Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

So it says here ...

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/article/...on-ad-campaign

Discuss. :)

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

This will astound some on here that think only virgin go running to the regulator,as we are now seeing sky do the same when it suits .!

Where i live sky,bts 02s,talk talk, ect ect are all in the slow lane as ADSL only delivers a maximum of 1.5-2 MB on ADSL max being not close to the exchnage.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Virgin were correct with their campaign, Our business broadband in an industrial estate in the middle of Bedford with BT gets 2mb if we're lucky and we're on "up to 20mb", what's the point of even giving us up to 20 if we can only get 2, and it doesn't matter if it's BT, sky ,talk talk etc etc, they all run through the same cable so they will all be as slow

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Not true, a provider can unbundle an exchange and provide their own service over the same lines where it is economical.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

When i looked into changing suppliers a few years ago they were all offering basically the same very slow speeds ie up to 2 MB !! nothing like 20 MB because thats all our local line can take.

Strange as i live in a large area nobody has unbundled our services.

Even sky offer the same 2 mb service here so i make virgins advert right myself.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

No it is very true, what i was basically saying is that if our business were to change to any of the other useless ADSL companies we would still get the same 6 odd year old speed of around 2mb because of the distance from the exchange

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

So you can see why Sky want this stopped. They will have to tell the truth about there speeds.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2011/03/24.png

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

none of the speed coming down adsl will ever get full speed and that a fact expect when on bt infinity. i hope sky lose coz they lie to much about tv broadband

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Sky are blowing hot air... Ofcom results show Sky and BT are much slower on average:

http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2011/03/02...ertised-speed/

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

It's not even true of BT Infinity. The last piece of cable is still copper or aluminium and the speed is still reduced.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Sky spitting our their dummy as per usual.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

So what happened to "Believe in better"

Or is that only when it suits them :LOL:

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Different day, same story, just players the other way around today.

VM's turn next time.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

distance from the exchange is only one, albeit a big one, factor in BB speed

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

I always laugh (to myself) when I see Believe in better. Is that saying that you should believe there is something better than Sky?

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

I went with VM about three years ago because BT broadband was absolutely useless as I live at the end of a line from the exchange and have found VM absolutely wonderful in that my BB is quick and efficient and my landline gives me much better clarity in that the first time I used the phone I had to turn the volume right down.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Sky are right the word con implies deceit and the most dishonest company I've ever had to deal with is Virgin. I recently had to leave Virgin due to poor service Ok the line speed was fine upload very poor Virgin said they didn't support upload speed which in this day and age is a complete joke. My adsl upload speed is 4x faster than Virgin. Also while the speeds on Virgin are showing good in speed tests, due to high latency and packet loss at peak times caused by congestion on the network renders the download speeds meaningless as even with a good download speed everything just crawls to a halt even webpages and that was on my 20Mb connection. Lots of people in most major cities are having the same problems for months on end with very long fix dates with Virgin. just take a look at Virgins own support site for confirmation.

When I signed up to my new supplier they where very honest about what speed my line could take no twelve month lock in. Yes there is traffic management of 250Gb per month which they where up front about but none of this nonsense of slowing your connection for hours on end if you dare to down load a couple of videos from iplayer over a short period. All in all I'd rather stick with my 6Mb adsl line than the super duper all dancing allegedly mega speeds from Virgin it's been rock solid up and down since I had it over a month ago and no packet loss high latency and call centres that are not routed half way round the globe to rude staff who cut you off having been kept waiting on the phone for over 30 mins. Virgin can keep its super fast broadband thanks but no thanks. Who's coning who ? I'll never go back to cable again.

:td:

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

My speeds are always fine, apart from a few outages my internet is rock solid, I think the campign is true as ADSL companies advertise upto as do Virgin but due to the technology Virgin uses they can give the headline speed more that what ADSL companies can.

People with no knowledge of how ADSL works will see wow upto 24Mb and when they get it they get around 2mb due to been too fair from the exchange, Companies these days are not honest so fair play to Virgin who can give customer what they promise, I understand people have issues but I doubt they out way the people that have a perfect connection.

sky/BT have ran to ofcom/ASA to stop VM broadband con campaign
 

I hope VM win on this. As this campaign is correct in my opinion.

I am going to give 2 scenarios.

Scenario 1 - current situation for me, up to 24mbit adsl connection that runs at 5mbit and upto 30mbit cable connection that runs at 30mbit. On paper the cable connection is only 25% faster, in practice its 600% faster.
Scenario 2- my old situation same adsl connection, VM congested 20mbit service with varying speeds. So cable speeds varied between maybe 1mbit and up to 20mbit. Typically speeds were still above 5mbit tho and I could usually get 15mbit or more in morning. On paper the adsl connection faster, in practice the cable connection was still usually faster but at extreme peak would be slower.

In the real extreme situation when I was on my legacy cable docsis port, VM ran unfit for purpose and in that situation I would consider that also a broadband con. But looking at it overall that kind of extreme performance drop only affects a tiny % of VM customers, so whilst unacceptable its nowhere near the severity of what the adsl isp's are doing.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12617994
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-12618350

According to the BBC on up to 16/24mbit services.

69% less than 8mbit.
28% 8-16mbit.
3% above 16mbit.

This is what VM have had to compete against, isp's that deliberatly missell their product to compete. Meaning VM's 10mbit service is still superior to what 69% of people get on 16/24mbit adsl2+.

Dont know what others thoughts are, but this campaign is one of some good things VM are doing. Although its come way too late as BT is starting FTTC rollout now which doesnt suffer from the same issues to the same extenct.

---------- Post added at 17:58 ---------- Previous post was at 17:31 ----------

sorry didnt see this thread, thanks for moving my post.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Please tell me that I'm not the only one who finds this story absolutely hilarious :D

Absolutely nowhere in the campaign does VM directly criticise any, specific, broadband provider. In fact, the campaign is aimed at any and all ISPs.

Yet Murdoch assumes they must be talking about him. Arrogant much? :rolleyes:

I'm pretty sure it will get thrown out of court, assuming it even gets that far!

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

I dunno VM is basically attacking Sky for saying their conn is up to 20mb, funnily enough so does VM >.<

As said by a few Sky peeps will give an estimate I believe on how much you could feasibly get when they see how far you are from the nearest exchange, and they give you a limit per month that is not too excessive, 250gb leaves plenty of room even for those who naughtily download things.

But for VM, its totally random.... They will play the contention card nearly constantly these days... so now their up to 50mb for example with contention happening can be anything at all even a couple of meg, then the traffic management, then the p2p/usenet throttling, then the hidden amount for downloading per month and mostly the poor support, poor technical issues being dealt with (some taking months), poor hardware (superhub), oversubscription and just general poor performance are starting to look like a fairytale.

Overall they have no right to stand there and call another ISP a con when they themselves are the biggest cons out of all ISP's. Im sure some staff of VM will deny this, albeit loyalty or not, but lets be honest whats happened to myself and some others and the lies some come out with on that phone... it's pot calling kettle black time. IMHO.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Erm... no. Broadband in general; as I already said.

How right you are. You obviously do not know.

The rest of your post is, of course, irrelevant to the point of the thread.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Ok I am going to be calm and respond to you nicely.

1. I was not responding to yourself Carl, was giving my view on the topic at hand. Not everything is about what you posted.

2. Yes they are attacking broadband in general but not their own, but broadband provided by other providers, thusly they are attacking Sky, and also at the same time attacking BT, etc.

3. Of course it is relevant they claim the other providers are conning people by not declaring correct speeds, which of course they wrongfully do also, up to 50mb doesn't mean a lot and is open to massive scrutiny, the fact over the last year they have developed ways of clawing at bandwith means they will come to a point where they will have to say "up to 50mb only during non-traffic managed timeframes", so while they attack other ISP's they are the biggest culprit.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Okay, but you are still wrong. They were not specifically attacking any ISP.

Correct. Well done. Now that you get it, what do you think of Sky's position?

Well their main point was, of course, that ADSL ISPs claim "up to 20mb" when there is clearly no chance of most people getting anywhere near that speed.

http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2011/03/02...ertised-speed/

This is unlike VM's cable service where, although of course no speed is guaranteed, but you are far more likely to get the headline speed.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

I am not going to the ofcom link Carl as you know what I will say, that the data is not of the entire country only select regions.

Far more likely yes... outside of non-traffic managed timeframes yes... unless it is congested with oversubscribing which some areas have then its very hard to get the headline speed.

As for Sky's position, they are in every right to request the ad be removed, because Sky tells potential customers about the limits of the connections they are going to lease. And they will be honest and tell you. That is not a con, that is being truthful. VM on the other hand are not in that regard, too much overuse of "up to" doesn't make it so.

VM know they will be forced to remove the ad, but in true business like style they know it will take a bit of time to get it removed by which time their corporate sabotage has done it's job. And even more students sign up to overpopulate UBR's :P

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

to be honest even in a congested area it still is nothing like as bad as the adsl situation.

Even in jan this year when my port was very badly overloaded at dusk hours I was able to get over 70-80% of my advertised speed. Whilst on adsl if you on a long line forget it, you wont 'ever' get high speeds.

So the facts are every cable customer syncs at advertised speed (or higher). A majority of cable customers achieve close to those speeds even during peak, the ones who dont still can get close to full speeds during the quitest hours. I am not saying thats an acceptable service if in that situation but its worth pointing out its a very different situation to what the adsl providers are doing. On adsl2+ services only 3% get close to advertised speed, thats a horrific figure.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

I assume you can prove this with hard facts? I look forward to reading them.

You think the industry regulator, will have just accepted any old figures that they were given; from a bloke in a dirty over-coat down a London back-alley, I assume? ;))

No; probably not!

They will have been checked and verified so, I'm sorry, but unless you know and can prove otherwise, they are as accurate as they can be.

Their complaint that the campaign is specifically aimed at them. It is not. So any complaint on those grounds should fail.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Carl we have had this discussion before, and I proved to you the last time you tried to use ofcom research links that they were not valid.

Ofcom does research in specific areas that is fact, as they will tell you in each research project which areas they tried. So not every piece of the UK is tested about 25% is, that is not definitive proof of anything, just proves which areas they tested is doing well or not.

Can you prove they did all of the UK? I bet you can't Carl, you couldn't do so months ago and I don't expect you to do so now.


Some elements of the ad has suggestive wording to point to Sky, some words used point to BT and so on, and of course on a whole the ad points to all. Now using your words again Prove to me it doesn't do what I suggested.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Well thats typical Sky trying to use bully boy tactics when they do not get their own way.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Okay, but can you prove that they only chose the best areas and not completely random areas? No. You can't.

Well the ads gone now so you can't prove that either. Lucky for you because you can now say anything you like. But I know it didn't.

Well done.

Glad someone else gets it.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Carl, DABhand never stated they only chose the best areas, so you are raising a straw-man argument there.

re the ads - neither of you can prove it (unless you have access to a cached version), but it is rather impolite, imho, to state "Lucky for you because you can now say anything you like" - the same could be said of you.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

The difference being I believe the figures. I have no reason not to believe the figures therefore I don't need to prove anything. If anyone, including DABhand (who has a history of complaining about VM, don't forget!) can prove to me that the figures are not valid and correct then let's see the evidence.

I have no doubt that they use random samplings rather than everyone in the whole country, but to even suggest that they would not be entirely random and only concentrate on the "good" VM areas (which is what DABhand is claiming) is, IMO, completely bonkers.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Once again, you are raising a straw-man argument.

Dh stated He did not state in this thread that "but to even suggest that they would not be entirely random and only concentrate on the "good" VM areas (which is what DABhand is claiming)" , unless, of course, you can show otherwise, as I cannot find that statement.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Maybe not. But that's what he is trying to imply.

So 25% of the UK is randomly tested and these figures produced. Of course some areas are going to be worse, but of course some are also going to be better.

Dh's main contention is that these figures are not accurate. Well that's just tough. OFCOM accepts they're accurate. As does the industry; what with OFCOM being their regulator and all. Dh is simply un-happy that they show VM is actually better than he would like everyone to think they are.

There is a separate, straw-poll on this very forum, somewhere, where the vast majority of VM users are getting exactly the speed they are paying for. Okay, it's not statistically accurate but it is another poll suggesting that VM are actually doing okay.

None of this is, of course, anything to do with the original point of the thread. Which is that VM were not specifically attacking Sky or any other singular ISP. Yes, of course it was merely a campaign to show that VM users are more likely to get the headline speed they're paying for. A fact which is shown by the OFCOM report.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

As I have said, and said elsewhere they are only accurate for the areas tested. The figures they give do not and will not show a true representation of the whole of the UK coverage, unless they actually start to test every single area that VM supplies to until then its not a 100% true representation.

Since you are making the claim that I am wrong and say Ofcom's findings are the true state of things, then you have to prove to me that it is indeed that.

And months ago we had this discussion, and we are back to the very same point, and i'll roughly repeat what I said before iirc.

The service is excellent? What about the people in student areas with oversubscription? (I know this was mentioned elsewhere here in another thread but there was plenty of threads etc about it on the official forums).

What about the people who wait months for a simple repair to happen so they can get a decent expected service?

What about the people who are now having lag issues in many online games and through services provided by consoles?

What about people with poor performances and getting a small percentage of bandwith they were promised to get "up to" 24/7?

I could go on listing the other examples...

But funny thing is, I said these months ago on the official forums, but yet they can still be used today. That is bad. So from the evidence provided by customers on the forum which there was a huge amount of. And from replies from the VM moderating team and some staff (some staff who were badly mannered imho), it can be cleary seen that Ofcom's findings do NOT show the true picture of what is going on.

So the onus is on you Carl to prove to me with proof from Ofcom that what they shown in that report is the true picture and for them to say how much in percentage of areas they covered that VM supplies to. If its below 50% then I won't accept it as true data.

And Carl, don't bold key words.. its very pedantic.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Makes no difference. They will (I would hope) be statistically accurate for the whole of the UK.

Besides, they are the only figures available to anyone so they have tp be taken as accurate.

Actually, you'll find it's OFCOM that are claiming the figures are accurate so I don't have to prove anything. If you have a problem you should really take it up with them.

Yes. Overall the service is excellent. As the OFCOM figures show. See also this straw poll and VM's own results.

This is not to say that they don't have some problems in some areas. No-one has ever said otherwise.

You could but there's not a lot of point as I agree with you and have never tried to make out any different. However, see also this post.

However, these are the figures we have and that's that. I'm pretty sure that if they showed VM in a worse light we would not behaving this disagreement.

I used bold for emphasis only because such emphasis is lost when quoted as quotes are always italicised. Nothing more.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

There appears to be some confusion between statistical analysis and reality (I cite election polls which are statistically accurate, but often do not represent the real state of play).

Statistic analysis is the best reflection given limited resources, but is not, imho, reality.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Statistical analysis can (and is, or so I understand) very accurate. Also, it's the best we have unless you always want to ask every single person in the country individually every time :)

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

I think the phrase is "can be" - I think we have all seen how it can also not be (cf General Election polls...).

I agree it's the best we can hope for without complete sampling, but should not be taken as a mirror of reality, just an indicator thereof.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Like I said, it's as good as we're going to ever get without a 'census'-type of thing. So the fact is that VM offer the closest you can get to any given "headline" speed.

Unless anyone can prove otherwise.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Carl one day you will realise that everything in Black and White is not necessarily Black and White :)

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

And one day you will realise that VM aren't actually as bad as you like to make out; as proved by the evidence in this thread.

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Perhaps the truth is somewhere in the middle?

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Are you talking about those annoying shades of grey again Hugh?

Re: Sky sets its lawyers on VM over internet ad campaign
 

Of course it is. VM aren't perfect and they aren't bad. I certainly have never said otherwise. My point has always been that, as the OFCOM figures are the only ones we have then they are the only ones we can use as a yard-stick.