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Virgin Promises 100Mbps Connections To UK Homes
registerShift writes "Virgin said it will roll out 100 megabit-per-second broadband connections to homes in the UK. The company said users will experience speeds 'very close' to what's advertised as it plans to deploy cable instead of ADSL used by competitors. 'There is nothing we can't do with our fiber optic cable network, and the upcoming launch of our flagship 100mbps service will give our customers the ultimate broadband experience,' Virgin Media's chief executive officer, Neil Berkett, said. This is just days after the FCC announced aims of 100Mbps by 2020, and companies panned it as unrealistic."
I can't see why a domestic user needs that speed. I've got virgin cable and the 20MB is plenty for me. Perhaps this has something to do with their Tivo deal and on-demand content?
Widespread fast broadband access is key to a healthy economy and world-leading software industry. Just look at Japan, where...ohh, wait.
Slashdot: providing anti-social weirdos a soapbox, since 1997.
A 100MBs line will just create more virgins.
...what is she going to charge?
It really, really, *really* irks me that Virgin's advertising constantly goes on about it being "fibre optic" where ADSL is copper.
Fact is, Virgin is NOT fibre optic in the sense that their advertising implies - at best and in some areas only, they have fibre to the cabinet. They do not offer fibre to the home anywhere (which ironically BT actually are offering in some new-build areas). BT also has FTTC in some areas already and is rolling this out into more rural areas to improve speeds there.
I'm pretty sure Virgin isn't rolling out Fibre-to-the-home, just using their existing cable network, it really irks me that they get to advertise 'Fibre Optic Network' when it's set up pretty much the same as BT Openreach's, just with newer cables to the home.
If I'm not mistaken, BT Openreach is beating Virgin laying out fibre-to-the-home by presumably a long .. long time:
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/4068-openreach-fibre-to-the-home-coverage-to-double.html
The quality of the Virgin brand is not honored by its out of date NTL service infrastructure. It really should be addressed if these services are to be of use to Small business individuals, Research students and the like. A friend of mine who's 20MB connection I share via wireless when I visit him was offline for a whole week, because he was late in paying bill by a couple of days. Having paid the bill, it required two visits by differing engineers and the modem being replaced as they knocked it out. Where is the cost effectiveness in that and in the year 2010. "Pay Bill, switch on", "Don't Pay bill switch off" my suggestion for service slogan. Beware if continuity of service is important to your use of the service.
Not only are they deceitful in their advertising (few if any get the advertised speeds), but Virgin are also one of the biggest enemies of fair Internet access in the UK. Witness the CEO of Virgin Media's reported comments that net neutrality is "a load of bollocks" and that Virgin Media are arranging deals with various content providers to deliver their content faster over their competitors.
Virgin can promise me whatever amount of bandwidth they like (not that they've ever delivered on their advertising from what I hear), I'll never support them and I'll continue to explain to those that ask my advice (I'm one of the go-to technical people for a lot of friends) exactly why I don't like them and suggest competitors.
Aide-toi, le Ciel t'aidera - Jeanne D'Arc.
I'd like to have a 100mbps connection while downloading games, videos and the occasional large file. Beyond that, I don't really need it. With 100mbps I could pull down a gigabyte in less than a minute and a half. At those rates my household would probably spend less than two hours a month actually utilizing the full bandwidth potential. And between the four of us we're online almost 24/7. I'm assuming Virgin is expecting the same from most of their customers. And as soon as heavy users start stressing their network, you'll see caps imposed.
> "There is nothing we can't do with our fibre optic cable network,
Apart from get it anywhere near approximately 50% of the population, and that is mostly in the very dense urban areas. Sure, wonderful if you live in an area that NTL cabled back in the 90s.
Virgin Promises Up To 100Mbps Connections To UK Homes
What you'll really get is something completely different
Summation 2
Well 100Mbit is all good and well but considering Virgin have some serious traffic shaping going on (4-12 peak time speed cap if you, err, use your connection iirc). It's a shame they don't just release a plan where they WONT cap you (ie you pay us XYZ for 200gig etc)
Well it's coax rather than twisted pair cable, so it is a 'better' type of cable the the POTS for this type of data use. But yes 21CN is basically the same, just using the twisted pair as the last mile.
I'm on their 10Mb service and getting close to what they advertise. Specifically my cable modem is reporting that it is connected at 10240000 bits/sec.
I have seen downloads (normally from steam) hit 1.2MB/s.
Even better, my cable modem's uptime is currently 108 days 18h:11m:16s, my (admittedly custom) router's uptime is 107 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes. I've never seen an ADSL connection stay up that long.
I must be one of the few, too. I'm on the 50mbit service, and getting 50.1Mbit/s and 8ms ping according to speedtest.net. My 20Mbit service before was faultless, and also my 4Mbit service when I lived 90 miles from here (with NTL, before rebranded Virgin), and also my 2Mbit from my flat before that, and also my original 600kbit service in 2000 - and everyone I know on Virgin (and NTL before) has a similar story. (no I don't work for Virgin, just a happy customer)
I'm pretty sure Virgin isn't rolling out Fibre-to-the-home, just using their existing cable network
Correct. I'm always amazed they've got away with advertising like this for so long. It's coax to the house.
I used them for eight years through the Telewest/NTL merger and the Virgin rebranding while they got steadily worse and worse. I had their 10Mbps/512kbps service which struggled to provide half that most of the time. I suspect they spend more on advertising than they do on infrastructure.
The awful upload speeds (which they no longer even mention), the afternoon & evening 'subscriber traffic management' (bandwidth throttling) and the Phorm debacle finaly convinced me to dump them for Be DSL with whom I get twice the speed despite being a mile from the exchange.
I've seen. Be Internet in London, around Stockwell. My uptime was the same as my Linux server - both shutdown when I forgot to top up electricity after 9 months...
Yes, it can happen, but most companies don't give a damn about that as most customers don't have a clue.
"an experienced, industrious, ambitious, and often, quite often, picturesque liar" - Mark Twain
my cable modem's uptime is currently 108 days 18h:11m:16s, my (admittedly custom) router's uptime is 107 days, 12 hours, 12 minutes. I've never seen an ADSL connection stay up that long.
Virgin Media had a wide-area crapout for about 3 hours yesterday; my cable modem didn't reboot at all during that time. Uptime is not an indicator of connection stablilty!
You're talking about ADSL: Virgin offer ADSL in non-cable areas. Of COURSE you don't get the advertised speeds: ADSL is notorious for that. Those of us who live in Virgin Cable areas get much faster connections at the advertised speed: I'm paying for 20Mb and I'm getting 20Mb (& I checked the modem before I wrote that).
Basically your complaint is "ADSL is shit. I wish I had cable."
The stated speed of 100MB/s will only work as long you don't actually use it that often. If you use Bittorrent and/or Youtube/iPlayer too much Virgin will trottle down your connection (they do it alreay with their current 40MB/s fibre offer.
Oh, and by the way, your connection will be silently censored.
And let's not forget that Virgin is also a media company: if you, your kids, the neighbour (that managed to hack into your Wireless connection because you used no or easy encryption) or anybody else actually downloads music-tracks/videos/games/apps from some fishy place or other through your connection, expect a call from the appropriate industry's lawyers.
Last but not least, most Virgin companies have incredibly bad costumer service: even when their products are good, you can't trust them not to overcharge you, auto-renew your contracts against your wishes and/or other fishy practices. Usually they include incredible clausules in their contract designed to make it impossible for you to leave (good luck remembering to cancel your contract at a very specific couple of days in the year before they auto-renew).
What I mean by this is, on their 24Mbit plan, I would get no higher than about 200Kbytes per second
24Mbps is an ADSL speed not a cable one, ADSL is notoriously poor because of BT's shitty telephone wires. Virgin cable broadband offers speeds in whole 10s of Mbps - from memory, 10, 20 or 50 currently. I have the 10Mbps service and get pretty-much exactly that; downloads speeds of 1.1MB/s or higher are the norm for me, not the exception.
It's official. Most of you are morons.
Same here - I would never accuse them of not delivering exactly what they promised. But try downloading two episodes of something in 720p and then see how close to 10mbps you get afterwards (hint: you're throttled to 2.5). And I'm unsure how exactly they accomplish the throttling, but it seems to me that once the throttling kicks in even extremely low-bandwidth tasks like simple browsing are painfully slow. 2.5mbps should be plenty fast enough, and yet somehow really isn't.
you dont get traffic shaping on the 50mb package, only 10 and 20. so its unlikely they will shape the 100mb either.
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html
Agreed. It all looks smooth till you go and download that Linux ISO (DVD). The first 3Gb come across at close to the advertised speeds, then you're capped down to 768Kb/s.
I suspect they do something to the stream, too. I've never managed to d/l an ISO yet where the checksum tallied.
I know if I contact them, they'll argue that it's my equipment (it's not - nothing has changed on my side of the network for a couple of years now), and they'll never admit to it being their problem...
You are probably right, but you imply you have not even tried. My advice is to try and contact them letting them know you have a problem.
They may be able to suggest a fix. It may be some weird conflict between your equipment and theirs so listen to any suggestions they make, try them, and if it does not fix it change it back. All this will cost you is a bit of time. If you do not have time to spare then change to a different supplier and see if everything works perfectly with them instead, just remember that they could be worse and you just locked yourself in to their service for a year.
I had a similar problem years ago with TalkTalk. They are certainly not the best ISP but they did confirm to me that the problem was at their end, and that they would be upgrading the routing into my local exchange in about 3 months time and that this would fix it. In about 3 months time, the issue was fixed at their end. I could have moved ISP, but it stopped being so urgent when I knew it was only temporary and I was too lazy to put up with the hassle.
I dont read
and any good torrent client
Are there any torrent clients that don't do that?!
BTW a quick tip, sometimes you will see one chunk keep failing. Usually that is because something is messing with the stream so if you see that issue turn on "encryption" (I put encryption in quotes because if you think you have any privicy at all when torrenting you are dangerously ignorant).
note: i'm known as plugwash most places but i screwd up registering that here somehow in the past and now can't register