Virgin Media broadband customers to be hit with price hikes from November

[RainmakerRaw]

Meh. We're always complaining the network is outdated and needs bringing up to date with extra (spare) capacity adding. I'd gladly chip in another fiver or tenner a month if they would actually do that.

[jb66]

Do you think they are missing a chunk of the market by not offering a slow broadband speed, someone with just an ipad doesnt need 100Meg or customers who only use the laptop to book a holiday

[MJPS]

Originally Posted by jb66

Do you think they are missing a chunk of the market by not offering a slow broadband speed

I for one dont need 50meg,when I was on the phone to retentions they would not take no for an answer.
I have been taking stock lately and realised that 15 or 20 would be more than enough.

[Skie]

I think marketing will like the ability to say even their lowest speed is faster than BT's fastest speed.

[Kushan]

There will be a point in the future where 100Mbit is considered "slow" but I agree we are not there yet. Still, it's not such a terrible thing that the customer is ahead of the curve, it's usually the other way around.

I do wonder if we're going to hit a sort of peak whereby most people just don't need more. Maybe we've already hit that with 50 or 100Mbit, in the same way that hard drive capacities and RAM on computers have hit a point where most "average" users really don't need more. It seems cheap laptops have been coming with 500GB HDD's and 4GB of RAM for years now and there's just no demand for more, until you get to the people that either game or do other intensive work (developers, etc.). Even for those people, 100Mbit today is probably excessive.

It would be nice if the general population started focussing on the other aspects of a good connection, upload speeds, latency, jitter and buffer bloat. Then maybe Virgin would start focusing on those issues as well.

[RainmakerRaw]

Originally Posted by Skie

I think marketing will like the ability to say even their lowest speed is faster than BT's fastest speed.

It does kinda make the middle tier redundant though, except for legacy customers, doesn't it?

"Hmm what speed do I need/want/can I afford?"

1) I'm penny pinching, so I'll have to 'make do' with a speed faster than any other ISP. I'll take the 100Mbps.

2) I want 10Gbe already. Sign me up for 300 of your shiniest epeens, and hurry up with DOCSIS 3.1 will you? There's a good chap.

3).... Um?.... I'm lily livered and can't decide. I mean 100 megs is obviously far too slow for web browsing and email, and I don't want / can't afford 300 megs, so I'll take 200Mbps?

It seems so... un-necessary with the speeds being so high already. They'd be better with an 'all in' and a 'budget' range surely? As I said I'd gladly pay an extra tenner or so a month if they'd actually fix the bloody network already.

EDIT: @Kushan While extra speed is always welcome from a downloading and streaming POV (good 1080p, 2k and 4k are surprisingly hungry, and extra bandwidth leads to further innovation at the consumer end), I do agree that with 3.1 they'd be better served focusing on those things. "Oh gee my 500 megs down 30 megs up (LOL) connection is running at 20% rated speed due to congestion, and my ping is in four digits again" isn't much to shout about. I'd much prefer 100/100 or other good symmetrical connection (I shan't be greedy and cite gigabit+) with decent ping and no bufferbloat. Thing is not many people actually want to pay for it. Short of starting up a small community project with custom blown fibre (eg Gigaclear) there's only so much you can do with a legacy cable network overnight.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by jb66

Do you think they are missing a chunk of the market by not offering a slow broadband speed, someone with just an ipad doesnt need 100Meg or customers who only use the laptop to book a holiday

*Points to the 'S' service used for retention purposes.

There may even be other ways to take in that market. Remember for VM many of the costs are fixed and the rest are based on usage. Super cheap, slow tiers are no good for VM. Worst case scenario is people going onto slower, cheaper, unlimited tiers and downloading like loons.

Check out UPC Ireland. They have 1 tier on their website, 240Mb, but offer a capped version and an unlimited version. Ireland are the most similar market to our own but are somewhat further along with ultrafast. UPC have competition from the incumbent telco and the Vodafone/ESB joint venture FTTP network.

Ziggo (formerly UPC Netherlands) offer 120Mb and 200Mb.

UPC Romania - 200Mb and 500Mb.

Where competition and conditions merit it the UPC family do offer lower tiers.

Austria.
Switzerland.
Poland.

It does take away somewhat from the USP selling 'standard' broadband speed tiers, especially with FTTC from BT available to nearly every premises that is passed by Virgin Media. They aren't going to want to compete with £5-£10 a month ADSL.

---------- Post added at 22:46 ---------- Previous post was at 22:41 ----------

Originally Posted by Kushan

It would be nice if the general population started focussing on the other aspects of a good connection, upload speeds, latency, jitter and buffer bloat.

If it's not affecting their usage why would they care though?

I don't care about buffer bloat and I'm hardly undemanding, though I'm not hammering my connection with tons of P2P / Usenet connections drowning everything else out as a general rule

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

If it's not affecting their usage why would they care though?

I don't care about buffer bloat and I'm hardly undemanding, though I'm not hammering my connection with tons of P2P / Usenet connections drowning everything else out as a general rule

Because for the longest time, download speeds was the biggest factor in their usage. Using the PC example, it was like RAM - there was a time when if you wanted your PC to go faster, you put more RAM in it before doing anything else. Once RAM quantities became "good enough" for most, that changed to other things - SSD's, price, battery life, etc.

Getting back to broadband, if the download speeds on Virgin and BT/Sky/etc. are so large to be irrelevant to most, then other things will suddenly become more important - probably price first, then upload speeds, then latency, etc.

[Ignitionnet]

As far as upload goes I imagine the fact BT are testing G.fast with 50Mb up is going to be more of an issue than customers calling for more

Buffer bloat is partly taken care of by DOCSIS 3.1.

Latency and jitter will still not be as good as fast path VDSL or G.fast. Virgin could improve it by routing based on latency rather than other metrics but it would be a massive task and they can't control what happens to packets when they leave their network.

Until Sky/BT/TalkTalk start trumpeting higher upload speeds in the marketing it's not going to be something a mass market operator like VM are going to worry about too much. Due to the joys of VDSL, line management and interleave the xDSL operators advertising latency is a risky business for them.

I guess another issue there is you need a standardised measure of latency, too. Which should be used for me? First hop outside of home or to a specific site?

traceroute -q 1 www.linx.net
traceroute to www.linx.net (195.66.234.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 0.218 ms
2 *
3 host-62-24-255-10.as13285.net (62.24.255.10) 4.711 ms
4 xe-11-2-0-bragg001.bre.as13285.net (78.151.225.39) 6.227 ms
5 host-78-151-225-92.static.as13285.net (78.151.225.92) 6.903 ms
6 host-78-144-8-175.as13285.net (78.144.8.175) 12.448 ms
7 ge0-0.pr1.linx.net (195.66.225.254) 13.419 ms
8 fe1-1-112.tr1.linx.net (195.66.248.226) 13.467 ms

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

As far as upload goes I imagine the fact BT are testing G.fast with 50Mb up is going to be more of an issue than customers calling for more

I hope so! We have 50mbit upload in the office and it's so nice, sending emails with large attachments is near-enough instant and for an office of 40 people, it still feels nippy-as.

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Buffer bloat is partly taken care of by DOCSIS 3.1.

That's good to know! I hope 3.1 starts rolling out soon, but I'm not getting my hopes up.

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Latency and jitter will still not be as good as fast path VDSL or G.fast. Virgin could improve it by routing based on latency rather than other metrics but it would be a massive task and they can't control what happens to packets when they leave their network.

Until Sky/BT/TalkTalk start trumpeting higher upload speeds in the marketing it's not going to be something a mass market operator like VM are going to worry about too much. Due to the joys of VDSL, line management and interleave the xDSL operators advertising latency is a risky business for them.

I guess another issue there is you need a standardised measure of latency, too. Which should be used for me? First hop outside of home or to a specific site?

traceroute -q 1 www.linx.net
traceroute to www.linx.net (195.66.234.8), 30 hops max, 60 byte packets
1 192.168.0.1 (192.168.0.1) 0.218 ms
2 *
3 host-62-24-255-10.as13285.net (62.24.255.10) 4.711 ms
4 xe-11-2-0-bragg001.bre.as13285.net (78.151.225.39) 6.227 ms
5 host-78-151-225-92.static.as13285.net (78.151.225.92) 6.903 ms
6 host-78-144-8-175.as13285.net (78.144.8.175) 12.448 ms
7 ge0-0.pr1.linx.net (195.66.225.254) 13.419 ms
8 fe1-1-112.tr1.linx.net (195.66.248.226) 13.467 ms

Shame about latency/jitter really but you're right, it's going to be hard for DSL vendors to market that in a meaningful way.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Skie

I think marketing will like the ability to say even their lowest speed is faster than BT's fastest speed.

Marketing from BT will say their fastest speed is 330Mbps and probably file a complaint with ASA.

---------- Post added at 10:46 ---------- Previous post was at 10:44 ----------

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Remember for VM many of the costs are fixed and the rest are based on usage. Super cheap, slow tiers are no good for VM. Worst case scenario is people going onto slower, cheaper, unlimited tiers and downloading like loons.

The slower tiers have historically all been disproportionally high priced anyway, £20 for 10Mb, £25 for 20Mb, £30 for 50Mb for example, and most customers stick to them so they end up generating the lion's share of the profit either way. Sure, 2Mb for £5 might be pointless, but 30Mb for £25 wouldn't be too shabby, if 100Mb costs £30 now.

[Kushan]

The vast majority of customers are on the lower tier.

[Kabaal]

Personally i think £30 for what will soon be 100mb is perfectly reasonable and £42 for 300mb ridiculously good value.

If you only check emails and browse web pages then yeah it would be annoying but people like that would be better off on one of the free ADSL offers elsewhere anyway.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Marketing from BT will say their fastest speed is 330Mbps and probably file a complaint with ASA.

Virgin have been cautious to use 'widely available' in their advertising, hence why they can still advertise 152Mb as being twice as fast as BT and Sky, even though Sky offer 940Mb to a very small footprint and BT 300 to one not that much larger.

The 'widely available' is also behind the claims of being fastest even though Hyperoptic offer 1Gb, as do Gigaclear, while SeeTheLight also offer faster than VM.

[Chad]

Originally Posted by jb66

Do you think they are missing a chunk of the market by not offering a slow broadband speed, someone with just an ipad doesnt need 100Meg or customers who only use the laptop to book a holiday

That's the market SKY are still going for with some outrageously good value deals.

http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/new...-and-broadband

"£5.35 for a year's Sky line rental and broadband"