back to article Virgin Media still claiming no usage limits

Virgin Media's website still says the firm has "no plans to introduce any usage limits", despite the nationwide rollout of bandwidth throttling at the beginning of May. Virgin now limits speeds between 4pm and midnight once users reach a MB limit, which is dependent on how much they pay per month. However, in the firm's FAQ, …

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  1. Anigel

    Cheeses me off

    They clearly stated in letters sent to users that

    a) the price was going up by 2 quid

    b) they were going to start upgrading XL users to 20mb instead of 10mb

    c) the traffic throttling would occur when you were upgraded to 20mb

    Well I haven't got 20mb I am still stuck on 10mb and am in a TBC area for the upgrade.

    So WTF have I been speed throttled now for months already? IE they started throttling me well before they announced they were going to do it and I was not in any test area.

    Don't believe a word these guys say.

  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Typical of Virgin / NTL

    This is the way it's always been with NTL - make headlines by giving a "free" (usually a month after a minor charge increase) upgrade, but then add something into the small print that makes that upgrade WORSE than the service you have before.

    The previous capping debacle is an example and you would have hoped that NTL would have learned SOMETHING from it, but no, it looks like not :(

    Utterly useless bunch of hypocrites - Transparency my arse

  3. Mark Rendle

    Worrieder and worrieder

    I'm moving to one of these new developments in a month where there are restrictive covenants prohibiting satellite dishes, but of course the whole area has been pre-wired for cable. Of all the worries and stresses of moving, I think the prospect of having to replace my Sky+ TV and ADSL2+ broadband with Virgin Media is the worst.

  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    People in yorkshire don't need capping...

    Since May 1st people in yorkshire on the VM 10Mb service have been having to put up with paying £37 a month for <1Mb bandwidth. The support groups are full of people complaining about the speed with just the generic responses from the techs that people are looking at it (See http://status2.virginmedia.com/vmstatus/serviceissue.do;jsessionid=4E44129F4B63B7068CD0486F6B4A0C89.jsps304p:28009?ticket=472359 ignore the start date this has been going on since the 1st . It just seems to get closed "accidently" every so often)

    On top of that VM are screwing their premium customers by restricting them from 20Mb to 5Mb after they go after the 3Gb limit (A joke in itself as this is only approx 23 minutes of constant use!!) unlike the other speeds where there is just a 50% reduction in speed.

    an annoyed VM user...

  5. Pete

    The Pedants Are Out Once More...

    As it stands, Virgin Media does not cap downloads. At all.

    Bandwidth throttling is more to do with saving everybody else's connection than slowing the heavies down. If you had experience of living in the states using SBC, Comcast or Time Warner Cable, you would find that every evening, without fail, your download speeds were throttled back somewhat.

    In such a litigious country, claims of "unlimited downloads" would be slaughtered in court were they not true.

    For those of you who want constant high speeds AND unlimited downloads, get yourself a leased line - consumer lines have limits simply to save those users who don't abuse the network.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    meaning of words...

    Of course, according to the meaning of the words, their service still isn't 'capped' - you can still download as much as you like each month, it'll just take longer if you want to do it during normal leisure hours (ok, you can download slightly less in total in a whole month, if you max out your connection 24x7 but IRL who does that?).

    I'm waiting for the 'peak hours' to be extended to include all weekend plus bank holidays plus university & school holidays plus.....

  7. Chris Leuty

    To be pedantic...

    ...there is no download cap because you can still download as much as you like, albeit at a reduced speed, so you just can't download the same amount of stuff as you used to. I'm sure that would be their answer. However, you're right about the transparency and they ought to make it clear that there are certain restrictions with their broadband service even if there isn't a 'traditional' monthly usage cap as other providers might have.

    As a VM customer, I am still waiting for the email from them to inform me of this change...

  8. Matt Jordan

    How much?

    So if you have a 10mb or 4mb what would the limit be?

  9. Robert Lee

    Another case of the right hand doesn't what the left hand is doing.

    2 weeks ago, one of my customer rang and said his broadband speed went really slow, so I explained to them that theres a new throttling limit on Virgin broadband, he were so angry at this as he joined on the recommendation from me that there were no download limit (back in Jan 2007), so he called Virgin support, Virgin sales didnt know anything and insisted on no limit, no problem, next the technical support people, same thing, no limit, no problem, until the customer asked them to view their own website where the new limits were clearly posted.

    Talk about a mess, for a communication company, they sure do no flavour to themself, not even knowing what their own company is doing.

    Now Sky is taking their TV away, with the new throttling limit, I can only see one direction for Virgin, all downhill.

    Customers hates having to work with or work around a limit, its like buying car, you try to sell a car to a customer and tell them the car can do 150mph, no limit to how fast or how long you can drive it for...BUT !!!! once you drove 100 miles, your car will be throttled to only do 75mph MAX!!! I doubt even the best salesman on the planet wont to selling any of these.

  10. Ash

    Throttled connections

    I work during the day (as you all do, most likely), so my connection is not in use during the day.

    How about Virgin decrease the monthly line rental to reflect the unused time? In essence, i'm paying £35 a month for a 10mb connection 24/7, but only getting 10mb for 2 hours and then 4mb until about 11pm where I stop using it again.

    What is it when a person or business sells you a service that they don't actually offer? It has a legal term... Some word which describes ripping off customers by lying to them about the product for personal gain...

    Oh yes; Fraud.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    And the TV service seems to be having some problems

    I recently joined Virgin Media after moving into my first place. The 3 for £30 looked a good deal and has been for me. My internet usage isn't huge so I don't get any problems that have been reported in articles such as these.

    However I am getting problems with the TV service. The lip sync is constantly out on some channels. Could this be a problem with their network which was reported in an article on the Reg some time ago (http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/05/14/dear_branson/).

    Have many others had a similar problem?

  12. Andrew Kay

    Pffft

    I will be ditching this sorry excuse for a "service" as soon as I can identify a broadband supplier that isn't a complete charlatan.

    Guess I may be stuck with them for some time then..

  13. James

    Make your mind up

    In the same story, you lambast VM for claiming on the website they have no usage limits but admit "Virgin doesn't apply monthly download limits"...

  14. Peter Kay

    My heart bleeds...

    boohoo.. throttled to 5Mb/s with no download limit. boohoo.

    That's *way* better than ADSL at that price point, no matter how you slice it.

  15. Nick Palmer

    *cough*

    Technically, they're not introducing caps; they're limiting speeds - you can still download as much as you want, but muuuuuuuch mooooooore sloooooooooowly. And yes, it sucks.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Don't just blame the bandwidth hogs

    Don't just blame the bandwidth hogs - hmm, I remember years back that's exactly what NTL were doing ;-)

    Anyway...

    "Bandwidth throttling is more to do with saving everybody else's connection than slowing the heavies down"

    It once used to be the case that the greedy were killing ISP networks for the low users, however this isn't the case any more and this attitude against anyone downloading anything is not valid.

    The reason being that broadband is moving on and bandwidth intensive applications are starting to appear that will move people into the realms of the downloader, and the ISPs just simply do not have the capacity to cope. Broadband Britain is not keeping up, simple as that.

    Joost is a classic example. If it gets as popular as Skype (same owners), it has the potential to cripple ISPs far more than the relatively small amount of heavy downloaders who download 100s of gigs a month.

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Not unlike BT.plus.net

    Used to be on NTL until I moved to a cable free area. Never had an issue with NTL. Moved to Plus.net - seemed better than NTL (more for money).

    Until BT bought them.

    I have a 8Mb connection (4Mb due to locallity), which is constantly throttled to 1Mb. 24/7. P2P is throttled to about 10kb/s, at best, rarely above dial-up. Virtually all downloads are limited to about 512kb unless they are from plus.net - then I'm allowed the 'Full' 1Mb.

    Where then is the 8Mb connection?

    I'm a Linux user, sometimes I want to download a few DVDs to share the fun. Ha! not any more.

    Moving from NTL/VM? Avoid BT and plus.net like the plague. Oh well, off to a new ISP.

  18. Robert Harrison

    Caps

    Shurely, because the maximum download speed is limited during peak hours the overall number of bytes you are able to download in 1 consecutive month is reduced a.k.a. capped ?

    So:

    (10megabits per second / 8) * 60seconds * 60minutes * 24hours * 28days (*1)

    no longer applies.

    (*1) I take no responsibility for this formula being wrong :o)

    I'm a VM customer and don't make that much use of my broadband any more but it still seems to me like we're being ripped off here.

  19. Matt

    Ok, who's really being disadvataged here?

    By my very rough calculation, a 10MB connection running at full pelt for 30 days would give you somewher ein the region of about 2.5TB of data.

    Taking a gross averaging of 8hours of 5MB in there that gives you about an 8.3MB service, running to around... 2TB.

    Now, if anyone can show how they're really losing out because of this throttling, could they please demonstrate?

    You can only call it a cap if it actually limits how much data you can download, surely!

    I use my 10MB connection fairly extensivley and I don't hit more than about 100GB per month most of the time.

    And lets not forget, that you're not entitled to your 10MB connection 24/7 ANYWAY. Its a contended service.

  20. Paul

    5% or 95%

    According to VM (insert pinch of salt here) only 5% of customers will be affected yet 95% of people (even more salt here) appear to be complaining about it affecting them. Me thinks the quiet majority are staying very quiet and are just enjoying their improved performance due to a less congested network without a need to comment on it. If the 5% affected feel strongly enough that they leave then I can't see VM being too upset as the lose in revenue can be balanced against the reduction in the expense of upgrading the network.

  21. max allan

    Virgin broadband sent me a letter warning of excessive download!

    I have never heard of anyone else getting a letter, but after a heavy month of use, I was sent a letter telling me I'd exceeded their acceptable use limit and they might take some action if I didn't stop.

    When I queried it they told me that the next step would be to terminate my account.

    No mention of throttling or other action.

    My download speed in the evenings is generally around 1-500kbit/s compared with the 6.5Mbit/s during the day (when I'm not there to use it). Maybe I'm already throttled and they aren't admitting it.

    I'd switch if I thought there was any alternative. I'm waiting for my exchange to be LLU'ed, then I'll ditch virgin as quick as humanly possible.

    Max

  22. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Get a grip

    To all the moaning VM customers, get a ticket for the real world - you are paying for a consumer service, that offers fairly high speeds and no actual download limit. If you download a lot of data during 'peak' hours the speed will be throttled so other less bandwidth hungry users get sensible speeds.

    At no point did you pay for an uncontended service with guaranteed speeds. If that's what you want then you are going to have to pay for it, as a comparison a 2Mb leased (fibre) connection will cost you around £2000-£3000 for the installation and then ~£500 per month, instead you pay more like £35 per month..... go figure

  23. SImon Hobson Bronze badge

    ISTM

    ... that soo many people haven't used anyone elses 'broadband' offering either, brings to mind that old saying about greener grass.

    As Peter says, most people on ADSL don't even get 5Mbps at all, let alone during peak times - I only get 4.5M and I'm about 1/2 mile from the exchange. Being allowed to download 20GB in a month and STILL get 5Mbps - wow, I'd be VERY happy to get that. By 2/3 of that figure I'm being throttled, and by the time I reach it I'm throttled to 'not much at all'. The idea of getting 20Mbps, well that's just pie in the sky !

    Yes, VM could be more open about it, but FFS, look around at the lack of information on the alternatives and the 'interesting' interpretations of 'unlimited' (like the "we won't tell you what we think is reasonable but if you go past that then we'll throw you off with no second chance" that I believe is still in some ISPs 'fair use' policies).

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The Point Is More Honesty...

    ... With all the confusion out their of whether or not its capped and what it actually means I think it would make sense for Virgin Media to advertise honestly on their website that all broadband packages are 'unlimited, with no download limits' as this is true but also add on there that 'all broadband services subject to speed throttling during peak times' as that is also true!!

    As a VM broadband customer, your not actually restricted as to how much you can download even though a 'fair usage policy' is applied, all that happens is if you abuse a residential line by download gigs of information during peak times you speed is increased to make it fair for people who may see their service effected because someone is hogging up bandwidth by excessive downloading. I do however feel that they need to assess what the limits are before these speed restrictions come into place as not everyone uses the internet for downloading but do use it for a lot of streaming, gaming etc - And with Internet TV/VOD starting to be the next big thing people will find they are restricted all the time when using these services during peak times which will (no matter what VM claim) seriously effect the quality of these content if their speed drops.

    As it has been mentioned many times before, if the issue is the network being hogged or at full capacity invest in upgrading it to handle the speeds they offer or simply restrict customers who continuously abuse the service by putting them on a permanent peak time throttle and not make the minority suffer or have to worry about paying say £37 for a 5MB service between 4-12...

  25. bambi

    hello sky

    VM customer services are quite happy to help as soon as you mention a switch to Sky..... It got me a free TV upgrade anyway.

  26. Ian McNee

    Get a bit of perspective

    Q: Is Virgin Media's cutsomer service average to mediocre?

    A: Yes (no big news there)

    Q: Is cable broadband generally more reliable and less hassle than ADSL?

    A: Yes (personal experience fixing domestic PCs and see other posts)

    Q: Is it reasonable for a small minority of VM customers to suck away all of the contended bandwidth by hoovering-up largely illegal video/music content via P2P?

    A: No. In fact you can f*ck right off and deal with throttling, you deserve it. If you can't even work out how to set up a P2P client that does your illegal downloads while the rest of us are either tucked up in bed or at work (i.e. NOT between 4.30pm and midnight) why should you have the right to take all the bandwidth away from the majority of us not abusing the service?

  27. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Reg readers should be capped...

    This is the same line of thought that says all movies and music should be free, all software should be free and for 20 quid a month you should be able to download as much as you want as at the fastest speed you can access. I think a serious reality check is required for all these freeloading kool-aid drinkers, their arguments just aren't serious.

  28. Anigel

    Users are not Abusers but they are Abused by the ISP

    " if you abuse a residential line by download gigs of information during peak times "

    Since when was using a XL service to download a large file at a time that suited you abuse?

    This is the main problem with the internet industry today. I should know I work in it and have to regularly point out to the management that customers using the advertised service does not constitute any form of abuse just because they use it a bit more than the company would like them to. The fact that they insist on referring to these users as abusers instead of just heavy users (and remember in VM's case the XL users are obviously going to be heavy users else they wouldn't pay top dollar for the largest fastest "unlimited" "no download limits" residential package they could get) immediately makes it seem they have a right to remove or otherwise limit the service they are offering these users whilst still advertising the service they are no longer giving and still charging the same amount.

  29. Iain Cartledge

    That's not the point..

    I am quite happy with a 2 meg connection, I have never had anything more, and for the first time in a long time my connection was pretty stable after the VM switch. I am a gamer, and as such I don't like choke, loss or high latency, and for once I had 20ms latency and no choke or loss to just about any server in the UK.

    Since the speed increase and caps, I have a 60 ping to almost every server in the UK and high amounts of choke and loss. I can only put this down to VM being unable to cope with a speed increase. In fact that's the only reason I can see for them introducing throttling, as they appeared to be coping fine until they increased the speeds.

    The argument about it only affecting high bandwidth users is utter pap as well, there is no reason anyone needs a connection faster than 1 meg when they are only browsing and occasionally downloading.

    The last straw for me was sending us a letter explaining that they had reduced phone bills to £4 a month for the deal we have, and how amazing they were for doing so, then explaining that we would still be paying £11 a month because of our contract, which is practically as expensive as their best package now.

    They are completely useless.

  30. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Joost

    One word in reply to this...

    "A: No. In fact you can f*ck right off and deal with throttling, you deserve it. If you can't even work out how to set up a P2P client that does your illegal downloads while the rest of us are either tucked up in bed or at work (i.e. NOT between 4.30pm and midnight) why should you have the right to take all the bandwidth away from the majority of us not abusing the service?"

    ... Joost.

    Not illegal. It's commercial/advertising funded broadband TV. Massive data rates. An hour knocks up a few hundred meg downloaded alone! The very concept of watching broadband video means peak time usage.

    Similarly, Sky Anytime, 4oD and BBC iMP, which are all P2P apps to download your favourite shows LEGALLY and make heavy use of your bandwidth.

    Do you consider that abuse?

    The problem is we're not just seeing the dodgy stuff being throttled, but perfectly legit stuff is now. It's not just VM either.

    Broadband Britain just isn't up to shape to cope with the way broadband is moving. Higher speeds being offered is not enough, the capacity needs to be improved (and much of that is down to the likes of BT and cable companies providing the pipes).

  31. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Greed and a Me, Me, Me attitude.

    The same people who are moaning about the throttling are probably the same type of people who cause accidents by their me, me, me attitude in the rush hour traffic.

    We would all like to cruise home after work at 70mph, however the roads tend to get full at about 5pm and your speed ends up being more like 20mph. Most of the time the tailbacks are caused by idiots who block end up blocking junctions by insisting on tailgating the car in front despite the lights being on red.

    Do your downloading at different times of the day and your ok. What is so difficult about that? Or are you really so selfish that you want to spoil the speed of my web browsing between 5 and 12 midnight? Lets not forget that I paid for the service as well and I do want idiots who download illegal software and games to slow down my service. I am already subsidising the heavy downloaders as it is, so you owe me one. If you don't like it, then **** off somewhere else where you get your precious downloads. If you can find an ISP who will put up with, that is.

  32. Ian McNee

    Re: Joost

    Yes, you are right about a lot of the new services becoming available over IP/P2P through broadband and that the industry as a whole (and VM in particular) have been slow to scale-up their infrastructure to cope in comparison to some other countries.

    However up to now (and I expect also in the short to medium term future) the vast majority of VM customers that get throttled (bandwidth only *sigh*) will be those illegally downloading copyrighted material. Not only is this indefensible (see "Reg readers should be capped..." above for an eloquent explanation) it also means that those of us using the legitimate high-bandwidth services you list will have less access to those services.

    Perhaps VM (and other ISPs) will come up with a more sophisticated means of bandwidth allocation that gives some preference to legitimate services. (Pause with baited breath awaiting the hysterical howls of protest that it is our inalienable right to download whatever the f*ck we like at the highest possible bandwidth). In the meantime, as a moderate and increasing user of cable broadband, I am prepared to accept throttling as a much more preferable alternative to a free-for-all.

  33. Giles Jones Gold badge

    In some ways they're right

    They're not capping, that suggests a limit which you hit and then can't download anything else. They're restricting, not capping. Reducing your download speed, not saying you can't download more.

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Dangerous driving porcine bandits

    Why, if you choose to pay additional monthly fees for a higher bandwidth service are you consistently accused of being a hog, a criminal, causing car crashes or subject to various other forms of abuse just for actually wishing to take advantage of that bandwidth?

    I'm aware it's a consumer service, not a guaranteed leased line, but everyone should each get the slice of the pie that they pay for.

  35. Josh

    Bandwidth

    I worked at a cable co in the US for a few years. My experience has been that these (US) cable companies never have enough resources for the amount of users, in hopes that not everyone will jump on at the same time, thereby increasing the savings(profit). They even do this with DHCP leases for the devices attached to the CPEs. To save on server (and admin) costs, they don't have as many IPs as they have customers, and usually that works out OK. But then again, when everyone DOES get on at the same time, suddenly we're running out of IPs, the backbone latency starts to skyrocket (in a bad way, similar to DDOS...think 5 DS3s and a handful of DS1s connecting us to the big-boys (sprint, verizon, etc...), trying to feed ~10,000 subscribers, using 3 or 5 Mbps cable connections), and the tech support lines get so flooded they ring busy. Most customers know there is a system problem by that busy ring. What we aren't allowed to tell them is that although we accept payment for a service advertised as 3-5mbps, we don't have the capacity to allow every paying customer to get that throughput to the internet at the same time. What the customer is told when they call in is that "While we can't guarantee you will be able to obtain 3 or 5 mbps through our backbone to the big-boys and the internet, you ARE getting the 3 or 5 Mbps they pay for, and if you download a file from OUR SERVERS you will see the appropriate download rates. "

    Sure you don't have to provide 3 or 5 mbps if the fine print reads 'actual rates may vary according to insert-PR-BS-here'; but that's just poor customer service, and that's why it is wrong.

    Who in their right mind thinks a customer will happily (and knowingly) pay for the 'ability' to connect at those speeds, when they can't be reliably utilized?

    As an analogy, some customers would call and ask if switching from 10mbs LAN to 100mbps LAN would improve their internet, and obviously, you're connection to the modem is 10xs faster, but not anywhere past that point in the route. All of them said something to the effect of 'then why bother paying to upgrade?'.

    If the customer can't realize the value they are being sold on, they WILL leave, in search of something better, or at least more transparent. Also, I am highly suspicious of any company that blames their problems on their customers. It IS the companies responsibility to adapt to the customer's needs and want's, otherwise, someone else will, and you're left SOL, with no revenue.

    You could say customers 'might' reach the full bandwidth potential they were sold on, causing a loss of service or high latency for other users, or you could just as easily say it is VM's fault, for not having the infrastructure that 'might' be required to keep everyones service usable. It all depends on which end of the fiber you look from, and which dotted line you signed on (or didn't). From the customer's point of veiw, 'Page cannot be displayed' means 'the service you are paying for is no longer available'. Even if it's wrong, that's what the customer expects, and if that can't be provided for, the customer will find someone who can.

  36. Aubry Thonon

    "unlimited"

    First of all, let me say that I'm an Aussie ADSL (not + or 2) user with a 512 lkine and happy about it. Why? Because I'm on an unlimited account: not capped, not throttled. Yes, I could move to a faster line (my ISP provides for up to 20Mb ADSL2) but I would loose my "unlimited" status. (~30-50Gb of downloads per month, varies... nowhere near the theoretical maximum but I'm happy)

    So why ADSL? Because while cable has a much higher total bandwidth, you are sharing said bandwidth with any other Tom, Dick and Harry in the area who happens to be using the same Fibre as you. And I don't play well with others. ^_^

    As for Virgin Media (UK)... I'm sorry, any way you slice it, their offer is not "unlimited". It's not even "with no download limits". English 101 will show you this: once you download past a certain limit, your speed is limited. Wow, a limit based on dowloads... could this be <gasp> a DOWNLOAD LIMIT? Yes, I think it might.

    Personally, I would not sign with VM; not because they have throttling (a common enough practice - my ISP offers plans with Capping or Throttling, your choice) but because as far as I can see they blatantly lie in their adverts and slide some double-talk in the mix to make sure they can do what they want to their customer.

    Remember, ANY limit based on downloads IS a "download limit"; so if an ISP is stupid enough to advertise "unlimited, with no download limit", make them stick to their promises. It might actually make them more honest about what they offer.

  37. tim

    seems fair enough

    i'm not overly thrilled by it but at the end of the day do you really need to be downloading 3GB a day everyday, I work from home, listen to internet radio all day am constantly uploading and downloading large files, I'm a developer so get sent loads of psd's and fla's etc, dowlnload software, I've even been known to tinker with utorrent and I dont get anywhere near that and even if you do, it's only for 4hrs ffs.

  38. Paul

    Joost

    For the person who mentioned 'what about joost'?

    Well for the XL level joost will run just as fine at throttled 5Mb as full speed 10/20Mb so if you are addicted to watching the minimal content on Joost the VM throttling should not affect your view pleasure.

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    UK ISP's underperformers....?

    I have just canned my ISP, Orange after seeing what had been an adequate service descend into shambles. The ISP don't seem aware of who has purchased what product, the helldesk is unusable, their real technical are unreachable, their mail servers unavailable (because of DNS issues), and their third party sales partner mis-sells products and services. Never mind that what had been upgraded to an 8Mb service by Wanadoo now no longer manages more than 2Mb (router still syncs at 8Mb though), or that the price I'm bound to is 5 quid over the odds (unless I accept a new 12 month contract of course....) All the aforementioned were annotated in my account details. The customer service manager still didn't understand what my problem was..... Virgin and Orange aren't alone here. In the UK we have broadband that consistently fails to approach the speeds advertised and much of this has been blamed on LLU.

    Truth is, just like every consumer company out there, everyone in the market place seems bent on slithering out of their sales promises, delivering the least possible amount of product and filling their boots. Time ISPA was given some teeth perhaps ?

  40. William Bronze badge

    You get what you pay for.

    The maximum speed limit on the motorway is 70mph. I don't expect to do anything like that at rush hour. They could build more lanes, but then everyone would complain about high taxes.

    If you want a dedicated speed 24/7 with no caps then get a dedicated line and you will discover how much people like me are subsidising you big bandwidth hogs.

    I am sick to the back teeth of hearing people "how unfair it is" that they are being throttled. I hardly ever reach my allocated download "limit". So it seems the rest is being taken by someone else. So either shut up, or pay up. Let's not forget - you owe me some bandwidth, so where is my refund...

  41. Anigel

    Title

    William you are not subsidising us. You are just paying for a service then not using it. Like buying a 10 slice toaster and only ever using it to toast 2 slices. That is your choice.

    You are underusing the product you have purchased. Just because some people do use the full capacity of the product they are paying for does not mean they are somehow stealing your limit just because you do not use it.

  42. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    What They Should Of Done...

    ... Was only apply a throttle to customers using illegal p2p fine sharing software and other illegal activities which hog up a lot of the bandwidth. That way customers who use legal services such as Joost are not affected - After all isn't that what broadband internet is meant to be designed for and what cable always used to brag about their fabulous service?!

    Now its just as crap as all the others, and no longer worth the money they are trying to charge for it. Hence why cable is in a sorry state of affairs and looking at being taken over in a private equity bid.

    Thats what happens when you still have old NTL management running the show, I mean look at the state NTL was in before the Telewest merger and re-brand and they dragged poor Telewest down to their s*** level!!

  43. Jonathan Wickett

    VM Untruths

    2 weeks ago I called virgin customers services asking about this £2 increase and 20mb upgrade. They assured me that this £2 would only be charged when I got the upgrade. I repeated this back to them, asking if they were sure, they said yes there sure.

    Lo and behold my bill arrives this week, and my internet is now £37! but no upgrade. So onto the phone i go and ask them what the hell is going on. I explain what I was told previously, to which they reply that the person who told me that was mistaken, and that £37 was now the price. Oh no its not I said, much to their suprise :) I demanded to be put through to disconnections dept, where I tell them in no uncertain terms that I aint paying more money for something I am not getting!

    The guy then checks the upgrade date for my area (southwest) and confirms it'll be up to3 months. So he then offers me my £2 back until I get my upgrade.

    VM must think we are stupid, £2 more for a restricted connection,and customer services that simply dont know what they are doing!

    Dont do the typical British thing and just accept it, complain and let them know we wont put up with it !

  44. NickR

    Title

    http://abcde.co.uk/virginmedia/stm.html has a lot of useful figures.

    "To avoid STM your average KB per second (over the 8 hour peak period) must be equal to or below these figues:

    Broadband Size: M average speed 12.4KB/s or 99.2Kb/s.

    Broadband Size: L average speed 26.7KB/s or 213.6Kb/s.

    Broadband Size: XL average speed 109.2KB/s or 873.6Kb/s."

    IMHO the limits are far too aggressive.

    I think that the price should be adjusted to compensate for difference in maximum monthly download available

    I think this would be the fair thing to do as our "unlimited" monthly download limit will drop by around 2/3rds !

  45. Gordon Windridge

    Virgin speeds variations

    I'm not in a cable area but I am with Virgin via the phoneline. I find that up till about 4pm the speed is fine (4-6Mbits/sec) but comes between 4 and 6pm the speed drops dramatically. Usually in the evening my speed is about 250-500Kbits/sec, but on occasion it has even dropped below 150. Needless to say, any serious downloading ghets done during the daytime. I was considering changing my ISP to Sky but I've read so many bad reports from people changing to sky that I have decided to stay put with virgin.

  46. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    NTL..Capping..moneyspinner

    NTL or VIRGIN MEDIA Capping Fiasco

    Basically they are paving the way for STREEMING movies,Tv etc

    this you will have tp PAY for again through the nose!

    If only 5% are causing the problem,CAP them by all means..we`ve all downloaded..

    I mean why do you need anything over 4mb download speed ?

    you only need it for movies,TV shows,MP3s.....

    CAPPING those people will do more good.....I mean

    I`m on 2mb download.....and I can have my speed halfed...Twice a day for downloading more than 350mb in any 8 hours?

    someone on 4/10/20 or the new proposed 50mb download if cut by 75%

    will still be loading x4/5 faster than me ..that taught them....

    CAP the heavy users and suck their £40.00 a month off them.........they`ll leave

    Leave the little leechers alone.........

    to put it into perspective......what you don`t download today........

    you can download tomorrow...ha ha!!!!!!

  47. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Teach Virgin Media a little lesson

    How about if everyone download ONLY between 4pm and Midnight!

    Download ONLY at Peak times,you`ll be Capped at off-peak.

    In addition since everyone is being capped...No point in having a 10 or 20 mb line

    so STOP paying £39.+ a month......ALL drop to a 2mb line @ £9.99 per month

    1. Clogs their lines up

    2. reduces revenue...which is ALL they want anyway

    point is VIRGIN offered everyone 12 mths contract of UNLIMITED USAGE

    wether you wish to abuse the download excessive amounts of "data" is purely an individuals choice....

    If you just surf...then i personally have never been affected..i`ve has 10mb line..

    and now on 2mb line......I have no problems.

    VIRGIN boffins say 5% abuse their system..if thats the case..CAP THEM ONLY..

    VIRGIN know who they are........they monitor ALL our accounts,they know which newsgroups people use.....

    Remember this Company could stop all the pornography sites using filters...

    on their servers

    Now WHY don`t they????

    that ALONE would probably solve the 5% band hogging

    come on Mr Branson ....pick on the corporates and leave the little guy alone..don`t spit your dummy out beacause SKY is shafting you,at least you now no just a little bit of what we feel like .. ha ha

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