Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed

[davidthornton]

Even when 120Mbit is available, Virgin might like to think about improving on the 10:1 download:upload ratio by offering more than 12Mbit upload. FTTC will be offering up to 20Mbit upload this year and I'd expect to be able to achieve the majority of that.

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by a01020304

BenMcr - as a 10mb L customer can I still get a 20mb upgrade instead of getting 30mb and having to pay the £30 activation fee for a superhub

Originally Posted by BenMcr

As far as I'm aware yes, although I would expect you would be pushed towards the latter

I don't see why.

If he stays on 10mb, he automatically gets upgraded to 20mb without any pushing from vm or anyone else. If he wishes to upgrade tiers, and VM have stated today that the Superhub will be given out for free (glad I never paid the "activation" fee when I upgraded from 20 to 30mb..) then his service will eventually go to 60mb. The choice is his and no pushing involved whatsoever.

---------- Post added at 21:10 ---------- Previous post was at 21:08 ----------

Originally Posted by BenMcr

Just to point out no plans for 200Mbit yet

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/...959777#M110003

I know, just read that myself a minute ago! Do we believe him?

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by Horizon

If he stays on 10mb, he automatically gets upgraded to 20mb without any pushing from vm or anyone else. If he wishes to upgrade tiers, and VM have stated today that the Superhub will be given out for free (glad I never paid the "activation" fee when I upgraded from 20 to 30mb..) then his service will eventually go to 60mb. The choice is his and no pushing involved whatsoever.

SuperHub is only free as part of the uplift programme i.e. when Virgin contact you and say you need it as part of the tier increase.

There is still the £30 activation fee if you upgrade your tier to one that requires the SuperHub.

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

SuperHub is only free as part of the uplift programme i.e. when Virgin contact you and say you need it as part of the tier increase.

There is still the £30 activation fee if you upgrade your tier to one that requires the SuperHub.

Oh yes, you're right. The "activation" fee is still activated....Prepare for the avalanche of complaints when those that paid the fee realise that if they had waited a bit they could've avoided the charge.

---------- Post added at 21:40 ---------- Previous post was at 21:28 ----------

Originally Posted by davidthornton

Given no roll out dates for the speed doubling have generally been announced I suppose those who are already paying for the top 100Mbit tier could potentially find themselves paying more than those who were just paying for 50Mbit but were then doubled to 100Mbit at no extra cost. That is unless, on the date that the first 50Mbit user is doubled to 100Mbit, all existing 100Mbit tier subscribers have the price they pay reduced to the same as those on the "50Mbit doubled to 100Mbit tariff" until they are upgraded to 120Mbit (which could be optional because some might want to remain on 100Mbit). BenMcr mentioned some price reductions might occur for eventual 120Mbit users, however I wouldn't think it fair if existing 100Mbit users were paying a premium for 100Mbit while those that were doubled to it, from 50Mbit, were paying less.

I suppose, at some point, being a VMNG300 user with 100Mbit, I shall need to ask for a Superhub. Will they accept posting it or will I need an engineer to visit?

They will post it.

And as for the first part of your post, as I've said VM are clearly merging the 50mb/100mb tiers together. Or more accurately the platinum 100 tier is being put on ice. As I said, those who have the dosh for 100mb will not want to remain on 120mb and accept a price reduction because they will be the same as the people on the 50mb tier who will be getting a upgrade to 100mb. The minute 200mb+ is out, they'll upgrade to it.

[Matth]

On the "new equipment" side, are there any modems still in service that are not 20Mb capable (mine's a 256, so I'm good).

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Matth

On the "new equipment" side, are there any modems still in service that are not 20Mb capable (mine's a 256, so I'm good).

Surprisingly, there are still modems in service that aren't even 10meg compatible. Some people are still connected via USB, so they get no more than 1.2Meg on a good day.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Sirius

Thats going to upset those that hate the shub

It's also false, as the VMNG300 has been tested for up to 200mb "on their network". 92mb sounds like whoever did the testing forgot to switch to gigabit.

---------- Post added at 23:17 ---------- Previous post was at 23:15 ----------

Originally Posted by General Maximus

that is the biggest load of poo i have ever heard. In order to get that result do you think they tested it as rigourously as they did the shub before it was released?

I tend to find most things written by Mark Wilkin are completely misinformed or just plain incorrect.

---------- Post added at 23:20 ---------- Previous post was at 23:17 ----------

Originally Posted by Masque

I expect it will have something to do with the VMNG300 inability to use more than 4 downstreams and I expect in 18 months time that will have been rolled out making the VMNG300 struggle on the network.

4 downstreams is enough for 200mb and it has been tested to that level. All else equal increasing the number of downstreams beyond 4 will make the VMNG300 perform better on the network, not worse.

It may have been tested at higher speeds but probably only with 4 downstreams, we are not senior management so those decisions will have been made at a high level.

The fact that it has been tested to higher has shown that it works on higher. One does not simply decide what they want the results of a test to be. If that were the case there's no point testing to begin with.

---------- Post added at 23:22 ---------- Previous post was at 23:20 ----------

Originally Posted by Horizon

Of course there will eventually be a higher speed and when 200mb and higher is released, those wealthy young rednecks on 120mb will want to upgrade to the fastest and pay the premium price for it. Lucky gits. I remember when I used to have money to burn!

When 200mb gets released I bet 120mb customers will get upgraded while everyone remains as is, i.e. 60, 100, 200 being the sequence. I have the feeling 120 is just a stopgap between 100 and 200 while the network isn't quite up to running 200 yet.

---------- Post added at 23:24 ---------- Previous post was at 23:22 ----------

Originally Posted by BenMcr

Just to point out no plans for 200Mbit yet

There are no formally announced rollout plans, but one would be foolish to suggest VM do not have any plans for 200mbit whatsoever. The fact that it has been trialled indicates planning.

---------- Post added at 23:25 ---------- Previous post was at 23:24 ----------

Originally Posted by Kushan

Surprisingly, there are still modems in service that aren't even 10meg compatible. Some people are still connected via USB, so they get no more than 1.2Meg on a good day.

USB 2 is "up to" 480meg. USB 1.1 is "up to" 11 meg.

[Skie]

The "tested to 92meg" line seems like an indication they wont be forcing upgrades, they just want to scare people into upgrading. But wouldnt a 4 downstream modem running 100mb actually end up stealing bandwidth from an 8 downstream modem when the network gets busy?

And does anyone on 100meg with a VMNG300 and the new "fluff" config fancy running some speedtests?

[Chad]

Overall I think it's great news from Virgin. Can't wait for my upgrade.

[davidthornton]

Originally Posted by Horizon

...as I've said VM are clearly merging the 50mb/100mb tiers together. Or more accurately the platinum 100 tier is being put on ice. As I said, those who have the dosh for 100mb will not want to remain on 120mb and accept a price reduction because they will be the same as the people on the 50mb tier who will be getting a upgrade to 100mb. The minute 200mb+ is out, they'll upgrade to it.

It's still slightly confusing because Virgin Media probably want to offer 120Mbit ASAP so they can still lay claim to being the fastest consumer broadband service provider in the UK (10Mbit faster than OpenReach's 110Mbit FTTP). So the platinum tier (currently 100Mbit, but soon to be 120Mbit) cannot really be iced unless everyone on 50Mbit, 100Mbit or 120Mbit pays exactly the same and is put on the fastest possible speed for their UBR. If this doesn't occur we'll see people either paying less or the same but getting substantially different speeds. Who'd want to be paying for, and getting, the current 100Mbit when some former 50Mbit users are getting the same speed for less (because of being doubled) and some former 100Mbit customers are paying the same but getting 120Mbit?

I can only envisage current 100Mbit users having the price reduced to that of 50Mbit and all those who are currently on 50Mbit but can get 100Mbit now are automatically upgraded, with the rest being upgraded when 100Mbit is available from their UBR. This tariff would be the new XXL. This would be followed by the introduction of a replacement top tier tariff called 120Mbit. Anyone who wanted to upgrade to 120Mbit would pay extra when the product was made available from their UBR.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Skie

The "tested to 92meg" line seems like an indication they wont be forcing upgrades, they just want to scare people into upgrading. But wouldnt a 4 downstream modem running 100mb actually end up stealing bandwidth from an 8 downstream modem when the network gets busy?

And does anyone on 100meg with a VMNG300 and the new "fluff" config fancy running some speedtests?

It wouldn't really "steal" anything, just slightly unbalance. A superhub on 100mb would cause, say, 25% load across 8 channels. A VMNG300 only capable of using channels 1-4 would cause 50% load across those but leave 5-8 at 0%. Used capacity would be the same, remaining capacity would be the same, and Superhubs on all channels would just have to bias towards 5-8 and trancieve proportionally more traffic on those channels and overall balance would be brought back into line. Even when busy, the total packet load would just get spread amongst the varying channels in a different pattern. In theory.

I do remember Igni mentioning a while back this doesn't actually work as well as it should in the real world though.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by Masque

I expect it will have something to do with the VMNG300 inability to use more than 4 downstreams and I expect in 18 months time that will have been rolled out making the VMNG300 struggle on the network.

It may have been tested at higher speeds but probably only with 4 downstreams, we are not senior management so those decisions will have been made at a high level

If its to do with 4 downstreams then why are VM rolling out 100mbit with only 4 downstreams?

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

If its to do with 4 downstreams then why are VM rolling out 100mbit with only 4 downstreams?

You did read th bit that says the VMNG300 is not capable of 100Mb on the platform, and that is from Virgin Media not me and if they have changed the hardware to use 8 downstreams rather than 4 that has to be significant.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

USB 2 is "up to" 480meg. USB 1.1 is "up to" 11 meg.

Yeah and the modems that have USB connections only do USB1.1 (With the EPC2100 possibly being an exception, but I can't remember).

As for the speeds of USB1.1, it has two profiles, "low-speed" and "high-speed". High speed is indeed "up to" 12Mbit, but low speed is 1.5Mbit which is what these modems tend to run at. At the time, BBI speeds weren't anywhere near that level so it was fine. Believe me, I've seen plenty of speedtest results from people connected via USB.

[Peter_]

Originally Posted by Kushan

Yeah and the modems that have USB connections only do USB1.1 (With the EPC2100 possibly being an exception, but I can't remember).

As for the speeds of USB1.1, it has two profiles, "low-speed" and "high-speed". High speed is indeed "up to" 12Mbit, but low speed is 1.5Mbit which is what these modems tend to run at. At the time, BBI speeds weren't anywhere near that level so it was fine. Believe me, I've seen plenty of speedtest results from people connected via USB.

USB has not been supported for around 4 years and the EPC2100 was the last modem supplied with USB anyway.

I know many high end routers have USB fitted but that is on unsupported equipment.