Quote:
Originally Posted by General Maximus
no isp plans for every user to be using their connection 24/7 and that type of service is called an uncontended connection and you are guaranteed the speed you subscribe to. Like I said earlier, you can plan for a 40% subscription rate in your area (and say other people are going to BT, Talk Talk etc) and then say people are at work/school/holiday/day out etc etc so at any one time we are going to have x amount of people consuming x amount of bandwidth. Obviously it is a very generalised approach and doesn't take into account certain variables which is why you always have problems in student areas in large cities. A perfect example is my situation and yours as complete opposites to the norm. Because you are in a new housing estate I am going to make several assumptions:
1) houses have been purchased by young couples who are looking for their first home
2) houses have been purchased by young couples with children who are looking for something new in a family orientated neighbourhood where they know it is going to be safe
3) there aren't going to be any old couple at all as they are happy in their current homes with what they know and don't want anything new
Bearing those assumptions in mind I can assume that literally every single home on your estate is connected to the internet and not only that, usage is above average due to the age range of population. Not only will it be a "pc for the occasional email", it will be games consoles, phones, tablets, tvs etc. You are at literal extreme of the range for a) the % of connected properties and b) the usage per property.
Now the reason why I went through all that is to put it perspective for you. I live in a very affluent and gorgeous area of Lincoln and the housing estate I live is primarily occupied by old fuddy duddys who like to spend all their time gardening and knitting or if they are younger people they have very busy full time jobs so they can afford the houses and aren't at home a lot. In comparison to the above generalisations I made, a) I am in a very low subscribed area and b) usage per household (for the few that are connected) is minimal due to the age of the occupiers. This is why I have been saying for years that the network in my area is mint and I have no problem getting full speed 24/7.
I am not trying to be a dick but I am trying to explain the two extremes. I imagine there are very few areas which are like yours or mine and most lie in the middle. VM can't fix anything until it is broken and without everyone ringing up and complaining they do do their own monitoring of the network and will notice a massive spike in utilisation in your area. It will get fixed but the work involved is massive and will take a year like I said earlier. The best thing you can do at the moment if you need the speed is to move to BT/Openreach because the way their network is designed and works is completely different to VM. The problem you are going to have is the max you are going to get is 76mbits which is far short than your 300mbits with VM but far more than the current 2mbits which you are achieving. You can sign up to a 12 month contract and after a year speak to some of your neighbours and see if VM have got any better. Like one of the users has said above, once a utilisation fault has been raised there is a fault reference for it and VM will be making a plan to fix it even if it does get delayed and take many many months.
everybody gets a fraction of their speed because their isn't enough juice to go around. Ironically though I notice that you have got the Sky logo as your avatar. Sky use Openreach and if you have got Sky tv you should give them a ring and see what deal they will do you for tv, phone + bb. You will be a million times better off than staying with VM.
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Thanks again.
I believe that your assumptions are correct and explain a lot when thinking about it. I guess, we've just moved from an area similar to where you are living now in that the population of elderly people was fairly high and gardening was the hobby of choice. Like yourself, I've been singing VMs praises when I comes to internet for years prior to moving into our new home.
I've been looking into other ISPs today and VM is the only Fibre option here unfortunately so I think it's going to be a case of playing the waiting game while VM put a plan in place to relive this congestion. On the plus side, I'm seeing an improvement this evening and currently testing 28Mbps.... Nothing great but way better than before.
You didn't sound like a dick at all either. Quite the opposite in fact, a really informative post. Thanks again!