Virgin Media to raise broadband and phone prices in Feb 2015

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

The difference being as you told us your parents were on a long line , the estimates given now have to fall within the range ie 10-15mb or your allowed to cancel without penalty.

My line on ADSL was around 8-10mb and fault free we only upgraded due to the fact more of us were using the internet at once , if my line was running at nearer 15mb I'd have never upgraded to fibre at least short term.

I can understand his reluctance. ADSL is notoriously flaky. I think you got lucky with your line. I had an ADSL line that occasionally sync'd at the full 24Mbit as the exchange was right next to my house, yet we had no end of issues with it from constant drop outs every few weeks to needing to reboot the BeBox nearly daily. Buying our own decent ADSL router helped but the line itself was always dodgy, it'd be fine for weeks then suddenly you'd get a load of noise on it and your sync rate would plummet along with constant disconnections.

That would cue the rigmaorole of phoning the ISP, going through the usual BS diagnostics to prove that, yes, the microfilter was changed, yes, we used the original equipment provided, yes we changed the cabling, etc. until they'd reluctantly book an Openreach engineer and then you're faced with the threat of being charged if he decides there's no fault there (Which one tried to do and we had to fight). Then, they'd finally admit there was a problem and disconnect us immediately while we waited about a week for them to fix something in the exchange. Fun.

So yeah, **** ADSL.

[muppetman11]

A bad experience scars you for life doesn't it , I had a similar experience with VM a few years back.

Regular outages both TV and BB , months and months of dire internet speeds , latency issues etc with constant fix dates what's always passed with no resolution so I suppose a stable 8-10 mb line on ADSL was a luxury for me , to balance it though my parents are only able to receive around 2mb via ADSL and have a cable connection what's excellent.

[Ignitionnet]

Most of us use more bandwidth than we used to. This bandwidth and the hardware serving it has to be paid for. The broadband market is very competitive at retail level so all operators stash price increases elsewhere if at all possible.

The obvious solution to this is to look elsewhere if unhappy.

---------- Post added at 12:11 ---------- Previous post was at 12:08 ----------

Originally Posted by Kushan

I can understand his reluctance. ADSL is notoriously flaky.

<Snip>

So yeah, **** ADSL.

Bad experience and not typical. Stability is the one thing I found ADSL superior to cable for. Every time I've had cable I've had at least a few days a year of downtime. ADSL my downtime per year was measured as a matter of hours. At one time I cancelled 50Mb VM and moved to 15Mb ADSL as VM was flaky.

YMMV. xDSL is actually fundamentally a more stable technology than cable as it can adapt to line conditions and impairments. Both are hosed however if the access network is very bad.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Bad experience and not typical. Stability is the one thing I found ADSL superior to cable for. Every time I've had cable I've had at least a few days a year of downtime. ADSL my downtime per year was measured as a matter of hours. At one time I cancelled 50Mb VM and moved to 15Mb ADSL as VM was flaky.

I do agree that bad experiences can mar your feelings towards a technology and lord knows mine was horrific enough. I've had my fair share of VM issues as well, it's just a case of different experiences which I believe is ultimately why Superblade7 doesn't want to go near ADSL again (Then again he might have entirely different reasons).

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

YMMV. xDSL is actually fundamentally a more stable technology than cable as it can adapt to line conditions and impairments. Both are hosed however if the access network is very bad.

I can't agree with this, though. I wouldn't say either technology is "Fundamentally" more stable than the other. Cable/DOCSIS adapts to line conditions in much the same way ADSL does, we just don't see a "Sync" rate that declines, instead we see things like QAM dropping to QPSK and the like. I would even argue that the shielded copper from a cable network is less prone to issues than unshielded copper (or the dreaded aluminium) DSL uses. Virgin seems to have a history of issues but I think that's less to do with the technology and more to do with the lack of investment and maintenance on the network itself.

One thing I will say, though, that very much works in Virgin's favour - it's a lot easier to get a fault tech out for a Virgin fault than it is for a BT fault.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Kushan

Cable/DOCSIS adapts to line conditions in much the same way ADSL does, we just don't see a "Sync" rate that declines, instead we see things like QAM dropping to QPSK and the like.

When was the last time your downstream channels dropped to 64QAM?

If you were to say have a huge burst of noise in the middle of an upstream channel that produced a negative SNR would it be able to adapt?

A single narrowband burst of noise will cause a loss of 50% of the capacity of an upstream channel. On xDSL this would be a far smaller effect as it uses DMT.

Your 'sync rate' declines it just isn't displayed. The added bonus is of course that impediments anywhere on the node can cause it to drop as, while you do have coax not twisted pair, you are also on a shared access segment with however many other hundred people.

Cable has its own set of issues. xDSL was built to run on unshielded twisted pairs in an unpleasant environment. Cable relies on being a closed network with constant maintenance to remove ingress.

[Superblade7]

Originally Posted by muppetman11

I don't understand your reluctance if you only do small amounts of internet browsing 10-15mb is more than enough , in fact its more than enough for Sky On Demand usage also.

Having had excellent service from VM for many years with fibre, just seems a step backwards to go back to ADSL. Plus the BT line in our property has never been connected as we've had VM all the time we've lived there so don't know if the line quality is good or bad.

However, if I'd get 10Mb - 15Mb then I'd agree that I should have no issue with what we use it for. Especially with the cost savings.

Have to see what's on offer next year when the season ticket is up like I said.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

When was the last time your downstream channels dropped to 64QAM?

If you were to say have a huge burst of noise in the middle of an upstream channel that produced a negative SNR would it be able to adapt?

A single narrowband burst of noise will cause a loss of 50% of the capacity of an upstream channel. On xDSL this would be a far smaller effect as it uses DMT.

The technical differences between the two doesn't necessarily make one "better" or "worse". Yes, a single fault can affect more customers but likewise that means more customers can be serviced with a single fault tech. I get what you're saying, its resilience isn't quite at the level of ADSL's but even with my super dodgy ADSL line, I rarely seen the sync speeds drop substantially in the name of stability, rather it tended to just die and spend hours rebooting. Then when the fault was actually fixed, convincing it to ramp back up to its ideal sync rate was a nightmare as well.

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Your 'sync rate' declines it just isn't displayed. The added bonus is of course that impediments anywhere on the node can cause it to drop as, while you do have coax not twisted pair, you are also on a shared access segment with however many other hundred people.

Cable has its own set of issues. xDSL was built to run on unshielded twisted pairs in an unpleasant environment. Cable relies on being a closed network with constant maintenance to remove ingress.

Certainly, however both technologies spread many customers over shared infrastructure. I'm not really sure what you're trying to say about being on a shared segment, when both do this? Yeah your coax is shared with others whereas (I believe) your BT line goes into a cab by itself but as I mentioned earlier, the pro/con divide there means if there's a fault, it takes longer to get the BT line fixed than the Virgin Coax (or has been in my experience).

I think what I'm trying to understand is why you'd claim that ADSL's technology is better, if that was the case then why wouldn't Virgin just deploy ADSL instead of Cable?

[Stop It]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Cheeky.

I was quoted 12 months at £41.99, not "7 months then we chuck the price up"

As it is an above RPI increase too that would mean I could tear up the contract if they didn't honour it. After that, well it's up for negotiation really.

[qasdfdsaq]

And they know that, and are just relying on most people not realizing...

[Stop It]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

And they know that, and are just relying on most people not realizing...

Indeed.

A contract only works if both sides abide by it after all.

Still, will wait to see what happens as I have received nothing as yet so may be moaning for no reason!

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Kushan

I think what I'm trying to understand is why you'd claim that ADSL's technology is better, if that was the case then why wouldn't Virgin just deploy ADSL instead of Cable?

I said it was more stable, not that it's 'better'. That's an entirely subjective measure.

Virgin didn't deploy ADSL because they'd have had to deploy a similar network to the one BT have built with DSLAMs in cabinets which wasn't feasible. Virgin's telco network is multiplexed in the field so adding xDSL to the mix would require cabinet hardware.

It was, more than once, considered however it cannot match the access network capacity of a DOCSIS 3 cable network with the current technology available.

[andy_m]

Phoned Virgin. They can increase my broadband speed to 152mb and leave me with xl everything plus Sky Sports in hd for £80pm rising to £90pm at some point during the contract. Let's face it, that's not a bad deal, but it's not as good as available elsewhere, and it's a lot more than I need, so I've cancelled. I felt a distinct lack of effort to keep me, which was instrumental in my decision.

[johnathome]

Originally Posted by andy_m

Phoned Virgin. They can increase my broadband speed to 152mb and leave me with xl everything plus Sky Sports in hd for £80pm rising to £90pm at some point during the contract. Let's face it, that's not a bad deal, but it's not as good as available elsewhere, and it's a lot more than I need, so I've cancelled. I felt a distinct lack of effort to keep me, which was instrumental in my decision.

What are you paying ATM? Did you mention the Sky 50% offer for VM customers? I bet they wouldn't have matched it.

I can't wait to see what they come up with for me. I have to get a roof aerial fitted before i phone as i get bad reception on the living room TV.

Although i'm not sure they would be able to compete with free

[passingbat]

Originally Posted by johnathome

I have to get a roof aerial fitted before i phone as i get bad reception on the living room TV.

Although i'm not sure they would be able to compete with free

If you keep phone and BB with them, and already have a Tivo, normally you will be able to keep the Tivo with M TV (effectively the Freeview channels), so you do get TV with a PVR FOC. In fact, last year when I wanted to cancel the TV service and just keep BB and phone, keeping Tivo with M TV made it cheaper!

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by andy_m

Phoned Virgin. They can increase my broadband speed to 152mb and leave me with xl everything plus Sky Sports in hd for £80pm rising to £90pm at some point during the contract. Let's face it, that's not a bad deal, but it's not as good as available elsewhere, and it's a lot more than I need, so I've cancelled. I felt a distinct lack of effort to keep me, which was instrumental in my decision.

They're possibly relying on the fact that you can't get 152Mbit elsewhere, you can't even get above 80Mbit elsewhere really and even then only if you're quite lucky.