New VM Customer

[ArcticMatt]

Hi there,

New to this site and VM. Had a contract with them just over two weeks and judging by some of the other threads I've read, and my own experience so far, wished I hadn't!

I'm doing short term contract work in the Bournemouth area and have rented a flat off a friend as my own place is in London.

Anyway, the flat is in the BH8 area of Bournemouth and with no SKY dish allowed on the building and the need to get a phone line anyway I thought I'd go for Virgin.

I have a friend who lives no more than 2 miles from the flat who is on the 20mb package and he gets a constant 16 - 17mb, hence my decision to go with VM.

Unfortunately, 8 phone calls and 2 technicians later, I'm barely getting a tenth of the 20mb package I'm supposed to.

I've used speedtest.net and giganews.com and both come back with similar results. Best it's been is 2.5 mb and the worst is 46k!!! Yes, worse than dial-up!

Now VM say they have tested the modem and it's receiving 20mb bla bla bla, maybe they're right but that would mean there was a problem with my laptop. But I know this can't be true as when I'm in London with the same laptop, I'm getting the speed I'm supposed to from BT.

This is a real pain as I'm into my gaming and downloading!

The 2 technicians that have come out have said it's something to do with the UBR in the area. Does anyone know 1. What that means?! and 2. Was that was just a fob off by the technician? and finally 3. Anyone else in the same area as me experiencing the same problems?

Sorry that was a bit long winded, was just nice to get it off my chest!!

Cheers

[Mick Fisher]

UBR = Universal Broadband Router.
In a lot of areas VM BB is rediculously oversubscribed.
Not much you can do if this is affecting you except downgrade or move to ADSL.
The classic test is, can you get full speed between 02.00 - 06.00 and does it go pearshaped from 16.00.

[ArcticMatt]

Thanks for that Mick, will give that a go.

In the meantime, I've downgraded to the 4mb package. As I've never got 4mb there I thought I could keep an eye on it and if it does reach those heady heights it probably means the work has been done and I can bump it up to 10/20mb again.

Cheers

[bus_ter]

How are you connecting your laptop to the modem?

If you are using USB try and network cable instead. If you're using a router or similar in the middle try bypassing that and connecting directly to the modem. If your modem is showing 20MBit then your laptop should be too.

[ArcticMatt]

Connecting router to modem via ethernet

Connecting to router via wireless.

I've run speed checks when wireless and with Laptop connected to modem via ethernet and both give same results.