virgin broadband speed

[dangalf]

just got off the phone to virgin media who were trying to convince me to stay with them

they advised that if i went with sky my broadband speed would be limited to the area where i live. so if i pay sky for the 8mb broadband it will in fact be limited to 4mb

the question i want to ask is the virgin man advised that because their broadband is fibre optic i get the full benefit of my 10mb broadband regardless of my postcode - is this true?

also the most taxing thing i probably do with my broadband is play xbox 360 games online with a wireless connection - will being reduced to 4mb radically affect performance (significantly more lag etc.)?

thanks

 

[ElectroMan]

I have Virgin cable, but am not on Virgin broadband - hopefully somebody who is can advise if the speed is as consistent as Virgin claim.

Or if you're on Virgin broadband already, can you see the data rate?

I know that the maximum speed varies depending on how recent the cable was laid - checking on Virgin's website my maximum speed would be 20Mb - pretty good, but under half their maximum quoted speed of 50Mb.

I'm currently on Demon broadband over a BT line, and the speed varies from 2 to 5 MB (never had anywhere near 8MB!), which I imagine is fast enough for gaming (I've played Call of Duty 4 online with no problems, though I don't usually play online).

 

[laserman16]

Hi Electroman. I have Virgin broadband at 10mb so thay say. Doing an internet speed test usually throws up speeds of between 9 and 10 mb on downloads and 0.5 mb on uploads.

In practice when actually downloading something it varies between 5 and 10 mb but this could be restrictions on servers that I am downloading from.

 

[Andy Clough]

I have Virgin 20MB broadband and while the download speeds used to be quite variable depending on the time of day and level of usage, recent upgrades to the system (they've now installed the 50MB service in my area) mean I get speeds of 15-18MB quite regularly, which isn't bad. And I have to say I've never had any technical problems with Virgin Broadband (unlike Virgin TV).

 

[aliEnRIK]

10 meg will give you exactly 10 meg unless you do a ton of downloading in which case they 'throttle' you at certain times of the day

Virgin ABOVE 10 seems a tad more iffy so I dont think their servers can actually cope with the extra demand they claim.

But yeah ~ youll be safe with 10 meg (Assuming you do mean their optical fibre service)

 

[dangalf]

thanks guys

can any of you tell me what will happen if i do decide to switch to sky's 8mb service - will i be getting 8mb or will i be restricted to 4mb which is what my postcode is supposedly limited to?

 

[Anonymous]

i wouldn't be fooled by their "fibre optic" claim to be fair. They are a hybrid so the last bit from the street cabinet is good old fashioned co-ax. I have seen this hacked so easily it's unreal. I would do some searching around maybe, take a look at the forums on places like thinkbroadband.com as vm's speed can be variable depending on where you live. i know some people in manchester who get speeds of less than 2mb and they were paying for the 10mb speed! i should add that they are not heavy users(odd bit of surfing and email here and there). People are right about it not making that much difference on a lot of websites though, many businesses still have 100mb or less connections so work the math out if you suddenly have 1000+ peeps going to the same site!

 

[laserman16]

Andy Clough: And I have to say I've never had any technical problems with Virgin Broadband (unlike Virgin TV).

Likewise, never had a problem with Virgin broadband.

 

[aliEnRIK]

dangalf:
thanks guys

can any of you tell me what will happen if i do decide to switch to sky's 8mb service - will i be getting 8mb or will i be restricted to 4mb which is what my postcode is supposedly limited to?

You certainly wont get full 8 Mb. Usually around the half figure is a general for phoneline broadband (Varies a lot though depending on where you are etc)

My dad has the 16 Mb version of sky and gets a max of 7.9 (Measured with ispeeder which gives exact amounts)

 

[dangalf]

cheers all

not sure what i'm gonna do yet

ideally i'd go with sky for tv and virgin for phone/broadband but its too expensive - decisions, decisions

thanks again

 

[chebby]

We have been on Virgin (cable) broadband for almost 2 years and it has been great!

I am on the 10mb service and TBH I rarely even test the speeds anymore (don't need to).

For the purpose of this thread I have just tested and got 9.7mbps. As I expected.

I could never have considered working from home before we got the cable connection due to the built in unreliability of anything traversing the BT infrastructure.

We are 1.8 miles (as the crow flies) from the nearest BT digital exchange and - bearing in mind that my city still has a lot of 1950s vintage GPO copper cabling (according to the last BT engineer we had here) - any service depending on BT is going to be rubbish. (I used Waitrose broadband before going to cable and their service was excellent but they were stuck with BT infrastructure like any other provider.)

Your '8meg' with Sky may even go as low as 1meg (or lower) depending how far you are from the nearest digital exchange and how stable your bit of the network is.

No such problems with Virgin. (Ok it helps that the nearest green box is about 20 metres away

)

 

[aliEnRIK]

Personally id either stick with virgin but tell them you want to leave. Theyll put you through to the dep where they 'should' give you a knockdown offer (If they havnt already)

OR

Id go with 16 Meg sky so at least the drop in speed shouldnt be too bad (hopefully)

 

[bretty]

dangalf:
just got off the phone to virgin media who were trying to convince me to stay with them

they advised that if i went with sky my broadband speed would be limited to the area where i live. so if i pay sky for the 8mb broadband it will in fact be limited to 4mb

the question i want to ask is the virgin man advised that because their broadband is fibre optic i get the full benefit of my 10mb broadband regardless of my postcode - is this true?

also the most taxing thing i probably do with my broadband is play xbox 360 games online with a wireless connection - will being reduced to 4mb radically affect performance (significantly more lag etc.)?

thanks

Hi mate,

I have Sky broadband. My antiquated phone line means that I can only get 2mb download speed. I play online with my PS3 and never experience any lag. If you're getting the 4MB, you'll be fine.

 

[Anonymous]

I work in the broadband field myself. Selling not technical but have had a bit of tech training. As said before the distance from the exchange greatly affects your download speed. As do many other factors such as how busy the exchange is, internal home wiring and whichever provider your withs network management policy. This policy means that at busy times,say between five and ten the provider will take from the users with the larger dls so that lower speed users arent affected too much.

This shouldnt affect users of fibre optic broadband to the same extent so Id go with that everytime.

Oh and its not fibre optic broadband I sell!

 

[dangalf]

hi aliEnRIK

i tried that and the girl i spoke to said they could upgrade my TV package at no extra charge to stop me leaving. when i called them back to say i wanted to go ahead with this another advisor told me i couldnt do it (this advisor also told me that with a sky+ box there was a compulsory £9 a month charge for insurance that sky dont tell you about!)

obviously this wasnt right - the third time i called virgin the best they could do was knock £2 per month off my bill (although this would tie me into another 12 month contract)

hi bretty

thanks for that - my main concern about leaving virgin is having significantly slower broadband but thats encouraging

 

[aliEnRIK]

2mb will easily feed console online gaming

Personally speaking I wouldnt put up with less than 4 though due to the downloading etc I do