[cookdn]

Stephen, ccarmock, thanks for your quick replies.

Originally Posted by Stephen

Have you checked the full info available here?

http://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk...dband_1211.pdf

Costs aren't mentioned on there but its best to call the sales team as they can advise you best as the prices vary depending on what you want and the contract length.

Sales 0800 052 0845

Thanks for that. The info in the PDF seems to be much the same as the website, as you suggest calling the business sales team is probably the best thing.

Originally Posted by ccarmock

[....] you are not segmented from the consumer network - the very same infrastructure that supplies the consumer service supplies the business service. I have been subject to slow performance at times when the network is congested, however on the whole I am very pleased and get close to the 10 Mb/s I expect.

Fault calls are handled by a UK team 24 hours a day. They are excellent - will not close a fault call until you are happy for them to do so and respond very quickly. My experience is that they usually have fixed the problem well within the 24 hours mentioned.

I believe fix times are now within 24 hours.

On balance fault reporting and fix times are more important than potential congestion. A dead connection over the weekend when I am studying means that I would have to spend the weekend at the office. Ok, if I get a fault on a Friday that requires an engineer visit it is unlikely that it would be fixed before Monday, but at least it would be limited and I wouldn't be spending every evening the following week at the office too. :-)

Originally Posted by ccarmock

The older 10 & 20 MB/s services are provided (or were provided0 using a standard cable modem, however the newer 30 & 50 Mb/s services are provided by a Superhub, running business firmware. I understand this does not currently offer modem mode.

I also needed my router downstream of that to have a publicly routable fixed IP address, so decided to take the 5 static IP option which will allow me to do that.

This seems to be corroborated by this thread:

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12...o-draytek.html

However this bumps the cost up by £10/month (ex vat I assume) for the necessary /29 IP address block.

Originally Posted by ccarmock

The fixed IPs are extra cost - £5 for a single fixed address, £10 for 6 and £15 for 14 IP addresses. Costs are per month.

While a block of static IP addresses would be nice, they are not necessary. I wonder if 'modem mode' would ever be implemented in the Business Hub firmware or whether Virgin assume/hope that businesses needing this functionality are prepared to pay the additional monthly cost?

Best regards
David