back to article Virgin Media, Readers - an apology

Dear readers, we owe you an apology. This morning, we could - darn it, we should - have written up Virgin Media's announcement that the "UK’s fastest broadband reaches one million homes" and drawn the obvious - but erroneous - conclusion that a million customers have signed up for Virgin's 100Mb/s broadband package. Many of …

COMMENTS

This topic is closed for new posts.
  1. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    so...

    Pats on the back all round then?!

  2. Lionel Baden

    1 more in the bag

    to throw at the virgin fans.

    Virgin almost went better than BT by stating their top package would not be capped in any form whatsoever during a watchdog interview but a couple of months later went back on their word.

    Pity really as i would of probably started recommending virgin had that been the case.

  3. Richard 51

    Glad you're on the ball

    Probably the price and the sometimes poor latency that comes with Virgin. But to give them their due, the speed is pretty close to the advertised rate, unlike some of its competitors.

    1. Steve Loughran

      Not in BS6 during term time

      Go search for "virgin media BS6" and see that VM quality depends purely on load, and in some parts of the country they are overloaded.

  4. Conrad Longmore
    FAIL

    Meh

    Given that the Superhub basically doesn't work on the 50Mbps package, is there any guarantee that this will actually work?

    My tip is this: if you're happy with your VM connection then don't piss about with it.

    1. Blue eyed boy
      Thumb Down

      I'm happy with my Virgin Media ....

      .... from a Technical Merit point of view.

      If only it weren't so ******* expensive.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    virgin media

    Recently I contacted VM a couple times about upgrading to the 50MB service. I was told out-right that they have no plans on introducing any traffic shaping or throttling on their 50MB service and that it would cost me around £57/month all in (including my TV and telephone package). I called back only a week or so later after seeing on their website that they have announced throttling for file sharing ports only to find that it was also going to cost me £64/month and not the £57 I had been quoted.

    The file sharing doesn't particularly bother me, its the fact that I was told one thing then they did another, on top of it costing me more money than originally quoted.

    Surprisingly enough I cancelled the install and have stuck with my 10MB service instead.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    ASA anyone

    When i am sitting in the lounge watching TV, I am "ready" to go and make a cup of tea in the advert break.... but that does not mean i am.

    Since no-one cares what lies are spread about broadband in the name of its take up, (unlimited connection and up-to etc), it is not surprising that it has become the norm for people like Virgin to say whatever they like, no matter how far the perceived understanding is from the truth.

    I wonder if we could get that term recognised in law "Perceived understanding" .. it would start to make people say something you understand not just something that is technically 'true' in their eyes.

  7. Number6

    Slow Router

    I'm not sure that many common home routers will cope with 100Mb/s throughput, so the value is limited to those prepared to spend even more on something decent, or stick to a single PC.

    So far 10Mb/s has been adequate here, although it would be nice to have uploads at the same rate (they did increase that recently, to give them some credit).

  8. Martin 19
    Coat

    My cock reaches 20 million women

    in the same way that VM 100Mb 'reaches 1 million homes'.

    It *is* technically available to at least that many....although not all at the same time I have to say. That would present some insurmountable logistical issues.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Thumb Up

      How do you...

      ...traffic shape that then?

      That'll solve your logistical issues, but in this "PC" age, I'm almost frightened to ask what your traffic-shaping model would look like...

  9. The Cube
    Stop

    100Mb of what exactly?

    Virgin's peering is crap and can't even fill a 10Mb connection with anything that isn't already cached in their local proxies. This "up to" maybe "ready for" perhaps, with a following wind 100Mb connection is the ISP equivalent of building a 12 lane freeway from your house to the New Cross one way system.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Slimy sales person

    Is this related to the slime who knocked on my door at 8pm yesterday asking me which telephone provider I used?

    When I asked him why he wanted to know he said he was selling Sky.

    At that non-sequiter, I said goodbye and shut the door.

    Is Sky sold over broadband lines? I thought it was a satellite thingy?

    1. TBrig

      AFAIK Sky runs over BT phone lines

      I had a Sky salesoik turn up on my door last month - I was specifically targeted as I had Virgin Media broadband.

      Strangely, he was able to tell me that their 'upto 20mb' service was more than the 'almost always 10mb over fibre' service I had from VM, but when I asked about contention ratio and a couple of other things he professed ignorance of 'that techie stuff'.

      AFAIK Sky broadband goes over the same plain old telephone service that BT supply for everyone else.

      1. chr0m4t1c

        Same here

        They claimed they could offer me 20M broadband to match what I get from VM (which always returns at least 19M when I do a speed test).

        Except that I already know that the (now unused) BT line into my house struggles to do 4M because it's pretty much a bit of string between two tin cans.

        And their £20 a month saving is slightly offset by the fact that I have to pay BT line rental in order to use Sky's service.

        The nice young lady couldn't figure out why I didn't want to switch to a much worse service in order to save maybe £10/month at a push.

        Even funnier, she told me that "everyone else in the street" was switching to them - like that was a reason that I should - but really struggled to answer when I asked if that included the two houses that had just installed cable in the last month and the guy who happens to be a VM engineer (being a small street that made almost 50% VM customers without even asking about the other houses).

        I told her she should probably go away when she tried to tell me that one of my immediate neighbours "definitely" had switched and I had to explain that I doubted that as the house was empty because the landlord is in the middle of refurbishing it.

  11. LawLessLessLaw
    Boffin

    upstream ?

    100Mbps x 1m houses = 100,000 Gbps

    Somehow I don't think they can supply that

  12. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bad El'Reg..

    Dont you know modern journalism is simply repeating exactly what you were told by the PR guy at whatever event.

    Asking real follow up questions and using your own common sense is a no no!

  13. Leona A
    Flame

    So am I reading

    that 'The Reg' got something wrong? Surely not, that's never happened before.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Swing...

      ...and a miss.

  14. Bob H
    Paris Hilton

    Pffft

    I received a SuperHub recently when I was convinced to move to 30Mbit/sec. I now get 22Mbit/sec instead of 18Mbit/sec and my VoIP no longer works. Great.

    Bob

  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I also noticed their claim that HD TV is available "at no extra cost"

    That's "no extra cost" other than the one-off fee to replace your cable box, then the increase in subscription rate to get the largest range TV package before you actually get the HD channels?.

  16. Richard Gadsden

    OC-3

    Live in the right place and you can get much more than a mere 100Mb.

    I had my own OC-3 at one point in time. Uncontended, and with plenty of upstream.

    Yeah, it's not generally available, but so f**kin what - go live on the right campus.

This topic is closed for new posts.

Other stories you might like