannot do with Operational Expenditure).

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

BT FTTC will be better than VM upcoming 60Meg / 6Meg in 2012 nationwide roll out as BT had a record of 80Meg /20 Meg trial. So, BT FTTC customers will see a strong upload speed of 20Meg meanwhile a download speed of between 57Mbps - 79.7Mbps.

So, why isn't VM not doing 20Meg upload yet to be competition against BT?

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

And the VM workers are not essential to compete with BT? Give them a bonus at least! A budget is just an artificial label, not a real obstacle.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Virgin do have either a quarterly or annual bonus scheme for it's staff

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

Try telling that to my FD and Chief Exec.....

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

So why aren't you switching to BT's FTTC instead of moaning about it here?

FUN TRIVIA: When I first started working for Virgin, it was a first-line phone monkey. In that whole time, I had customers threaten to leave and go to Sky, Talktalk, be, etc.
However, not once, no matter how bad the service Virgin gave was, did I ever have anyone threaten to leave and go to BT.

Unfortunately, pay is only one of a multitude of issues at hand. Anyway, as much as I'd love to rag on against Virgin, I don't think this thread is the place for it (there is a thread dedicated to that topic, though).

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

I really need to put you on ignore, my serotonin levels drop precipitously each and every time you post.

They aren't doing that because they do not compete on upload speed. It's still download that grabs the headlines and the attention.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

What Igni says - most (not all) consumers are interested in download speeds, not upload.

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

the speed doubling post code checker says that the lower tiers will be upgraded to 20mb and not 30 for some reason

Re: Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed
 

That is correct as otherwise they would all require new modems when the modems already in service will suffice for that speed.