ISP Virgin Media UK to Launch Surprise 600Mbps Broadband Tier

[oscarandjo]

Originally Posted by Kushan

£70 a month is a steal for that deal. No brand loyalty, go where your wallet takes you.

Toob is providing 900Mbps for £25/month in Southampton, I can't wait for them to lay the fibre on my road soon!

[Kushan]

That's also a stonking deal. Though I suspect not a sustainable one, it's good to have competition!

I feel as though history is repeating itself with all the various small fibre providers laying fibre all over the country. Not too dissimilar to what happened with cable originally, it seems inevitable that they'll start merging and buying each other out.

I wish they would do it around here.

We have FTTC (both VM & BT I believe), just cant get it to the house.

[oscarandjo]

Originally Posted by Kushan

That's also a stonking deal. Though I suspect not a sustainable one, it's good to have competition!

I feel as though history is repeating itself with all the various small fibre providers laying fibre all over the country. Not too dissimilar to what happened with cable originally, it seems inevitable that they'll start merging and buying each other out.

Yes, I did feel that too. I'm sure it's just a temporary thing while they get their name out there and they'll put the prices up.

Whatever happens, I'm just happy the fibre is being laid. We're so behind the rest of Europe in the FTTH game.

It's funny how as soon as Toob announce they're building a Gigabit Fiber broadband company in Southampton, Virgin announce that Southampton will be one of the first cities in the UK to get Virgin's 1000Mbps.

Virgin Media have publicly vowed to "destroy" Toob, but I wonder how they'll try to compete. Their prices for comparable internet are so much more expensive than Toob.

[fizzyade]

Anybody heard any rumours about Voom? Speed upgrades? DOCSIS 3.1? New business hub?

I’m currently on the 500Mbit package, but a boost in upload speed would be great for transferring data back to the office, I work on signal processing software (for radar) so often up transferring large amounts of raw quadrature data and processed data back and forth, although I try to work remotely via RDP (as my spectrum analyser and RF hardware is there) sometimes I end up doing development locally for convenience/speed.

[Martin_D]

Don’t expect anything on the upstream side for a long time just look at Comcast in the US they’re good to look at to see what virgin will be doing in about a year’s time

[fizzyade]

Originally Posted by Martin_D

Don’t expect anything on the upstream side for a long time just look at Comcast in the US they’re good to look at to see what virgin will be doing in about a year’s time

The residential 1Gbit has 50Mbit upload though doesn’t it? I’d settle for that, that’s 40% faster than what I get on 500Mbit. I’m just a bit surprised that they haven’t yet released a 1G business product for parity with the residential service.

[Martin_D]

Originally Posted by fizzyade

The residential 1Gbit has 50Mbit upload though doesn’t it? I’d settle for that, that’s 40% faster than what I get on 500Mbit. I’m just a bit surprised that they haven’t yet released a 1G business product for parity with the residential service.

Yes that’s correct 1Gbps / 50Mbps for residential

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by fizzyade

The residential 1Gbit has 50Mbit upload though doesn’t it? I’d settle for that, that’s 40% faster than what I get on 500Mbit. I’m just a bit surprised that they haven’t yet released a 1G business product for parity with the residential service.

I imagine that's down to the 1gig service using 3.1 stuff, which is still relatively new to Virgin. They probably want to roll it out and work out all the various kinks before making a business product out of it.

[Jayster]

Originally Posted by fizzyade

Anybody heard any rumours about Voom? Speed upgrades? DOCSIS 3.1? New business hub?

I’m currently on the 500Mbit package, but a boost in upload speed would be great for transferring data back to the office, I work on signal processing software (for radar) so often up transferring large amounts of raw quadrature data and processed data back and forth, although I try to work remotely via RDP (as my spectrum analyser and RF hardware is there) sometimes I end up doing development locally for convenience/speed.

Is BT FTTP available to you?

[Travelstar]

Originally Posted by Paul

I'm interested in an upload increase, 350 > 500 (or 600) is not really worth paying more.

Likewise. With the 350M and 500M tiers retaining the 35M upload, there is zero incentive for me to switch, especially with an 18 month contract. The reality is that should we get an FTTP provider open up around here, I will get rid of VM in a heartbeat.

Having had G.Network for almost a year before our recent move, a real 1G up/down connection made me realise just how snappy a real gigabit connection based on pure fibre is. With no jitter, and super low latency, HFC is definitely not the future.

[pip08456]

Virgin Media UK Refresh Bundles and Add 600Mbps Broadband UPDATE2

https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.ph...broadband.html

[Lee]

So the website doesn't list the M350 any more, so what happens to people on that tier?

My contract with VM has expired, so tried contacting them yesterday to ask about upping to the M500 at the £42/mo price. I was told this isn't possible, I can only have a 30 day rolling contract at £62/mo...

[Kushan]

Try calling them again at the start of next month. I believe retentions get various credits, etc. reset at the start of the month.

[Travelstar]

Originally Posted by Kushan

That's also a stonking deal. Though I suspect not a sustainable one, it's good to have competition!

I feel as though history is repeating itself with all the various small fibre providers laying fibre all over the country. Not too dissimilar to what happened with cable originally, it seems inevitable that they'll start merging and buying each other out.

100% agree. That's very clearly on the cards, especially if you look up whom some of the investors are in these various outfits.