Alternatives to Virgin Media Broadband

[CHR1S]

I have been with them under whatever name they went by for maybe 10 years now and the service has been great but alas I have had it with the throttling, it’s just plain unfair!

I am a downloader, but not one that I would consider extreme and having not used my internet for over a week I downloaded a couple of missed TV episodes (yes I know, naughty me) and bam hit the cap. 5 Hours later I tune in to watch the footy (actually legal so ner) on my sky player and bam hit the cap again.

 

So I can pay for the 20Mb service and have a bigger download allowance but get pretty much the same speed (about 12mb on both 10 and 20 Mb service - strange huh) or look to go elsewhere.

 

O2 bang on to me weekly that I am entitled to free broadband but as I’m with virgin I can’t do the checker as I have no BT line and I don’t know anyone in my road who is on BT! So they estimate about 2Mb - I’m in Birmingham for god sake - 2Mb????

 

How do I use my internet at any time without a stupid cap, 2Mb is too low but I would take 5 - 8Mb unlimited any day. If anyone can get round the "you don’t have a BT line" carp and check my supposed speed please PM me.

 

Taa

Edited April 15, 2010 by CHR1S

[Fatmas]

The 50Mb Virgin package doesn't have a cap AFAIK - You will obviously pay for the privilege though.

[CHR1S]

Yeh I forgot to say, dont want to spend more, especially if O2 are offering free!

[ZeroHour]

Virgin tbh is for mugs. http://www.samknows.com should be able to tell you where your nearest exchange is firstly. Then you could try to guess the distance and estimate from there.

[CHR1S]

Thanks Zero, im guessing it looks between 1.5/2 miles via road and 1.2 miles as the crow flies. This is my exchange SamKnows Broadband - Availability - Kings Norton (CMKING) Exchange

 

Edit -

 

ADSL2+ available at ~4Mbps

Be Unlimited

O2 broadband

UK Online (incl 20M packages)

Sky Max (LLU) (16M for £10pcm)

 

It says these are avaliable to my house, what sort of speed is it saying I will get (~4Mbps means nothing to me)

Edited April 15, 2010 by CHR1S

[ZeroHour]

The other x factor in your deal is you WILL have to get a BT line @ £12 approx per month

I think it means around 4mb but its always a pure estimate until adsl is activated really.

The other thing to remember is if your area get fibre to cabinet you could get 40mb and thats being enabled in a lot of places this year.

[CHR1S]

Virgin LR is £11 so no difference really! Thats stupid, they can only guess how fast it will be until you change all your services and take up a 12 month contract? Good way not to get my ££

[mavhc]

What you really need is a way to stop yourself going over the limits, either cap your speed during monitored hours, or, cleverer, monitor for, say, 75% of limit, then cap at an even lower rate. would need a router that does snmp and rate limiting of course

[featured_spectre]

BT line rental for me is £9.95 a month with unlimited broadband at £24.95 a month. So I pay £35 a month, get capped at around 500GB per month for reasonable usage downloads. I have no issues with BT as I use iplayer, 4 on demand, sky player and I play my online games religiously every night. Haven't yet hit the cap!

 

The service is good, they don't disrupt my uptime as the majority of the work is carried out at 3am-7am if any is needed. Can't complain, also I am less than 200 yards from my exchange so I KNOW I am getting my 20Mb :-)

[kmount]

Virgin tbh is for mugs. http://www.samknows.com should be able to tell you where your nearest exchange is firstly. Then you could try to guess the distance and estimate from there.

 

Except for those of us who can and do get 50mbit from them whilst nobody has LLU'd the local exchange.

 

EDIT: Also, you should find that the 20mbit rate limiting cap is 5mbit from my experience whereas the 10mbit one is 2mbit as you've seen might be worth a complaint in their direction to get that sorted.

 

I'd never go back to ADSL, it's just too temperamental in my experience.

[CHR1S]

Except for those of us who can and do get 50mbit from them whilst nobody has LLU'd the local exchange.

 

EDIT: Also, you should find that the 20mbit rate limiting cap is 5mbit from my experience whereas the 10mbit one is 2mbit as you've seen might be worth a complaint in their direction to get that sorted.

 

I'd never go back to ADSL, it's just too temperamental in my experience.

 

Ive had modems swapped lines tested and configs fiddled and VM just said take it or leave it.... Also when they cap you at whatever speed the connection is pretty useless as you see massive packet loss!

[kevbaz]

We swtiched from virgin to SKy and never looke dback, sure im not getting 10mb like i was befor ebut im pretty happy with the 6 that i am, i also dont miss the restting of my modem every 10mins because the connection had flaked out, in the time ive been with sky which is almost a year now ive restarted my modem twice, once of these was just to move some cabling around.

 

I actually pay £10 for the 20mb package knowing im not going to get that speed but it is completely unlimited unfilterd and no fair usage crap

[GrumbleDook]

I've only hit a cap twice so far, and both times VM apologised and reset it with no issues. Not had a problem since on the 10meg service and I am a fairly heavy downloader on iPlayer and via iTunes (*lots* of subscribed podcasts / vodcasts!)

[elsiegee40]

We switched from BT to Sky. Sky took over the phone line as well, so we have no BT landline now. Sky at present is a million times better than BT. I wish we'd had the option to switch sooner.

[Andycat]

We switched from BT to Sky. Sky took over the phone line as well, so we have no BT landline now. Sky at present is a million times better than BT. I wish we'd had the option to switch sooner.

 

Same here, excellent service with no throttling from SKY. And £15 a month less than I was paying BT.

[ZeroHour]

I've only hit a cap twice so far, and both times VM apologised and reset it with no issues. Not had a problem since on the 10meg service and I am a fairly heavy downloader on iPlayer and via iTunes (*lots* of subscribed podcasts / vodcasts!)

 

I have to ask, if you went over the cap why did VM apologise and remove it?

[Trapper]

I'm fairly close by in Quinton, about 3 miles from the Woodgate Exchange. When I was on ADSL2 with Be* I managed to sync at around 17Mbps. That's with some dodgy internal wiring too, so I could have got pretty close to the top.

 

I'm with Virgin now, but I've left my downloading days behind, so only use it for browsing, some gaming and some streaming from BBC/4OD.

Edited April 15, 2010 by Trapper

[mac_shinobi]

The other x factor in your deal is you WILL have to get a BT line @ £12 approx per month

I think it means around 4mb but its always a pure estimate until adsl is activated really.

The other thing to remember is if your area get fibre to cabinet you could get 40mb and thats being enabled in a lot of places this year.

 

I did a check with the new BT infinity and it stated I could get 6mbps when I am already on at least 10mbps

[moobsuk]

Wow I kinda feel lucky I live in Yeovil,Somerset not a very big place town has around a pop of 20,000 and my internet connection is with titanadsl I have a solid 16mb download and a 1.5mb upload with no download caps or throttling (that I have noticed!) coupled with the bt line rental its costing me £31 per month

[Sarconia]

I have recently moved house and having to set up a new Broadband service has been a complete and utter pain in the arse. I wanted to get Virgin (as I have a serious dislike for ADSL connections... and after hearing about numerous nightmares from friends with ADSL connections, I've always tried to avoid it plus I mean, anything that is going down an old fashioned copper phone line/up the pole from the 1970's can't be that fast, right?) but as I live in a shared flat now and one of the other people living there already had it, for some dumb reason, they point blank refused to install it for me... yes, a business actually didn't want my money.

 

I then tried activating the phone line which already existed in the house by using the post office as their service seemed to be pretty good value, however, they failed to even activate the line, despite telling me that it was active every time I complained that it didn't actually work. So, definitely don't go with them!

 

I then decided to sign up with BT as a last resort and it hasn't been a smooth ride at all, they've wasted my time, I yelled at someone in India after asking politely to speak to someone in England and being told "they'd only tell you exactly the same thing" which was a complete load of... as when I did finally get through to someone in England they agreed with me that I actually had a problem, I was then left waiting for an Engineer for half a day which never turned up. Eventually, a few days later, an engineer did turn up and my line was installed, however my internet doesn't work properly even now. I can't work it out, half the time webpages simply don't load... yet I can stay connected to the Playstation Network and MSN so it seems like an intermittent DNS issue, still, it's most likely something at their end messing up which will only take "insert X number of phone calls here" to resolve.

 

I've gone into a bit of a rant there, sorry! It's just that all of these companies seem to be one and the same, they're all useless. Maybe give Sky a go... I've never tried them and nobody else here has bashed them yet.