OFCOM report: Virgin Media is the fastest ISP in the UK

[Welshchris]

Where i used to live i had problems with over subscription which for over a month denied was their problem saying my pc was to blame for poor speeds. They finally admitted to it and took 7 months to get the upgrades on the UBR done.

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by broadbandking

Thats something that all ISP's are guilty of not just VM, I was merely suggesting IF they upgrade the capacity in the network then there speeds are going to be top of any leader board.

Oh, I am not knocking VM exclusively there. That is a trait of a lot of ISPs..


I do believe, however, that Virgin deserve some criticism for the fact that the average 20 meg user gets just over half what they pay for though. If you bought (say) a car that was capable of 100 mph (assume for the sake of argument that you have enough private land you can drive on, so speed limits do not apply) and some of the time it wouldn't go over 60, you'd be within your rights to take it back and demand a refund/replacement.

[BenMcr]

But again - as other ISPs have been pointing out because of their issues, the survey was done before technical changes.

In Virgin's case this is before they started moving XL customers across to the DOCSIS 3.0 network.

Not defending any speed issues in the past, but the overall speed should increase once that work is complete for all customers (I hope)

[mnr]

One of the BBC's analysts said that Virgin was the fastest of the larger companies. And that there were small ISP's who were able to provide faster broadband! I know this is possible for business broadband but who does this in the residential realm?

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by mnr

One of the BBC's analysts said that Virgin was the fastest of the larger companies. And that there were small ISP's who were able to provide faster broadband! I know this is possible for business broadband but who does this in the residential realm?

Virgin are currently the fastest broadband supplier (based purely on the speeds advertised) who can provide that service nationally.


There are a couple of companies who can provide faster than 50 meg connections, but these are only launching in individual areas.


The only one I can think of (I forget it's name) is currently installing fibre for it's network in Bournemouth and surrounding areas. I don't think they are anywhere near a full launch, and I don't know what speeds their clients will offer (AFAIK they are a wholesale ISP, so you would need to buy access from a reseller).

Even assuming they don't have trouble installing their network in Bournemouth it will be several years before they can even offer their service in major cities, let alone nationally.

If you are looking for alternate ISPs, a good site to check is http://www.samknows.com

[mnr]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

Virgin are currently the fastest broadband supplier (based purely on the speeds advertised) who can provide that service nationally.


There are a couple of companies who can provide faster than 50 meg connections, but these are only launching in individual areas.


The only one I can think of (I forget it's name) is currently installing fibre for it's network in Bournemouth and surrounding areas. I don't think they are anywhere near a full launch, and I don't know what speeds their clients will offer (AFAIK they are a wholesale ISP, so you would need to buy access from a reseller).

Even assuming they don't have trouble installing their network in Bournemouth it will be several years before they can even offer their service in major cities, let alone nationally.

If you are looking for alternate ISPs, a good site to check is http://www.samknows.com

Thanks i'll take a look!

[Ignitionnet]

There's a few knocking about who cover very, very small areas. These are not featured on Samknows. Virgin are the quickest ISP with any real availability. BT operate the rest of the infrastructure pretty much and suck in a huge way, what can you say?