Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

Having had our business broadband connection in for around six months now, I now feel its time to post up the experience so that others who come looking for VM business broadband connections can have a flavour of what its like.

Install location: Cardiff CF10 5xx
Service: Business Broadband (50M) with routed subnet option

Ordering, Lead Time and Install

The ordering process was handled by a sales rep and was reasonably straightforward, however the installation lead time was 30 days (about twice as much as an openreach install).

However once the 30 days were up the flexibility regarding the actual installation date was very commendable and much better than openreach, which was handy for us as we had to arrange IT department cover for the install.

Our install took two visits, as it seems our equipment room did have a VM cable coming in, but the amplifier chain feeding it had been disconnected to reduce interference. Once they were all in place everything came up fine.

Hardware, faults and Speeds

We were supplied with a business superhub (which I am led to believe is based on the superhub 1) at install, which was not too bad an unit to work with compared to other "supplied" business broadband routers (it knocked the socks off the ones that Plusnet Business and TalkTalk business supply). The interface is a little graphic heavy but is pretty straightforward and easy to deal with.

Most usual business grade features are available (remote access, IP/MAC filtering, firewall) but the DNS server settings are fixed.

The one big criticism of the business superhub is that it does not have a modem mode. If you want to use your own router without NAT then you must pay extra for a "routed subnet" option (not just the static IP option).

If you do need to use your own router (e.g. for VPN) I suggest you take the routed subnet option when ordering the service as it cannot be set up remotely.

Also, there is a slight "bug" in the superhub management interface. On the firewall config page, unless the firewall is turned on all options on that page are greyed out. However the superhub won't route VPN traffic unless PPTP and IPSec are enabled.

Therefore you have to turn the firewall on and enable IPSec and PPTP pass through, apply the changes and then turn the firewall back off again (applying changes once more). You will then find IPSec and PPTP passthrough enabled (with ticks in the boxes) but the options will be greyed out.

Our speed has been steady at 50mbit down and around 5mbit up and reasonably reliable. There have been some dropouts and incidents but we've always had VM engineers available either the same or the next day.

Costs and Customer Servce

The cost of our connection (business broadband + routed subnet) comes out at about £50 a month. This isn't that far away from a similar business broadband connection via FTTC or ADSL, but does have much better fault resolution times.

Customer services have been very good. All UK based call centres and knowledgeable and conscientious staff.

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

Nice review! I've always wondered how Virgin stacked up on the business end, not many people seem to talk about them much.

We probably would have went with them if they'd supplied our office. Annoyingly, all of the streets around us are cabled, just not this office which is a shame. We ended up going for a leased line because of it (FTTC hadn't rolled out here yet).

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

Our choice was either

1: Stick with the 4mbit ADSL feed we had (despite being slap in the middle of Cardiff bay, FTTC wasn't on the radar at all)

2: Buy in to the building's dual homed fibre service (which would have been nice but we'd have lost overall control of our network)

3: Get a 10meg leased line for the same annual cost as emplyoing me...

Therefore we went for VM and haven't looked back. If they covered any of our other sites I would seriously consider them.

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

Bloody hell, how little are you getting paid? We looked around various providers and got our 50/50 LL for about £600 per month. I could have got that lower as well but we needed to get the ball rolling. Few months after our install, someone called up offering 100/100 for £550 per month.

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

BT wanted the thick end of £2k a month if I remember correctly.

EDIT: it was £800 a month for 10/10

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

The above is interesting but me being me has always said that an ISP should only provide a service, which means a modem!

Anything else a business (or a residential customer) needs should be at their own expense and they support themselves.

You do not state how option 2 would have lost you overall control.

As regards 3, I'm sorry but if 2 had effected any control over the network, I'd've gone for 3.

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

Yeah, BT were by far the most expensive when we looked, Virgin wasn't much better. We ended up going through a diffierent group entirely, who ended up going through Virgin who ended up going Through BT. For half the price.


Because that's how it works. :sleep:

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

No they didn't go through BT, they went through Openreach.

Openreach supply BT Wholesale and any other provider because that is what they have to do by law.

Had successive governments not stripped away investment etc before privatisation this country would be in a much better state.

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

Sorry, you are right - they went through Openreach, not BT. Still it's surprising that they went through Virgin first who also quoted us nearly twice the price.

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

No need to apologise Kush. I knew that was what had happened. I also know how advanced this country could have been without government interference.

The first electronic computer was developed by this country and mobile phones as was fibre optic tech, the jet engine etc, you don't really want me to carry on do you.

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

While I agree that most ISP routers are utter pants, certainly not all domestic customers (and some businesses) would have the knowledge to buy a decent router, and it would be a support nightmare.

(Of course that wouldn't apply to any power user/business with a proper IT staff.)

Option 2 was to use a shared connection managed by the building owners. That would proven problematic with regards to our VPNs and would have meant ceeding control of our internet connection over to the building owners' IT department. The reason we'd kept out ADSL for so long was because we used the VPN features of the Netgear routers that were on the line to connect between our sites.

Also, our site is a residential activity centre which regularly works weekends, the building IT staff IIRC did not.

The problem with 3 is that while a LL is of course uncontested, your still talking £x00 a month for sub 10mbit download. For a sub 40 user office that's a fair chunk of our budget.

---------- Post added at 14:52 ---------- Previous post was at 14:46 ----------

With no competition there was no impetus for investment. Whatever the GPO deemed you deserved was what you got. Did you want a better/different service? Not their problem.

Privatisation and competition in the telecoms sector was the best thing that ever happened to it. I can get a business ADSL connection (line rental, BB and next business day fault repair) for £20+VAT. Could the same be said if BT were still the only supplier in town?

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

I'm not an expert and no doubt will get corrected, but I'm pretty sure Pip is talking about the privatisation of BT in the 1980's which led to them being the only provider and a private company (thus no incentive to invest in anything other than screwing people over). It's only in relatively recent years that the government stepped in to stop BT blatantly abusing that position. LLU being a prime example, the splitting of BT retail and Openreach being another but I believe pip's point was that had BT not been privatised in the first place, none of that would be necessary.

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

I wasn't sure what the point being made was either TBH. Investment in the phone system did indeed dry up during the mid-late 70s as the government had quite simply run out of money. Privatisation allowed BT to raise money on the markets to start rolling out System X and Y exchanges.

Remember though, that when BT were privatised in the 80s/90s the government granted licences to firms like Mercury and what became Virgin Media to roll out their own networks. OK, it did take until the 2000s for it all to bear fruit, but to be fair the UK's telecoms provision isn't all that bad compared to Europe and the US. Of course the far east has much more advanced networks, but then again they didn't start from the same point we did (i.e. a legacy of sticking copper up poles/in the ground).

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

Well that's why VM also offer fully managed services inclusive of an enterprise-grade Cisco router and a qualified engineer to set it up, configure it, and remotely manage it for you. It's really a tradeoff of the cost of employing someone in-house or the cost of buying a time-share of somebody else's staff to do the same thing.

Nonetheless I'm surprised you're so pleased with a service where you've had 'some dropouts and incidents' - implying multiple failures for which you had to call an engineer - over just 6 months. Even my BT consumer service has an average uptime of 4 months and aside from crap I've broken myself, has had no need for an engineer in 3 years.

Re: Virgin Media Business Broadband: A Review
 

There's only been one engineer visit since the service went in (duff superhub). Other dropouts have been very short in nature (1-2minutes) and quite widely spaced (weeks). Signal levels are bang on, traffic levels are not mental so I'm thinking our fibre media converters might be playing up or a similar (our side) issue.

Compared to the quality of the ADSL link available (a mile and a half of line) this is considerably better. Of course given the choice I'd always go VDSL/FTTC, but I will say that VM Business is definitely an option I would consider if it was more widely available.