Virgin rapped on broadband speeds

[Central]

Originally Posted by LostintheNW

Its about time they were pulled again, they are selling their service still as unlimited when its clearly not, anyone who achieves near maximum speed is lucky or is sleeping with Richard Branson, as most people don't seem to get more than a 1/4 of what they are paying for and with STM its even less.

I still dont get why they can say they have fibre optic broadband as try as I might I really can't see any fibre optic cable in my house from VM - and seeing as the cable was rammed in back when Nynex had the franchise in this area it was fibre then and hasn't been changed this is another area they need pulling on as its fibre to the cabinet and I don't live in one of those.

The ASA need to seriously fine companies tho for anything like this as its the only way it will make money grabbing theives like VM pay any attention, its like a little kid, the more you shout and say no no don't do it its naughty and if you do it again we will put you in your room, the more they do it as they know a threat is all it is with no hope of ever being carried out.

It is unlimited. They dont stop you downloading how much you like. Just at a slower speed.

[Wicked_and_Crazy]

Originally Posted by Magilla

Until you hit the STM limit (after less than an hours use), then you're on 1Mb, which is the crux of BT's argument.

Depends on your usage in that hour. For the "majority" its not an issue

[h3llb1tch]

Originally Posted by Be*

It is unlimited. They dont stop you downloading how much you like. Just at a slower speed.

During STM hours, you are limited as to how much you can download.
If you exceed that limit, your speed is then limited to one quarter of what you pay for.
Now which part of that is unlimited exactly ?

[Angry@VMedia]

Originally Posted by LaineY

Iv noticed a significant difference with the network in edinburgh the past few months. i have the feeling theres been some upgrades done rather than struggling to meet 20mb from newsgroups iv now saw it download at 24 mb a second solid for quite some time now. i used to work for tech support and loved it when it was blueyonder. The old days were definatly the best time for this company.. now they have a big head and a severe lack of knowing what the customer wants.

Mabey they should have IQ tested people before they installed cable into peoples homes. atleast the network would have had less people on it.

Id be happy to pay 50 quid a month if it was a SOLID guarenteed connection with no cappage etc..

I recon they need to give customers that option. or atleast have the option for customers to phone up and say "look il pay 50 quid a month if u give me no cappage and no restrictions" and have some sort of a dedicated route or something for it.

BUT the thing is (and i know its been said & done before, but this IS relevant!) they are already selling their broadband as "unlimited" even though it'd take a retarded pea to see right through that lie, why should anyone have to pay more (or an extra premium) for what they are advertising?

If they cannot provide UNLIMITED broadband (and we all know they CANNOT) why oh why are they still being allowed to sell & advertise it as UNLIMITED??

Some might counter with "well they dont cut your connection when you go over x amount of MB's or GB's" the answer to that is, no they dont do that, but they DO LIMIT your speed, which means that they have limited what you can download/upload, as if they didnt have this stupid STM business, then say I wanted to download 100GB (I hardly do this in 2 months yet alone a day, but will use this for my example) of music & films in 1 day, I'd be chugging along, when suddenly BLAM!!! internet speed is CUT DOWN to a lower speed, thus not only limiting my speeds, but also limiting how much I can download..

Now argue all you want, but the facts are there, bold as brass, Virgin Media ARE LIMITING my speed, no if's, no buts' they ARE doing this, so its a bit hippocritical of them (not to mention falsely advertising a lie) to be doing this.

Another example of how Virgin Media can get away with breaking the law AND making themselves look good in the process!!

[AbyssUnderground]

Another word that is being wrongly used. UNLIMITED. Nothing can ever be 100% Unlimited. In the case of broadband it should be UNMETERED not unlimited. You always see data centers selling servers with unmetered bandwidth, not unlimited, don't you? Why should broadband be any different? It is after all the same thing; a connection to the web.

Too bad it only mentions "peak hours" STM and not the * all day * STM.

So VM should be made to advertise the fact you cannot download the video out of peak hours either.

[lsproc]

Be* is right. It is unlimited. There is no limit to how much you can download. After a certain threshold you will get STMed, but there no limit (as far as we know) where you get a letter saying "your disconnected and charged an extra £40 for downloading too much), which some ISPs with download caps do.

[chickendippers]

Originally Posted by LaineY

Id be happy to pay 50 quid a month if it was a SOLID guarenteed connection with no cappage etc..

I recon they need to give customers that option. or atleast have the option for customers to phone up and say "look il pay 50 quid a month if u give me no cappage and no restrictions" and have some sort of a dedicated route or something for it.

Check out business broadband services.

Originally Posted by lsproc

Be* is right. It is unlimited. There is no limit to how much you can download. After a certain threshold you will get STMed, but there no limit (as far as we know) where you get a letter saying "your disconnected and charged an extra £40 for downloading too much), which some ISPs with download caps do.

There is still a physical limit to the amount of data that can be transferred simultaneously across Be*'s network.

[tweetypie/8]

Originally Posted by cimt

Thing is though, BT complain about VM not making things clearer but the average internet user who doesn't know these things get conned out of money. I mean when you see ADSL broadband adverts, do they make a point to say that the distance you live from the exchange effects your speed? Do they say what your area can achieve? Nope... Also, I don't see how BT can complain against VM when they were the ones going behind the clients backs and not telling them they were using Phorm.

Does that go with the thread?

well said.

[jaycee]

BT are right, but they also shouldn't be throwing stones - ADSL is a great big hack, and they know it full well, and yet they and other ADSL ISP's keep ripping customers off with the "Up to" thing.

[Gary L]

What's the difference between Be* and Virgin Media?

Be* don't have any limits for you to hit before you get restricted or STMd.
Be* don't tell lies to get customers, Virgin have 9 warnings for doing this from the ASA

[hoggie]

Originally Posted by Toto

Yes it goes with the thread.

It made breakfast news in the finance clip, with the advert on full display. The editor from a PC magazine said that VM and BT were as bad as each other, which I think most would agree.

Agree

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by jaycee

BT are right, but they also shouldn't be throwing stones - ADSL is a great big hack, and they know it full well, and yet they and other ADSL ISP's keep ripping customers off with the "Up to" thing.

Virgin Media use the term "Up to" and they say it doesn't matter how far you live away from the exchange.

[cimt]

Originally Posted by Gary L

Virgin Media use the term "Up to" and they say it doesn't matter how far you live away from the exchange.

I live 2944m away from my local exchange. With VM I can get a good solid 8 - 9Mb+ on my 10Mb connection, now if I went to ADSL I wouldn't get more than 1.5Mb on ADSL and more than 2Mb on ADSL2...

So in a sense, Virgin are right in some cases. I think just like BT phone lines it depends on the condition of the lines? I mean some of these lines must of been down for years.

[jaycee]

As I keep saying, ADSL is a rotten hack. Unshielded untwisted copper pair (aluminium in some cases!) was not designed to carry high frequency, high bandwidth signals. It's a miracle it works at all. So at least BT/ADSL ISP's have some justifiable reason for the Up To speeds. It is still not right that they do not make this clear in advertising though!

Virgin however, have NO EXCUSE. The HFC/Fiber network *was* designed for high bandwidth. Virgin's problem is lack of capacity at UBR's and GSR's due to lack of investment in the network. Rather than invest this money, Virgin have figured out that they can put "Up to" and add usage caps, because this is what ADSL is doing and there is no other alternative. What's most annoying is that unlike BT, who have to invest in 21CN, completely new tech, Virgin do not as the existing fiber and HFC network is capable of plenty of bandwidth! They don't even have to upgrade to DOCSIS 3.0 yet as 1.1 is capable of running all exisitng services except for the proposed 50Mbit one.

Be dont have usage limits in place, but I can't help feel they will have to add them at some point as their customer base grows - it will either be that or increase the price, which would make people leave. Unfortunately, transit costs money per gigabyte.