When The 50MB Rollout Is Done - New Tier Thoughts

[UnReaL]

Virgin Media and their horrible policies, we pay a premium compared to other countries, yet there are limits, etc.

If anything, I'd rather pay more (knowing I'm always going to get ripped off anyway, unless someone else can come up with faster speeds), then have ANY TYPE of limits.

[keyholder]

Originally Posted by AbyssUnderground

That may be true but when you think about it if there is no STM, people won't wait to do their downloads until after 9pm and then hit the network with a load it can't handle. If there was no STM, people would download as and when they needed, meaning the network wouldn't have such a high peak time at 9pm when STM is no longer a threat. That in turn would reduce the actual need for STM as the peak load wouldn't be so high. I do understand what you mean though, for someone who downloads a lot lot more than average and downloads virtually constantly anyway, its not going to affect them in the slightest.

Pretty Much hit the nail on the head there. Maybe VM should try that for a month or so, then decide which is the best case of usage for thier customers & network performance. After all once people have download what they want when they want they are either going to run out of hd space, or get fed up of downloading random Junk for the hell of it.

Even when STM knocks off at 9pm, and people unrestrict thier torrent clients, the network is still alot faster than it is during the day.

As for the options id sooner they stay as they are even with STM, but with a little more uplaod speed & a little xtra cost to go with it

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by keyholder

Even when STM knocks off at 9pm, and people unrestrict thier torrent clients, the network is still alot faster than it is during the day.

Mmmm that doesn't seem to be the case for me, last time I checked, just for the hell of it it gave this, note the drop after 9pm. STM pushes peak time, 6.4Mbit on XL at 11:30PM?

Date 15/04/09 18:16:42
Speed Down 11305.46 Kbps ( 11 Mbps )
Speed Up 709.69 Kbps ( 0.7 Mbps )

Date 15/04/09 20:58:12
Speed Down 9625.04 Kbps ( 9.4 Mbps )
Speed Up 710.78 Kbps ( 0.7 Mbps )

Date 15/04/09 21:06:40
Speed Down 6314.83 Kbps ( 6.2 Mbps )
Speed Up 712.49 Kbps ( 0.7 Mbps )

Date 15/04/09 22:11:21
Speed Down 8812.84 Kbps ( 8.6 Mbps )
Speed Up 700.10 Kbps ( 0.7 Mbps )

Date 15/04/09 23:34:55
Speed Down 6438.88 Kbps ( 6.3 Mbps )
Speed Up 678.11 Kbps ( 0.7 Mbps )

[Rik]

Increased price but no caps or STM and performance range.

here.

[keyholder]

Originally Posted by Broadbandings

Mmmm that doesn't seem to be the case for me, last time I checked, just for the hell of it it gave this, note the drop after 9pm. STM pushes peak time, 6.4Mbit on XL at 11:30PM?

Date 15/04/09 18:16:42
Speed Down 11305.46 Kbps ( 11 Mbps )
Speed Up 709.69 Kbps ( 0.7 Mbps )

Date 15/04/09 20:58:12
Speed Down 9625.04 Kbps ( 9.4 Mbps )
Speed Up 710.78 Kbps ( 0.7 Mbps )

Date 15/04/09 21:06:40
Speed Down 6314.83 Kbps ( 6.2 Mbps )
Speed Up 712.49 Kbps ( 0.7 Mbps )

Date 15/04/09 22:11:21
Speed Down 8812.84 Kbps ( 8.6 Mbps )
Speed Up 700.10 Kbps ( 0.7 Mbps )

Date 15/04/09 23:34:55
Speed Down 6438.88 Kbps ( 6.3 Mbps )
Speed Up 678.11 Kbps ( 0.7 Mbps )

Ouch lol, that is bad. even at an hour apart roughly, your speed seems to get worse lol with the odd minor improvement. Maybe you have some heavy users on ur ubr.

Im / family are mainly effected by network more than anything, as the estate im in, the ubr wont be used hardly during the day, it only slows down mainly after 6pm once kids and parents are in from school &work, but come 9pm im peaking @ 1.7mb from the gamefiles site. Hitting 10 meg conection is ok, due to network allowances thoe.

Saying that thoe, I do notice a slow down in web page browsing during the night after 9pm. @ 00:30 hrs, i hit 1.2 meg steady download, yet web browsing is crap, i.e takes approx 5- 10 seconds to get a web page up.

personally, with current speeds available, id like to see something along the lines of...

2mb down - 1Mb up, no cap,but stm from 10.30 pm- 7 am. This would suit people who dont use the net alot but want a fast conection during the day wud suit familys, old people, Mobile i.t tech's

10Mb & down - 0.5Mb up. no cap, stm from 3pm - 4am. this would suit people working on a night shift allowing them to have a fast conection during the day. no 20 mb option due to timings on daytime bandwidth

10MB down - 4 Mb up - No cap, usal Stm, this would be for gamers, who want to game when and if they want. @ a slight price increase
20Meg down - 4Mb up 400GB cap, usal Stm times. @ £45 Pm
50Mb down - 10Mb up, 500Gb cap, stm also @ approx £65Pm
50Mb Down - 10Mb up No cap, Stm from 9am - 4pm , @ £100pm

All uploads would be uneffected by caps and Stm.

I personally think that this way all different walks of life people get what they want, if they want a faster line then they must pay.

It will also ease the congestion of the network also imo. With the huge amount of debt and lack of network upgrades going on VM need to rethink thier price war, and grow some balls and start acting and stop going soft on customers. In the end with a fast and reliable network they will come back probably with cheaper prices and higher bandwidth available

People want to abuse the network, download stupid amounts of data, then they need to pay, if they feel thats wrong, they need to change thier surffin habbits.

Waits for the angry but educational comments ....

[die5el]

Originally Posted by keyholder

People want to abuse the network, download stupid amounts of data, then they need to pay, if they feel thats wrong, they need to change thier surffin habbits.

They all ready pay to surf the net they dont need to change thier surfin habits at all.Its not the customers fault VM have totally oversold on thier network and the only way to keep things under control is to penalise people using it. There should be no stm on any of the tiers customers should be able to surf the net any time they want with out being hit with the stm vm like taking your money but dont dont like you using the product how would they feel if everyone said we will only pay you upto a certain amount because we only getting a upto certain speeds because the stm has kicked in.They brag about it being mother of all broadbands but what they dont tell you is you can only use it in the middle of the night when most people are sleeping ready for work the next morning. VM said the stm would only affect about 5% of users (lol) vm would stm everyone 23 hrs a day if they could and still charge top price.If they introduce anymore stm hours i wil say cya vm take your broadband and phone and shove it where the sun dont shine

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by keyholder

Ouch lol, that is bad. even at an hour apart roughly, your speed seems to get worse lol with the odd minor improvement. Maybe you have some heavy users on ur ubr.

Not really load is generally pretty uniform, there's just over 420 of us sharing 38Mbit and more than 50 of us are on 20Mbit with another more than 100 on 10 so it doesn't take much to overload it.

[scu11y69]

i pay for 50MB i want 50MB with NO STM if i was closer to the phone exchange id be paying 42pound for 2 lines for a 48MB download and 5MB upload
quote(Download as much as you like with no caps or limits* and take advantage of increased upload speed )

unlimited means unlimited VM take note

[chickendippers]

Originally Posted by scu11y69

i pay for 50MB i want 50MB with NO STM

Fork out the cash and get yourself a dedicated non-contended service then and be prepared to pay at least £100 for it!

With a monthly cap people still download during the traditional peak time, as for a lot of people that's the only time they can keep an eye on the progress.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by chickendippers

Fork out the cash and get yourself a dedicated non-contended service then and be prepared to pay at least £100 for it!

100GBP a day perhaps

With a monthly cap people still download during the traditional peak time, as for a lot of people that's the only time they can keep an eye on the progress

Yep but those people who care about the progress tend to be downloading low amounts anyway, you don't sit there watching 40GB of Blu Ray coming down, a game patch or service pack you might. That pattern of usage should be expected peak time traffic.

[Welshchris]

Originally Posted by scu11y69

i pay for 50MB i want 50MB with NO STM if i was closer to the phone exchange id be paying 42pound for 2 lines for a 48MB download and 5MB upload
quote(Download as much as you like with no caps or limits* and take advantage of increased upload speed )

unlimited means unlimited VM take note

i agree with what ur saying that u should be getting near to 50mb most of the time if thats what ur paying for and thats why STM is in place to ensure that u do and stop overloading of the network.

Im a 20mb user and thanks to my problems being sorted touch wood im now getting between 17 - 19mb all the time. My problems wernt down to over utilization tho they were SNR Problems which meant i was lucky to get between 4 - 9mb which was totally unacceptable. But what im trying to say i know of people who are on over utilized networks getting the same problem as i was, a friend rang me a few days ago asking me for links to things VM suggested to me to tweek his connection as he is on a 10mb connection and is getting around 1.9mb during the day time. Virgin say that signal is ok and the network isnt over utilized yet when he tries to use the net after midnight he gets about 9.7mb.

Option 1 would be my prefeence.

[keyholder]

Originally Posted by die5el

They all ready pay to surf the net they dont need to change thier surfin habits at all.Its not the customers fault VM have totally oversold on thier network and the only way to keep things under control is to penalise people using it. There should be no stm on any of the tiers customers should be able to surf the net any time they want with out being hit with the stm vm like taking your money but dont dont like you using the product how would they feel if everyone said we will only pay you upto a certain amount because we only getting a upto certain speeds because the stm has kicked in.They brag about it being mother of all broadbands but what they dont tell you is you can only use it in the middle of the night when most people are sleeping ready for work the next morning. VM said the stm would only affect about 5% of users (lol) vm would stm everyone 23 hrs a day if they could and still charge top price.If they introduce anymore stm hours i wil say cya vm take your broadband and phone and shove it where the sun dont shine

I know where yor coming from but i wouldnt say they have over sold the network,, Maybe they have in some area's, But the main factor here is to upgrade the network as best as possible imo. I agree there shouldnt be no stm, but if that were the case, everyone would jump on then band wagon and cripple the network more so than now.

Increase the price i say but then have no stm, but with a higher upload.

As you and many we would probably like to know who this 5% of people are, or where virgin get thier stat's from, probably fresh air, as even a family of say 3- 5 would hit thier stm pretty easy considering how many devices use the net today from home.

Virgin have to start realising that there are more and more failmys / people / students, using the net for all sorts of things now, i.e HDTV, bluray downlaods, bbc Iplayer, flciker,twitter, etc etc, upload is becoming more and more popular now a days, So in a way, STM does play a vital part, but in other ways it annoys the hell out of people.


Virgin need to stop having these crap trial areas with new STM times and start trials where there is no stm and no monthly usage cap and then see how that part of the network copes.

Personally i think virgin need to increase their prices, but with current network state they have no choice but to give better prices than most.

all good for competition thoe

[KingDaveRa]

I prefer traffic shaping personally. You can do some very nice things with shaping, and keep the great unwashed happy with their casual browsing, but also keep the serial downloaders happy with consistent service.

[frogstamper]

I've voted for option one, on my 20mb connection I'd be assured to get "20mb" on the 250gb monthly allowance, not just 30 mins of burst speeds then stm.