New STM rules 2008

[Gary L]

Old
Speed down to 2MB
Upload down to 192Kb
4 hours

New
Speed down to 1MB
Upload down to 128Kb
5 hours

It's worse than what it is now - upload is counted so you only have 325MB to do before you are affected.

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

[foreverwar]

For information, the above is for the L package (4pm till 9pm)

[dev]

Originally Posted by Gary L

Old
Speed down to 2MB
Upload down to 192Kb
4 hours

New
Speed down to 1MB
Upload down to 128Kb
5 hours

It's worse than what it is now - upload is counted so you only have 325MB to do before you are affected.

http://www.virginmedia.com/help/traffic-management.php

325mb up is harder to do than 800mb down but the 1mb seems a bit odd seeing as 4mb is going to 10mb at some point next year typo possibly?

[foreverwar]

Informative post from Toto in another thread

In summary
Amendment of windows so that no customers can have the traffic management policy applied to their service after 2100 daily - the
daily traffic management application window now runs from 1600-2100 (is currently 1600-0000).
* Customers can now only be traffic managed once daily, as opposed to the previous twice. The current 4 hour window changes to 5 hours, but any traffic management application will be for a maximum of 5 hours daily (currently can be 8 hours - 2x4 hours).

[Gary L]

Not a typo, just that 4mb to 10mb is just a rumour to stop you from going to another ISP hasn't the same rumour been around since the rebrand?

[darthlinux]

omfg

[Help!!!]

Any change with the 20MB-XL packages?

[foreverwar]

From the web page

Broadband Size: XL
During peak times, the top 3% of downloaders on the Size: XL package download at least 3GB of traffic each, with the top 3% of uploaders uploading at least 1250MB of traffic each.
Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till 9pm) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 5Mb, with their upload speed set to 192Kb. This will last for 5 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

[Gary L]

The 5 hours is a big part of this now because an average user who works all day and only uses the internet of an evening, now has 5 hours of restricted speed compared to their previous 4 hours which they were complaining about before. this makes it more worthwhile for them to downgrade now if they think about it properly.

And because the upload is now counted that will hit a few thousand more people than it did before, where they didn't download much but just uploaded.

Even them same people who work all day are now having their speed dropped to 1meg instead of the old 2meg! these people are the ones who will lose out the most.

[darthlinux]

this is stupid they have lost sooooooooo many customers due to stm so now they increase it to include upload this is crazy @ TD with the way vm are going now I think they will use stm on 50Mb because they really dont wanna upgrade the network and **** customers over well done vm well done

[Gary L]

Originally Posted by darthlinux

this is stupid they have lost sooooooooo many customers due to stm so now they increase it to include upload this is crazy @ TD with the way vm are going now I think they will use stm on 50Mb because they really dont wanna upgrade the network and **** customers over well done vm well done

They think they are making it better by that you only get STM'd once now instead of twice. I think the average user is in bed before the chance of it happening twice came along. so to them they have got the worst part of this. it really is quite funny that all this has to be done to save them from having to spend any money on the network to fix what they are selling to people.

Are we now going to see another multi million pound advertising campaign saying

*we've changed the STM rules! you only get hit once now instead of twice!*

#must be taken with a phone line, and a 12 month contract.

[brundles]

Generally I'm not that fussed about STM but this is getting a bit ridiculous. The changes clearly show (IMO) that this is an effort to try and push people on to higher packages in the hope that they will upgrade but their usage won't increase.

VM's attitude of "but you have the rest of the day" is getting beyond a joke too. This was their reasoning as to why a 3 hour outage in the evening was acceptable. "But you have the rest of the day and night - it was working for the other 21 hours". Completely ignoring the fact that it is irrelevant during those hours as we're at work or asleep for the majority of them.

[AbyssUnderground]

I think this is stupid. I was quite happy with the previous STM rules. I had no problem what so ever with that. 2Mbps is still, after all, quite fast still. But 1Mbps now? Thats just STUPID. They might as well give everyone unlimited dial-up (but they'll probably STM that as well ).

All other companies are trying to go for higher speed while Virgin are going backwards. Why?

Virgin, stop making stupid retentions deals so you actually get some money and start upgrading this laughing stock of a network.

[Kymmy]

Originally Posted by AbyssUnderground

All other companies are trying to go for higher speed while Virgin are going backwards. Why?

LOL, DSL users get throttled to as low as 128kb on a 8MB line if they go over thier monthly FUP limit (demon)

Kymmy

[AbyssUnderground]

Originally Posted by Kymmy

LOL, DSL users get throttled to as low as 128kb on a 8MB line if they go over thier monthly FUP limit (demon)

Kymmy

Yeah but isn't that a proper cap? The user knows it exists as they sign up for a particular CAP rating, eg 1gb, 5gb, 20gb, 40gb a month etc?

Virgins STM is in the small print, which not everyone has the patience to read. You may say this is their own fault, but I don't think it is. Its something that should be made 100% clear to the customer.