[Ignitionnet]

Just posted the below on the newsgroup virginmedia.feedback - I'd welcome the same from the good people here! Please do consider this was addressed to VM's people:

---Too Long Don't Read Begins---

I know that the 50Mbit so far isn't exactly flying off the shelves.

I have spoken with a few people on this both on and offline. A recurring theme is that 50Mbit is all well and good, but 1.5Mbit upload isn't enough to back up that 50Mbit.

Selling a service for multitasking, etc, and giving it an upload rate like that really isn't working for the kind of people I speak to.

Right now the service is a genitalia enlarger with no practical applications over the 20Mbit service at all. There is nothing that can be done with 50Mbit that can't with 20.

This would change with a 5Mbit upload on the 50Mbit service, it would immediately provide a differential.

Anyways this is the feedback newsgroup and that's my feedback - I may purchase it anyway simply because I won't be paying for it, for me it's expensible, but I see very little that justifies 50/1.5 over 20/768k and a vague promise of higher upload, accompanied by possible shaping or throttling isn't really a turn-on to people.

Dealing with your advetising from the website directly:

Regarding HD movies, your own FAQs quote this:

'an HD movie at 5GB (e.g. HD movies from Xbox Live marketplace)'

I can already download with my 20Mbit service at more than enough to cope with smooth streaming of H.264 / MP4 HD with 10Mbit to spare, so what?

Gaming - your advertising is nonsense. There is no game that uses enough upstream to stress 768kbps upstream and 1.5Mbit will not give better latency, its' only use is for hosting of games, and it will not improve the experience of the hoster in any event.

Sharing the connection - Well it won't make much difference to that either, I can have 3 PCs running here, 2 of them gaming and 1 browsing with no issues at all. Even when 1 machine is downloading at full line rate the others are ok. The only issue might be where 1 machine is running a P2P app, so have to cap its' upstream. The 50Mbit doesn't really offer much beyond a higher upstream cap that will be needed, let the P2P app run unfettered and it'll smack the connection in the face same as the 20/768k.

The 50Mbit is also even more asymmetrical than my 20Mbit, it's likely that someone downloading at full speed would cause problems with responsiveness in both directions as they would be loading up most of the upstream as well as the downstream, which doesn't happen on the 20Mbit as there's more left.

Downloading - Sure it'll run faster, however the average VM customer apparently uses 9GB a month, so 50Mbit will save them a little over an hour over the course of a month, assuming of course that all websites and downloads are at 50Mbit speeds, which most will not be. Web browsing will not really be affected by this and it tends to be subject to delays due to the chattiness of HTTP, latency and time taken to deal with requests on the server side.

Would be good to see a service that offers new things and kicks off the internet revolution rather than a PR revolution of having the biggest front line number. At least increasing the upload along with the download would:

Allow more multitasking - someone could host a game with 16+ players on it, or P2P at 4Mbit upstream without in any way affecting others using the connection.

Downloads at full speed would not stress the upstream part of the connection, allowing for true multitasking in both directions.

Allow customers to not only download content from the Internet dramatically faster, but also upload it dramatically faster - the difference between sending those pictures, that youtube video, those files to someone else at 5Mbit instead of 768kbit is much more noteable than occasionally downloading at 50Mbit instead of 20Mbit.

It could also be mercilessly spun by the PR people. Virgin the ISP for those who love social networking, tell the world what you're up to, video conference with confidence, etc, etc, etc.

IMHO there is more of a market, and more of a case for 5Mbit upstream broadband than there is for 50Mbit downstream broadband, the sales of the 50Mbit product so far would seem to prove my point. Even Samuel L Jackson's magic hasn't been too potent yet.

If Comcast, UPC, Cablevision, JCom, Comheim, etc can with more limited technology in some cases do it I'm sure VM could. Comheim even offer over cable 2/2Mbit, and 10/10Mbit for a small extra cost, right up to 50/10Mbit.

The commercial case is a simple one - ask Bethere how many of their customers take their Pro package. The benefits of that pack are a static IP address, oh and an increase of maximum upstream from 1.3 to 2.5Mbit, it costs 4GBP/month. People *will* pay for the extra upstream, even if as in the case of DSL it costs them downstream.

Thanks for reading my excessively long posting.

BB