back to article Virgin Media begins 100Mb upgrades

Virgin Media today said it will begin increasing the maximum downstream broadband speed available via its network to 100Mbit/s, and maximum upload speed to 10Mbit/s. The gradual programme will take more than 18 months to cover the country, it said, and is due for completion in mid-2012. The first areas scheduled for upgrade, …

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  1. Graham Jordan

    on 50mb service

    And use newsgroups.

    I rarely slip below 40mb.

    Bloody beautiful it is. One of those things you don't realise how great it is until you queue up 100gb before you go to bed and find it all nicely downloaded for you in the morning. My other half watches xvids on her Xbox. 3 minutes and its down, it takes longer to repair/extract than it does to download.

    Unless Virgin decided to throttle 50mb I don;t see the urgency to move, but would take it up in a snap the moment they imposed restrictions.

  2. PoorLumpyPony
    FAIL

    Like the idea

    But there support was so unbelievably poor:

    When my line kept flapping they assured me it was due to sofware on my PC, took them weeks to agree to come out and fix (wasnt software on my PC causing the link between the local exchange and my router suprisingly).

    Also after moving house and they being unable to supply at my new location tried to charge me for the rest of the contract because they were unable to supply, had to take them to small claims in the end....

    Anything that makes sky look good is pretty frickin poor

  3. Blue eyed boy
    Unhappy

    What will happen next

    The new rate will become available, at suitably inflated fees, to the top rate customers.Everybody in the middle layers will (by default) be moved up a layer in speed (and price). Bottom rate customers like Yours Truly will find his bottom-rate broadband speed (and close-to-the-upper-limit-of-affordability price) disappear from the repertoire.

    Now where did I last see my old modem?

  4. Dave Robinson
    FAIL

    Gigabit copper rolled out to house in Worcestershire

    Big announcement... I am willing to offer gigabit ethernet to anyone who wants to lay a cat 6 cable into my house in Worcestershire. Oh, almost forgot to mention the slight contention issue of the 7.6mbps ADSL connection, but hey, that's not important.

    The point is, when Virgin cable covers the whole country, stories like this one will have some significance. Currently, they don't.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Oh the irony

    I'm in the unusual position of getting crap speed on my BT line died to line length but get virgin.

  6. Stefan 2
    Flame

    An opportunity?

    An opportunity for FAIL.

    I had my Virgin Media broadband upgraded today. I had a nice 20Mb connection which ran at top speed all the time.

    Now I have a 50Mb connection which is currently running at 16Mb, though the day's average is admittedly 28Mb. Sadly, my upload speed has stayed at 0.72Mb. A far cry from the 1.5Mb (and soon 5Mb) I should be seeing.

    Engineer saw the speeds. "Nothing I can do mate, the modem's working".

    There's a network problem in my area. A manager will call me in a couple of hours. That was 5 hours ago.

    My power levels are both too high and too low. No suggestion as to what is to be done about that.

    If I upgrade to 100Mb, I wonder if I'll get back to where I was, this time yesterday? It'll only cost me £14 more per month.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      WTF?

      Fail

      You're aware there's a network problem, yet you're comparing your speed today on the new package against the speed yesterday on the old package? How about you wait until the problem is resolved? FYI the 50Mb product uses different frequencies and different hardware than the <=20Mb products, so it's entirely reasonable to be having issues with 50Mb yet not on 20Mb.

      Coincidentally, there were also network problems in my area when we have the 50Mb connection moved to our new house. A day or so later we were getting 52Mbps, and still are http://www.speedtest.bbmax.co.uk/results.php?t=1288270162&v=11240247

  7. Dave Moffatt

    Don't hold out for cable network expansion

    Virgin are BT's bitch.

    BT Wholesale manage the POTS ('phone) part of the network

    Openreach maintain the POTS part of the network

    BT Wholesale provide all of the backhaul

    and now

    Virgin are installing DSLAMs in BT exchanges to take advantage of BT's cheap and available unbundled access network.

    Forget about expanded DOCSIS service.

  8. Dave 120
    FAIL

    the rich get richer... or fast get faster anyway

    Speaking as someone who is 4 miles from their exchange and can't get more than 500k ADSL and no cable I really couldn't care less.

    But hey, why not wring more money out of the people who have good speeds and don't need any more. Its surely more profitable than having to do a bit of work to get some new customers by laying more cable, above or below ground.

  9. Richard Boyce
    Thumb Down

    Overloaded and unreliable

    I left Virgin a couple of years ago after suffering chronic problems with broadband and customer disservice.

    In the summer, I stayed with a relative in a Devon village who unfortunately chose Virgin cable broadband with a Virgin-branded wireless router. The service via wire at off-peak was about 4Mbit/s.and the wireless link to the router seemed to have a programmed cap of 1Mbit/s for some reason, probably due to the Virgin firmware driving the router. Quite extraordinary. My hunch is the local cable equipment was installed many years ago, can't handle 10Mbit/s and doesn't have enough village users to justify an upgrade.

    To take advantage of 100Mbit/s, you really need Gigabit Ethernet, but I bet a lot of rich ignorant users using 802.11g will be giving extra money to Virgin simply to have the best without measuring anything.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You bet wrong

      When you upgrade to 50Mb VM supply a new modem and 802.11n router so that you can take advantage of the higher speeds wirelessly. When they introduce 100Mb, they have announced that they will be supplying an 802.11n router/modem combination device that has gigabit ethernet.

  10. Terry 6 Silver badge
    Unhappy

    Hmm

    I usually get my 10mb but;

    1.) I was already on 10mb when the 2mb contracts got their free upgrade. So I'm waiting for my free upgrade to 20mb or above. And I reckon I'll always be waiting, but I'm damned if I'm going to pay more.

    2.) The service is less reliable now. It doesn't slow down. But it does sometime drop off completely for a few minutes in peak periods.

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Go

    Thank you Virgin Media

    I have to say VM has delivered what BT continues to refuse to do even in this day and age.

    I truly wish VM cable business all the best and hope all their members of staff be proud to work for VM helping deliver such a great and proper service to customers.

    I live in an highly populated area where there are multiple closer BT telephone exchanges nearby then the one BT connects my line to, for many years now BT has not even acknowledge people like myself who are only able to receive around 250kb... I always said if these broadband providers had to refund the difference, in comparison to what they advertise to what they actually deliver, then the away broadband providers look at customers in the UK would quickly change and the services would soon be upgraded.

    Anyway BT for me is a lost cause that I could not even compare to some of the third world countries when it comes to deliver fast broadband.

    As a home user, I decided to contact VM business manager and explained how bad the situation was and showed my interest for VM services, and also explained some obvious facts in case they were not aware about my area, and soon after I received an email back advising me that my area was now scheduled to be upgraded to digital services, and also advising me to register my interest for the service and to let all my neighbours in the area do the same and less then 1 year later I now have a 50MB connection :)

    I can actually connect to my work network quicker then i can from the office itself :)

    To be honest, there are no servers out there that can deliver 50mb, however i can download multiple files from different locations simultaneously/parallel, so i'm very happy with my 50MB connection.

    by the way PS3 has a built-in bbc iplayer, very good quality running on the 50mb connection :)

  12. RichardBellamy

    Not always about money

    Some councils e.g. Caerphilly refuse to let Virgin/NTL dig up the streets to lay fibre.

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