Considering moving over to Cable

[ceedee]

Welcome to CF, Chaos Prime and Andy912.

At the moment, the new STM times are only working in four trial areas though it's strongly rumoured that they'll go nationwide later in the year.
Basically the UBRs (mini neighbourhood exchanges) can't cope with the volume of data from so many users' connections, so until VM can make them more efficient they're going to have to control the data speeds.

But don't let it put you off!
Remember that there's a money-back guarantee so you can always cancel the cable broadband in the first month if it's terrible.


Oh I forgot to mention: I'm on a 4Mb connection and can download at 3.8Mb/s anytime of the day or night and I've had three short disconnections in 2.5 years. I rate it much higher than my previous experience with ADSL despite VM's attempts to stop us using it when we want...

[cablesnail]

Hi,

just a thought, but if you can find someone very nearby it might be worth asking them what they're broadband is like. I have a 20mb connection and often get <1mb downloads in the evenings and weekend (14mb+ in the day but alas i generally have to work 9-5 ).... people 4 miles away getting fantastic speeds so really does depend on exactly where you are....

and you dont wanna get it and then want to complain, as im sure this website shows. I have complained twice and told "ermmm", then teased with an upgraded infrastructure in Feb 08 (didnt happen) then told very recently the "the capacity is fully
utilised at times" (see my thread "for info - wa3 upgrade") and an upgrade is planned for May.

Hence the suggestion to see if any of your neighbours have the service and are happy and get anything like the stated download speeds

hope this is of some use

[Chaos Prime]

well thats a good idea but sadly not plausable as im planning the switch after i move which will be in about 4 weeks (location yet undisclosed - Thats the council for ya lol) so thats why im looking around atm. Im not a heavy downloader. i use to just not any more. Not much to download. But every now and then i go through 10-20GB of downloading in a day (this is very rare but has happened) so as it stands i dont want to be cut off. I generally download about 10gb a month if that. But when the odd few and rare occasion occurs where i wanna download more, then i would like to be unrestricted in speed and limit, as i am now (though i need a stable connection here first lmao)

So how likely is this so called trial likely to be nationalised? or is it literally a matter of time?

[ceedee]

Originally Posted by Chaos Prime

So how likely is this so called trial likely to be nationalised? or is it literally a matter of time?

I'd say that something similar is guaranteed to become nationwide but not necessarily with these complicated times.

Too many of the UBRs are over-stretched and are awaiting upgrades which when completed should mean that (sometime next year) the 20Mb (and future 50Mb!) users will be on their own channels, freeing up some capacity for those of us on the slower connections.
Once that's all been completed then, maybe, the traffic management will be unnecessary.

These trial STM limits sound really draconian but they're not too bad until you want to download something big. I expect we'll get used to them and learn how to schedule those large downloads to happen overnight.

What it proves to me is that VM have run the network into the ground without keeping it updated to cope with the huge increase in our data traffic.
As our ISP, that's their job -- And they've failed dismally!

[Chaos Prime]

Interesting, well after reading a few more sites with the same story, VM just made the biggest mistake they could possibly think of. It will be interesting to see what direction everything pans out to

[Noggo]

I would advise you to do some homework and check to see if there are any over subscription issues in your area. There are areas which are currently over subscribed, with fix dates which come and go without any action done. Two ways you can do this are:
1. post your town name and ask here to see if any one close to you is having problems
2. wait until you're in the new home and ask your new neighbours.

Plus, If you do decide to bite the bullet and take XL - 20Meg VM cable service (or any other service for that matter) and you get poor performance, remember you have a 30 Day money back guarantee.