Virgin Media launches discounted packages with 50GB caps

[mike86]

I was just building a custom bundle at http://store.virginmedia.com/build-your-bundle and noticed three new options for broadband:

Up to 50Mbps (50GB) - £25.25/month

Up to 100Mbps (50GB) - £30.25/month

Up to 200Mbps (50GB) - £38.25/month

It seems quite a strange offering, especially as a 200Mb user could burn through 50GB in 35 minutes. 50GB is lower than the UK monthly average, so I wonder who the target market is? Who downloads so little but needs 200Mb?

It also seems expensive, looks like you only save £5 a month.

[techguyone]

Odd, VM used to pride themself on having no Caps, especially pertinent 10 years or so ago when a lot of the ADSL offerings had pretty severe caps (Do they still?)

[Kabaal]

Possibly something in the works with caps along with increased uploads.

[Kushan]

It has been picked up here:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php...-packages.html

[v0id]

Ewww, bandwidth caps

[techguyone]

I can't see them taking off, the cap isn't terribly high in todays HD World, and the savings.... aren't really huge either - to be avoided.

[Kushan]

I don't think this is aimed at the kind of person who visits this forum. think of the kind of person that doesn't know what netflix is and probably still uses Outlook Express.

[mike86]

Originally Posted by Kushan

I don't think this is aimed at the kind of person who visits this forum. think of the kind of person that doesn't know what netflix is and probably still uses Outlook Express.

But that kind of person doesn't need 200Mb to download a few emails. These packages might have made more sense if the higher tiers had more allowance, eg 100Mb = 100GB, 200Mb = 200GB.

Crivvens, a cap thread. We haven't had one of these in at least a decade.

[Ignitionnet]

May see another one at some point if a plan of action can be formed to deal with ultra-heavy users without causing too much fallout.

[Horizon]

I hope this action by VM doesn't become the norm and all their packages/tiers become capped in some form.

Comcast brought in data caps in America, or at least trialling them in various places. It was 300gb per month, although this has now raised to 1tb. And you pay $10 dollars per 50gb if you go over the limit.

If VM go down this route and other UK ISPs don't, then its goodbye cable. Their tv service has always been crap, the tivo is useless and if their internet service does this, then its of no use to me,.

[techguyone]

Do the ADSL guys still have caps? (it's been 10 years since I last used them)

I'll have to try and figure out some way to see what my monthly usage might be (standard shub1 in modem mode on a 615 router)

[ileikcaek]

50GB cap and 200Mb/s they are having a right laugh asking for £38.25 for that lol

Packages like this are absolute insanity.

[Kushan]

As a heavy user, the idea of caps does bother me, but as long as there's an unlimited option I am ok with it also being an option. I wouldn't be too surprised if Virgin put caps on all the low tiers but left the higher tiers as unlimited.