OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Time for an OFCOM update

http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2012/08/15...adband-speeds/

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Ben, you may wish to borrow this....:D

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2012/08/84.jpg

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Now if they only had the balls to use the phrase "unlimited up to".

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

:LOL:

Indeed he has made himself a target for that group on here who knock anything that VM do. I work in the same building as Ben so will have a fire extinguisher on call just in case

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

not another target you need to do some mentoring

;)

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

:)

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Don't convince me Ben as l know how good Virgin's broadband is but trying to convince the Doomsayers is another job in itself.:)

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

tbf, those people usually have had serious issues.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Absolutely. But what they don't seem to be able to handle is the fact that their having a problem does not mean that "the whole network is crap" or "VM are the worst company in the world" or "they're lying to their customers" or any of the other things I've seen posted over the years.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Absolutely.. I had a customer today with speed issues. Ranting and raving about how crap vm are and cant deliver the speeds, going back to sky adsl etc . as I walked through the door he was adamant that he was only getting 10mb from a 60 connection. I listened to what he had to say, plugged my laptop in side by side with his pc, mine 64meg constant, his still a solid 10. His mood changed somewhat when he realized this was all down to his pc. Dusted off one of his daughters laptops and that too sat at a constant 60 odd meg. The shame of all this is, is that how many people did he diss vm to on the lead up to my arrival? You can't win sometimes until it's too late and verbal word of mouth damage has been done. Still, he is a happy customer now, even though he has some work to do on his pc..

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

How does that work then? It was an older network port that couldn't handle the higher speeds I assume?

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

No, even an older network card would have seen more then 8-10 meg.. This was more serious. Hard to say really, all firewall and anti virus disabled, that was all it had to give.
Customers should always try another pc, laptop before concluding speeds on the normal one.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Shame this is just headline speeds, would have been interesting to see if the jitter decrease that the new Superhub firmware has been giving has brought VM's figures down closer to adsl.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Read the full report yourself:

http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/bin...s_May_2012.pdf

(Note that R36 won't be covered because the report is based on data for the 6 months up to May. The next report will show the full effect of that change, but for now VM's jitter is still about ten times worse than ADSL and fifty times worse than BT FTTC)

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

I don't think anyone would argue about the speed. what about the quality?
They do lie, unlimited, yeah in the middle of the night, they do hook people, with offers they can't deliver they then offer a tenth rate service when there is a problem. I had a rock solid 30M connection until the speed was doubled to 15M . yeah lucky to see that speed.
Strange how VM employees always get good connections, perhaps if they get a problem they don't have to learn a foreign language to get problems resolved.
Perhaps now beardy has been kicked off the railways he will have more time to spend getting his company name at VM respected.
Just seen the comment about R36, before, however slow never dropped a connection. Now since R36 every hour.
but then they did test it for all of 14 days, so desperate to get it out they ignored the feedback.
looks like they are hitching their wagon to the Tivo star. perhaps they should stick to that and telephone, and leave the ISP to the professionals

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

No, they really don't :rolleyes:

No. Your ability to download data is unlimited at any time. Though your speed may be limited at certain times.

That OFCOM report seems to disprove this comment.

Both my parents and I get rock-solid connections. As does a good friend of mine. And none of us are VM emplpyees.

So that's another thing proved wrong.

Pretty sure everyone I have ever spoken to at VM spoke English. It's the only language I know so I'd know if they weren't speaking it :)

That was a good rant though. Well done. But, as I just proved, rants rarely include facts in them.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Just included facts. If downloads are limited in any way they are not unlimited.

Unlimited ..."not limited or restricted in terms of number, quantity, or extent" Oxford Dictionary.
I think the relevant word is "restricted" tell me restricted doesn't apply to traffic management. Traffic management restricts your speed and speed restricts quantity, ergo traffic management is a restriction. As VM advertise unrestricted, they are lying.

When I ring India I can't understand them. I think VM understand my
Stirling pounds I pay them.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

But not really.

Like it or not, within the industry "unlimited" has a very specific meaning relating the the amount of data that can be downloaded not the speed.

Me neither. But then I also have problems with some variants of the Scots accent too. Doesn't mean they're not talking English. though.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Supercilious claptrap. As you can't grasp the meaning of the word unlimited i don't want to waste anymore time on a Birkett fanboi.
I will take the meaning onboard of this quote.
"Do not argue with an idiot. He will drag you down to his level and beat you with experience"
you nearly managed to drag me down to your level.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

No. Just the facts.
I have explained the meaning of the word within the broadband industry. That is all.

I am sorry you are unable to handle the truth.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

So why have I recently received 2 emails, and 2 letters, telling me that I am downloading "too much during peak hours"? (4 adults using the same connection, Shub says around 4Gb each full day). They already restrict speed if we exceed their "limits", so now they they want to "limit" data downloaded?

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

That must hint at there being an unpublicised limit during peak hours. If something is truly unlimited then there would be no need to send out emails when a unknown limit is breached ???

Here is a simple question, has anyone any evidence that BT or Sky have sent out this type of email on there UNLIMITED products ???

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

There used to be an unpublicised limit but no longer, they now just send out "advisory" letters and don't actually take any action against those breaching the "limit". They used to disconnect you for breaching said limit.

BT used to have a 300GB/month limit on their unlimited products, after which your speed would be cut to ~1Mbps, they quietly revoked this policy a while ago though.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

I thought that ALL ISPs who claim 'unlimited' in fact have FUPs (fair usage policies) in order to ensure the fairest service to ALL customers.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Just to point out, Virgin Media don't use the term 'unlimited' anymore

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

I never noticed that; but then I don't need to look at their 'shop' anymore these days :)

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

All "Unlimited" ISPs have acceptable use policies, not necessarily fair use policies. Some for example have no fair-use limitation on how much you use, only the acceptable use policy to prevent you using it for illegal purposes (e.g. harassment, terrorism, malicious attacks, etc.)

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Yay, "double" everyone's speeds, gain a 58% improvement in average... :dozey:

Still, catching up with BT. Average speed on VM "fibre" is now only 31% slower than on BT "fibre".

Peak time congestion looks like it's still bad though mildly improved, with VM cable customers losing on average 11-16% of their speed at peak time vs. 6% on FTTC.

That's an improvement of about 3% on VM and about 6% on its' competitors. Except for VM 30Mb customers, who saw their average speeds actually reduce.

Funny enough, BT 38Mb is outperforming VM 30Mb and BT 76Mb is outperforming VM 60Mb, which you might think is obvious, but I recall VM advertising their competing service would be faster due to line losses on xDSL.

... Apparently they were wrong.

Unsurprisingly, on the upload, BT 38Mb is faster than all of VM's surveyed tariffs, including VM 100Mb, and on comparable tariffs closer to triple.

Still. I think the most significant is that VM have managed to cut peak time speed loss on the 100Mb service by about 20%, which means quite significant improvements in capacity and reductions in congestion.

Similarly, average latency on VM is now finally lower than on BT Infinity (when averaged over 24 hours) which again indicates capacity improvements but packet loss is still ten times higher. Unfortunately latency still increases enough at peak times that it ends up worse than on BT.

Loading a web page still takes longer on VM 100Mb than BT 76Mb though that particular result is completely insignificant and just there for laughs...

VM DNS failure rates are also still several orders of magnitude higher than anyone else's as is jitter, but again the latter has improved about 20% since 6 months prior.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Except the report is only up till November last year. There has been a further 5 months of speed work since then.

So at the point of measurement in no way has everyone's speeds been doubled.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Double speed means nothing if you can't access popular sites like stackoverflow.com or any other site/service that runs on a 198.* range

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Not sure what you mean, as I can access www.stackoverflow.com with no issues?

This is the most recent post (at this time).

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...ltiple-servers

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Same here

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

You two are some of the lucky ones. Seems there are a number of users who have the problem although many won't even know they have the issue if they don't visit sites on that range.

16 pages on VM's forums about the problem which has persisted for some customers for 2 or 3 weeks.

Mark Wilkin, the Virgin media forum manager posting on StackOverflow about it.

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Just checked it now and i can access it as well

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...uild-qualifier

http://stackoverflow.com/questions/1...ead-time-issue

I have always been lucky :)

Re: OFCOM Broadband survey update
 

Indeed, I don't think even 58% of people had been doubled at that point, so in some ways it's a pretty impressive number.