ANOTHER price rise!?
 

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...ober-2014.html

:/

Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Discuss. Going up £1.50 in October for stand alone customers who joined after May 2014

New full price will be £40.50

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

You haven't given your thoughts, so what's to discuss?

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Oh sorry

I think whilst price rises are always needed to keep and invest in the networks/services more. 3 rises so close have got to upset people?

I only joined in July so it dosent affect me but I feel for those it does.

You can bet a rise for those who joined after 29th May 2014 will come soon. Just like other ISP's have done

Re: ANOTHER price rise!?
 

Are other providers dropping their prices at present!

Re: ANOTHER price rise!?
 

A £1.50 price increase form Broadband only customers - who don't need a phone line, unlike other BB suppliers - fair game it seams.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Duplicate topic threads merged.

Please do not start two threads on the same topic, especially at the same time.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Seems fair enough. No line rental is required on these services and, obviously, income is needed to power investment.

Put it in context against the services I have - I pay £80 a month for less bandwidth than a VM 152Mb customer.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Children Please: A couple of posts are deleted. Let's try and avoid pettiness towards fellow posters.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

£74 here after the price rise

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

For just broadband and telco, or for FTTC + telco and stand-alone broadband?

Also worth noting you get over 200Mb. I get less than 120.

Regarding the shareholders champagne thing, not really. Liberty just pumped a billion quid into VM that they didn't really have to spend given how crap BT are. That's a lot of shareholders' champagne.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

no for tv and phone and internet. last time i checked i got 152 like everyone else. when did the 200 come in?

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Correction: Before

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Yes sorry I forgot to change that bit. I misread the letter.

After I am sure will follow.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

I'm not so sure it will. It looks as though the price was already increased for new customers back when the "Big" bundles came out. This is just aligning the older customers.

It's not likely to be an issue, anyone facing a price increase can probably phone up to get discounted below what they're currently paying.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Well at some point they have to align the new customer also?

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

No, that's the point - the new customers are already on the higher price.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

It seems stand alone broadband customers seem to get a price increase every six months! I appreciate it being reviewed once a year, but twice?

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Ive been joined a month and a half and I am on £39 so this is the new price?

Sorry but it's rather confusing..

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

The change will be £1.50 for all existing customers who only take cable broadband and only applies to those who joined or re-contracted before 29th May 2014.

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...ober-2014.html

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

I think it is only once a year i.e. the customers getting the increase would have last had an increase in October 2013 (if they've been with Virgin Media long enough) http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...rice-hike.html

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

So not comparable at all - I am not talking about any TV service that's purely what I pay for Internet and the telephone lines I'm forced to take with them.

I thought you were referring to a cable and an FTTC line - which combined would deliver over 200, comparing like for like.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Just to clarify: I've been a standalone broadband customer for over 12 years, the most recent price increases on my account have been as follows:

1st April 2011 - £0.75
1st April 2012 - £1.50
1st Feb 2013 - £1.15
1st Feb 2014 - £2.00
proposed 1st Oct 2014 - £1.50

So there will have been 2 price increase within this year.

As far as my broadband L goes that will amount to an increase from £16.26 to £23.16, an increase of 42% in less than 4 years.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Ah right I see, No I wasen't although that's an interesting way to look at it. I never thought of that before - tell me more ?:)

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

You buy a fancy router with dual WAN ports and tell it to load balance your connection between both. You need to be careful though as it can cause issues with some sites and services (as you'll effectively have 2 external IP's).

It's generally not worth the hassle at the consumer level.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

These standalone BB customers deserve a price rise. They want to get a more balanced life and watch the telly more or phone the mother-in-law instead of spending all day on the interweb. Get a life.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Or on the flip side they just want fast internet at a decent price so they can spend less time downloading and more time socialising :p:

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

hahahaha not my problem anymore as virgin media have increasing price three times over the last 18 months and it ain't stopped there yet. More price rises again for Virgin Media customers in May 2015. Watch this space!

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

1. I watch lots of Telly, but via the internet so no need for a TV sheep - er I mean Licence.
2.I'd rather have my nuts grinded that have a wife - let alone a mother in law!
3.I have a life thanks.
4. Next!

---------- Post added at 16:34 ---------- Previous post was at 16:32 ----------

As long as it pays enough for another round of speed upgrades - then?

Yes LG put 1 billion in, no one one asked them too (the way some see it) but I guess it was necessary. they didn't do it just to **** customers off I am sure. My FTTC is also going up I found out today.

It's only the speed that we pay for. Compare it to FTTC and it's more expensive but the speed justify s it to a degree. If it gets past £50 and it's not more speed then I would give it up. I went to Denmark recently. They have GB speeds at like 30 euros.

---------- Post added at 16:35 ---------- Previous post was at 16:34 ----------

I watched TV whilst on the tube the other day (thanks to VM who were giving me 38/36 at Sloane Squarea nd whilst chatting to someone so I was travelling and socialising - get that! :D

---------- Post added at 16:36 ---------- Previous post was at 16:35 ----------

Cheers

My FTTC is a business line but I wouldn't do it with a VM business line unless it could do the same speed, thanks for the advice though

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

I heard Virgin Media rolling out 200Mbps from next year.

Will be line up like this:

100/5
152/12
200/12 (yes upload stay the same!)

FTTC still 80/20 no plan for 120/30 yet!

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

If so then it will be due to this new round of price rises I would imagine. and that's fine to me.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Hi i work for VM.

i do agree the prices rises are not the best.
but compared to other companies its much much cheaper.

£40 for the fastest broadband in the UK?
ok, id happily swap providers with you. i dont live in a cabled area so i have BT Fibre. i currently pay £52 per month with a phoneline. then £68 to sky.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

I'm moving to a non cabled area next week and will be using an unstable 40/5 FTTC line, I'm considering getting / paying for a second line just so I have (maybe) 80/10

Dropping from my 160/12 Virgin connection. Some would say it is unfair, but what can you do? (other than move)

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Yeah it's not good. I must admit that being in a cabled/non-cabled area would be a major factor in my decisiin making if i was moving house

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Most isp's say no to bonding FTTC and it will gonna to cost u more!

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Most isp's say no to eating chocolate while you are using your pc so it is a good job that they don't know we do it.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Well yeah, it'll cost a second line rental and broadband subscription.

My ISP doesn't even know I'm load balancing the lines, they have no way to.

Less of the 'S' please. Seems just last week you were on the Plusnet forum claiming to have Virgin Media load balanced with FTTC, and got all upset when it was suggested you were lying as you'd only posted about it on there, and were posting speed tests strangely similar to those that were shown up on here as being from someone else.

---------- Post added at 00:19 ---------- Previous post was at 00:18 ----------

You have made this up. Please kindly stop it. These posts go on Google and will misinform people casually searching.

A new tier will not come with no upload increase. The network upgrades required to increase upload speeds are in progress and there is an aim to beat BT in both directions.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Maybe I suggest to post forum with PGP Key, so u cannot read it!

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

When I said paying for a second line I did mean 2x line rental + broadband costs which I worked out would cost me around £70/m for "up to" 80/10. Then there's the cost of the load balancing router as software balancing is no use to me I need the whole network to use it.

Alternatively Openreach could make sure their engineers can be bothered to do the job they were sent to do, to actually fix my line (whole other story)

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

thanks, that is exactly what I wanted to say but I have given up trying to distinguish fact from fiction for him and I always get moaned at for mocking and bullying him which is why I just try to come up with useless rubbish now hoping that he will realise what his posts come across like.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Given no-one else could read it either without the relevant key that'd be just fine.

Another option obviously is to stop making things up and posting them in public forums as facts.

---------- Post added at 10:12 ---------- Previous post was at 10:10 ----------

I use this along with 2 Openreach modems to accomplish that task. It seems to work fine.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

I feel the need to remind people:
http://www.tvlicensing.co.uk/faqs/FAQ95

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Thanks for the recommendation, that one actually came up when I was looking the other day, looks like it'd be worth the investment and it's probably the one I'll go for if I do decide to do the balancing :D

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

that is so sweet. I wish I had the money for two openreach lines and two VM lines to come into the house. A 464/64 connection be amazing.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

I guess you could get as many FTTC lines as you wanted (until you ran out of spare pairs) or do Openreach have a limit per property?

Still, 1x VM at 160/12 and 2x 80/20 FTTC lines would be nice :D (if you had the money)

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Agreed, VM won't do 2 lines I have asked.

---------- Post added at 12:41 ---------- Previous post was at 12:41 ----------

As I feel the need to say what I have said for the past 10 years. Stuff Capita and their TV tax. I don't need it, don't pay it and never will.

---------- Post added at 12:45 ---------- Previous post was at 12:41 ----------

Which sounds good to me ;)

Thanks also for the load balancer link. I have search these forums and seen the software that some use but it's obviously not as good as the hardware. As you said I could achieve 200mbps + but for what? I stream more than I download. My FTTC line is a business line but I guess I should wait until I am not using a residential cable service also - as I think kabaal? said it would be of no benefit to me.

What do you think please?

Edit::

That's the first time I have ever seen something on PC world's business website which is cheaper even with the VAT than the cheapest UK seller on Ebay. very impressed!

So if I did get one I'd just call my business manager. Easy peasy!

---------- Post added at 12:58 ---------- Previous post was at 12:45 ----------

I just wanted to reply to this. For me I pay £39 for virgin and £35 for my FTTC and line rental so £74 - it seems for that I "can" geet roughly 212 down and 26 up when I did try it.

The software I tried (called connectify) seemed okay but also seemed to drop a lot. I am not sure if this load balancer that Ignitionnet has will do it all the time - only he can tell us that.

Also with the software it means I have to have 2 Ethernet cables running into my PC and both enabled for it to work. Which is great but I am about to unbox a new Imac and that only has 1. So this is again where the software fails. It shows whichever IP address you have enabled first it seems.

But the one he has I have found for £134. He again may be kind enough to say if that is expensive or good value for such a unit.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Yeah I've used connectify to "bond" my VM and tether my phone over EE 4G and I hit about 198Mbps but it was very flaky, some of the time it would just use the 4G connection and not my VM one at all, and yes I had it set up to give each connection equal bandwidth which I know works as it did for a few of the speedtests I did.

Also I'm confident that tp-link will do a much better job, going from the reviews on amazon anyway

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

This bit from the first review worries me

It's also frustrating that each WAN connection is limited to 100Mb, so if you have Virgin's top of the line connection then it will be limited by this device.

So sounds like it won't take 152 (which is really about 161) and FTTC unless you dropped down to 100mbps?

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

I read 100Mbps somewhere but I can't find it again, however the spec on the TP-Link site states Gig ports and NAT throughput of 350Mbps but I can't see the 100Mbps, maybe that reviewer is getting confused or something else is limiting it.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

At some point,you'll reach a point where it'd be better off to just get a leased line in. Not sure what a gigabit line goes for these days.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

If it's on VM it's £12,000-£16,000 PA. I did ask them once upon a time so might have changed

---------- Post added at 14:30 ---------- Previous post was at 14:30 ----------

My hope is that Ignitionnet will be so kind as to come and tell us for sure.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

All the ports are GigE on the TL-ER5120. They even have amber lights on the one I have here right now complaining about the 100Mb links from the Openreach modems.

The NAT throughput is allegedly 350Mb/s however I reckon in real life it runs slower, and remember that Openreach VDSL uses PPPoE.

See the attachments, should put your mind at ease. Ports 1-4 can be WAN ports, 2-5 LAN, 5 is DMZ if so configured.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Thanks for the explanation Igni, hey look you can get another 2 lines and balance all 4 :p:

That's probably when you'd start hitting the throughput limit i'd imagine

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Yes thank you.

I did notice the orange and green lights on the back and also that one said 100 and one said 1000.

Well I will try for 212 but I will also just downgrade to it's max if it can't take that.

It will be nice to know I have constant upstream something this software cannot do

I don't suppose there is a cherry on the top in being able to run vpn configs through it?

Also my VM is obviously dynamic but my business line is static - will this be a problem? I can make it un static if it needs it

In any case at £115,99 I've ordered one to be delivered on Tuesday.

Cheers

---------- Post added at 20:10 ---------- Previous post was at 19:48 ----------

Also, and this will sound trivial

Do I have to have another unit running? So OR modem and ISP router and then VM SH2 aswell? At the moment it's chewing through my power for some reason so another unit as well might not help

---------- Post added at 20:56 ---------- Previous post was at 20:10 ----------

Got to be better than this pants software - when it's using VM as the main IP it only uses 1 channel for upstream. Will be nice to have proper balancing (and I have it set to round robin also)

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

No, you'd need the TL-ER6120 for that.

Not an issue at all.

Depends how you have things set up. I have the 2 Openreach modems going into the 5120 and it feeding an access point. The 5120 can talk PPPoE so can replace the ISP modem, apart from the lack of WiFi.

Do remember that you need to have more than one TCP connection running to be able to load balance. On single stream transfers I get single line speeds.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Thanks for the reply

This is the review I based my purchase on as well as your excellent advice

http://www.broadbandbuyer.co.uk/prod...views/#content Just had a text saying it's coming Monday now :)

I have BTO modem _ ISP router and also VM sh2.

So I assume based on the split screen you added for each connection I can just plug in the BTO modem and the SH and therefore input my ISP details into it?

Would having FTTC and VM give me what I need in regards to this TCP? Sorry I have no knowledge beyond entering usernames and password into the ISP router.

Thanks

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

You'd need to put the superhub in the Modem mode and connect that and the OR modem to the tp-link, then your router to a LAN port on the tp-link.

By that Igni just means you'll only see a benefit on multi threaded downloads / uploads as balancing spreads the load rather than bonds it to give you all at once, if that makes sense?

IE speedtests with only 1 http connection will only show the speed of one line, but for say torrenting, usenet etc that use a lot of connections you'll see the full speed of both lines.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Will it do the same job as this software does? Give me 212/25 all the time -that's the main thing

I do usenet and P2P and also I use a download manager all the time.

SO what you are saying is I won't have any wireless at all? Unless I use the lan port router?

:?

Also will it bond my upload? that's more important to me as I upload a lot of shows to the station from home where they are recorded in case I can't make it in.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

You've answered your own question.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

I have?

So it's a yes?

And I still use the ISP's router? Sorry for the confusion Pip but Ignition sort of implied I don't need to use that as the Load balancer can take the ISP's details.

And I thought it went like this?

SH2 in MM into TP-LINK. BTOR HG612 into TP-LINK - TP-LINK talks to my FTTC ISP via it's internals - computer plugs into TP-LINK?

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Pretty much yes to all your questions, but if you wanted wifi you'd have to plug your isp router into the tp-link before your pc / whatever else you're looking to wire in.

If you upload with ftp or something that uses multiple threads then yes you'll see the improved upload too

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Exactly. Pretty simple really.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Definitely two this year, and last year. As Dave says in his quote below, He had one in February 2013 (as did I), I am not sure why he didn't in October as everyone did as seen on the article you posted. I know I had one then. As for this year I had one in February and therefore downgraded my service from the old 60Mb (Now 100) to the new 50Mb (the old 30) to save about £10. Now its going up again :(

Should have had one in October 2013 too. See http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...rice-hike.html

An extra 2.50!

Well I do watch television, just do not feel the need to pay for premium channels that I wouldn't have time to watch as I am busy socialising. Oh, and I am quite happy to pay my mobile contract for calls rather than paying for a land line which requires line rental and then paying for calls on top of that. I have an unlimited mobile contract, which does the job fine.

I don't see the point wasting money on things I won't use enough. Hence why I use Virgin Media, because I can have broadband without paying for a landline! :D Based on that, I will continue to use them and negotiate a better deal every year :)

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Thanks for your reply - I see that makes sense. I will play around with it and see. So I put it in the TP link also. I see

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Yeah, basically you'l want to plug the OR modem and SH in modem mode into the tp-link WAN ports, then your wifi router into a LAN port on the tp-link, and then connect your pc etc to the wireless router as you normally would.

But yeah give it a go when you get it, I'm sure it'll make sense :)

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

It is already - thanks for the advice.

I was hoping to sort of drop a device to power this one as I am running out of sockets but I guess I won't be able to now :) Luckily they can all sit on a 4 way adapter than I will leave on like I do now. I assume that that ISP modem will still auth? Or do I need to put them into the TP-LINK?

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Yeah the ISP modems (OR and SHUB) will connect to the lines then the TP-Link will deal with the auth (like if you were using your own router with a FTTC service anyway) however I don't think you'll need to configure that in the tp-link for the VM connection as the SHUB will do all that, you can just connect it to the WAN port on the tp-link and it should just route the traffic through that way.

I've never actually done this however so maybe Igni can confirm what I'm saying is correct! :D

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Ah poo it.

I might just scrap the wireless (which will help stop me taking my IPAD to bed and getting bad sleep from staring at the screen before trying to sleep) and just have HG612 + SH2 into TPLINK and then into Imac.

I have in the past managed to have it connected to a tp-link normal AP and then had the wireless going too from the SH2 but I wont try that again lol

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Took them long enough, BT's been miles ahead for nearly half a decade now.

---------- Post added at 22:35 ---------- Previous post was at 22:33 ----------

Lots of cheapo routers can be modified to do the same for free, as can an old/cheap laptop, the latter of which will handle much faster connections and perform a lot better.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Yeah I was looking at using an old PC + pfsense to properly bond the 2 lines we have at work but a bit overkill for a home connection.

Got an example of a router than can do this?I'm running a TP-Link WDR4900 with DD-WRT right now, only has the 1 WAN port but if I could figure one of the LAN ports to accept another WAN connection it could probably do it....

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

If you get a way to do it let me know. I have 4 4 port AP's all tp link hanging round here - you can have one for nowt. All cable ofcourse.

a TP-Link WR1043ND is an example. it's got DD-WRT running on it also.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Googling it right now but it doesn't seem the router I have can do it even with dd-wrt unfortunately, considering getting one of those tp-link load balancing routers for work, let me know how it turns out when you get it please, I have to justify spending £100+ of our budget but I think failover will be more than an adequate reason.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

It's very easy to do, since all the ports on that router are actually exactly the same. The only way a WAN port exists at all, is by the operating system pretending as such in software, hence any port can be set to any type. Pretty much all consumer TP-Links are configured in this way.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

I will let you know for sure.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

I've already let him know for sure. Not sure what there is still to know.

Regardless if it's a corporate solution you are after and you need support (and are not willing to do it yourself) then paying extra for a "certified" solution is perfectly reasonable. If you want cheap or are willing to look after it yourself instead of relying on an outside company to point the finger at if it blows up, DIY is far superior.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Thanks for that, I'll definitely keep that in mind if I decide to get a second line in.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

I must have been lucky! Just rechecked my bills and certainly didn't have an increase in Oct 2013. I think if it had gone up that much last year I would have thrown the towel in and gone for PlusNet Fibre as I also have a BT phone line. Never went to NTL/VM landline phone because historically the service was dire in this area compared to BT.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Because you don't know everything? and because you can't possibly let him know about my experience until A. I've had it and B you are me

So leave it there.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

Nobody said anything about your experience, <deleted>.

Nor do I need to know everything to know how the switch works on a router which I've written and compiled a switch driver and operating system for myself.

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?
 

<deleted>

I'm just looking at it now as it just arrived. I am hoping it really is as plug and play as people say. I don't want anything fancy from it - just to do what it should

Re: Another price rise for stand alone customers?