It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

Rather than tag this to the end of one of the "VM are sooo slow" threads, I thought this was significant enough to deserve its own thread.

According to Broadband.co.uk, VM have now overtaken Be and O2 as being consistently the fastest Broadband provider across all the speedtests performed by them, across every period of day or night.

link:
http://www.sourcewire.com/releases/r...hp?relid=42178

With the 4-10Mb upgrade now completed, 50Mb about to start rolling out, along with the 2-4Mb upgrade commencing in 2009 it looks like clear blue water may be opening up in the battle for service differentiation.

Now they just need to get analogue TV turned off so they can roll out channel bonding to increase upload speeds and there won't be anybody who can catch them.

About time too!

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

Coggy trots off for some popcorn...back soon.;)

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

Yea, they are the fastest, for around 20 Minutes.

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

Could too see but a few points, since when is there a upgrade from 2-4mb plus channel bonding on upstream may not be true as its has been said the modem for 50Mb dont support channel bonding on the upstream and cant be upgraded via firmware so you need to do some research before you post

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

I'd take that with a pinch of salt.. I am on Be, and the speed test on the site mentioned in that article measured my speed at 8Mbps. I average between 14 and 18 on other sites, and can download from Giganews at 18 to 20 Mbps..

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

Well of course they will be the fastest once fully developed,its been designed specifically for faster speeds. Also non-cable internet from virgin/ntl-telewest business on some BTexchanges runs down a LLU
network,most of them being shared with Cable and Wireless's LLU network which supplies pipex-Bulldog customers offering good speeds.

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

Didn't take long for the doomsayers did it...?

Don't need to do much research, Darthlinux, as I work for VM and know these to be facts. How about we revisit this conversation in Q3/Q4 of 2009?


Stuart, there are bound to be individual differences, as there will be on every ISPs network, but the point is, when compared across thousands of speed tests a day (and there are likely to be many more tests by VM customers than most others), VMs speed is found to be fastest on average.

Don't know about you but if I were looking for a fast Broadband provider I wouldn't deliberately exclude the provider shown to be fastest on average.

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

Has the a modem been officially picked? Or are Virgin Media still mulling about which one to get?

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

Actually, I was questioning the accuracy of the speed tester, based upon the fact that it under reported my speed by well over half. And I am not basing that on the advertised speed. I am basing that on the speed I actually get.

Web based speedtesters are notoriously inaccurate (look at the variety of results from Speedtest.net for proof) and can be affected by many factors.

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

Those results are meaningless because they are not broken down into tier levels. The average speed depends on what percentage of subscribers are on the 2,10 or 20Mbps tiers. If that speed test shows 10Mbps download, then that is excellent for a 10Mbps tier, but pretty miserable for a 20Mbps tier.

A more meaninful test would be to show what pecentage of the advertised speed you are achieving.

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

The result is meaningless. As noted above, we don't know how many are on which tariff. Virgin do have more high bandwidth subscribers than any other ISP (BT included, as BT don't go higher than 8 meg), Virgin are also the only ISP who are able (in theory) to offer speeds higher than 8 meg to around half the country.

The amount of 20 meg subscribers who are getting even half the speed they pay for will skew the results in Virgin's favour. A much fairer test would include average speeds for each tier, so we can judge for ourselves just how how likely we are to get the service we would pay an ISP for.

I am not setting out to criticise Virgin. Far from it. I have a V+ and apart from the excessive reboots needed, and a few niggles, I am perfectly happy with it. I was also a broadband customer for years, and was generally happy with that service.

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

Certainly not fastest here.

20 meg connection that's normally less than 2 meg and is thrashed daily by Ukonlines 8 meg connection.

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

One website, that I might add I've never heard of much less used having used broadband since 2000, does not anything 'official' make.

Their speedtest sucks by the way.

broadband.co.uk

Download speed : 6.53Mbps
Upload speed : 0.68Mbps

http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/

Download Speed: 13756 kbps (1719.5 KB/sec ) Upload Speed: 732 kbps (91.5 KB/sec )

Working for VM means nothing, care to give your job title Pogo, so that we can at least assess if you're likely to be able to confirm anything you say with any sort of clarity?

Unless you're pretty senior or working actively on the projects in question there's no way you'll know what's going on with them.

Incidentally I'm not interested in revisiting discussions on bonded upstreams on the 50Mbit product in Q3/4 2009, that it's being released with 1.5Mbit is enough of a slap to be honest. That's way below what's achievable without bonded upstreams, however as your collegue Broadbandbug mentioned the VM cable network can't handle offering higher speeds without bonding as it's not in good enough condition.

Maybe the people holding the purse strings also believed the hype about fibre optic broadband and forgot the copper needed upgrading.

EDIT...

Out of interest what does switching off analogue TV, which is, obviously downstream, have to do with opening up bandwidth upstream, beyond elimination of CPD and replacement with intermodulatory products? CPD shouldn't really be a major issue on a properly maintained network anyway? Switching off analogue won't increase availability of upstream bandwidth, those areas with poor networks still stuck at 30MHz subsplits will remain so, it will possibly allow higher order modulation which is not relevant to bonding.

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

You work for Virgin in what capacity Tech Support , Customer Services or whatever, you can give us an idea of why you think you have knowledge of these things you posted.

Plus 10mb on a Staff Package is rather unusual or are you from an associated company.;)

Re: It's Official...VM are the fastest!
 

In response to the doomsayers.

Like I said Cable Broadband is still technically under construction and i'm sorry but you'll just have to wait a little longer, try asking for 20MB speed from BT,Tiscali,Sky or Orange, you won't get any faster 3MB!!!

However, what Virgin Media need to focus on is City of Westminster in London, most of this area is business orientated and businesses need fast internet! NTL Telewest Business could offer superfast broadband, but is being neglected, I'm aware that offering Digital TV is a problem in this area, but Cable Broadband isn't and the towns and streets which would benefit would be:

Mayfair
Paddington
Marylebolne
Lisson Grove
Oxford Street
Charing Cross
Victoria (Westminster part)
Trafalgar Square
Strand
Soho
Piccadilly
Harley Street
Cleveland Street(Camden side is covered by ex-Telewest)
Regent Street
Wardour Street
Wimpole Street
Marble Arch
New/Bond Street
Covent Garden
Baker Street
St Johns Wood
Edgware Road
Sussex Gardens
Queensway
Maida Vale
Warwick Avenue
Queens Park

I'm also aware that Dolphin Square is completely upgraded and all 3 services are available there.