Should I go with Virgin Media?

[groundmonster]

Hi there I've been renovating my house for the past year and now I am nearly finished. I now have two choices regarding broadband, either pay BT nearly £200 for a new line plus £20 odd a month for a maximum 4.5meg connection or go with Virgin. It's probably worth mentioning that there will be three of us moving in, all of us heavy internet users including online gaming, web developing and filesharing. The house is in Bournemouth (BH10) and I'm wondering if anyone has had good or bad experiences regarding contention ratios in that area?. I'll be going for the XL BB only, no TV or Phone. So what do you think? I've read a lot about not getting the speeds advertised and poor customer service which is making me wary.....

[WHISTLED]

I think with 3 heavy users on one connection you need to worry about traffic management more than contention ratios or their equivalent.

[groundmonster]

Can we get more tahn one connection?

---------- Post added at 23:22 ---------- Previous post was at 23:20 ----------

Can we get more than one connection? we don't mind paying for it

[whydoIneedatech]

Can we get more tahn one connection?

No Virgin will only supply one connection per property, maybe you could have Virgin on cable and say BE on a BT line which will give 2 connections.

[groundmonster]

The thing is BT wants a lot of money for what is in effect one quarter of the speed! Would the business option be better? Taht seems expensive at £50 for ten meg

[WHISTLED]

Well with the use you describe you will probably be capped at 1meg at peak times

[whydoIneedatech]

The thing is BT wants a lot of money for what is in effect one quarter of the speed! Would the business option be better? Taht seems expensive at £50 for ten meg

For that you get Static IP's which you do not get with residential which is dynamic plus better support.

you may be best contacting the business people link below.

http://www.ntltelewestbusiness.co.uk/

Try this link for the business thread on this site .

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/12/33631584-vms-business-broadband.html

[Nemeth]

Check if your exchange is enabled for Be. If your line is good for 4.5meg on ADSL Max you could be looking at speeds of around 12meg with ADSL2 (very speculative guess). That's certainly more than a quarter of the speed of cable, with better upload, no traffic management, better routing, better support and a saving of £10pm to offset the installation charge from BT.

[whydoIneedatech]

The thing is BT wants a lot of money for what is in effect one quarter of the speed! Would the business option be better? Taht seems expensive at £50 for ten meg

This link will show you what is available to you.

Availability checker

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/maps.php

[Nicosia]

Hi there I've been renovating my house for the past year and now I am nearly finished. I now have two choices regarding broadband, either pay BT nearly £200 for a new line plus £20 odd a month for a maximum 4.5meg connection or go with Virgin. It's probably worth mentioning that there will be three of us moving in, all of us heavy internet users including online gaming, web developing and filesharing. The house is in Bournemouth (BH10) and I'm wondering if anyone has had good or bad experiences regarding contention ratios in that area?. I'll be going for the XL BB only, no TV or Phone. So what do you think? I've read a lot about not getting the speeds advertised and poor customer service which is making me wary.....

VM is very good but ur heavy downloaders even with the 20meg vm u will be capped from 10am - 3pm tnen 4pm - 9pm for going over 3GB so u have to be careful of what u dl, dont get me wrong i love VM i always get full 20mbits anytime of day or night but i keep getting carried away and getting capped for 5 hours its very annoying from 20 to 5mbit

[TraxData]

Hi there I've been renovating my house for the past year and now I am nearly finished. I now have two choices regarding broadband, either pay BT nearly £200 for a new line plus £20 odd a month for a maximum 4.5meg connection or go with Virgin. It's probably worth mentioning that there will be three of us moving in, all of us heavy internet users including online gaming, web developing and filesharing. The house is in Bournemouth (BH10) and I'm wondering if anyone has had good or bad experiences regarding contention ratios in that area?. I'll be going for the XL BB only, no TV or Phone. So what do you think? I've read a lot about not getting the speeds advertised and poor customer service which is making me wary.....

I would so NOT get VM if your going to be doing anything sort of heavy usage.

You'll be STM'd and only end up with 5mbit all day.

In which case you'd be better off with ADSL anyway, is 4mbit the max you'd get on ADSL or ADSL+2 ?

http://www.samknows.com click availability checker and check your distance to the exchange and list of suppliers to which you can get :)

---------- Post added at 11:10 ---------- Previous post was at 11:09 ----------

VM is very good but ur heavy downloaders even with the 20meg vm u will be capped from 10am - 3pm tnen 4pm - 9pm for going over 3GB so u have to be careful of what u dl, dont get me wrong i love VM i always get full 20mbits anytime of day or night but i keep getting carried away and getting capped for 5 hours its very annoying from 20 to 5mbit

Yea...so you dont get 20mbit anytime of the day or night do you :p:

VM is 5mbit with 20mbit speed bursts these days.

[Nicosia]

Yea...so you dont get 20mbit anytime of the day or night do you :p:

VM is 5mbit with 20mbit speed bursts these days.

i do get 2.30MB/sec download anytime of day or night unless i download over 3GB lol i just have to make sure i dont do any heavy downloading until 3pm for an hour then 9pm until 10am .. with adsl i had ukonline and i was getting 8mbit with no problem but when i upgraded to 24 that was it the line kept dropping so for me having this cap is a small price to pay to be able to recieve full 20megs plus cable is faster. maybe vm will remove the smt one day hopefully enough customers will leave/and or complain for vmto stop it like bt laughing at them saying u dl for 7mins before ur speed is dropped

[TraxData]

i do get 2.30MB/sec download anytime of day or night unless i download over 3GB lol i just have to make sure i dont do any heavy downloading until 3pm for an hour then 9pm until 10am .. with adsl i had ukonline and i was getting 8mbit with no problem but when i upgraded to 24 that was it the line kept dropping so for me having this cap is a small price to pay to be able to recieve full 20megs plus cable is faster. maybe vm will remove the smt one day hopefully enough customers will leave/and or complain for vmto stop it like bt laughing at them saying u dl for 7mins before ur speed is dropped

But you do d/l over 3GB, therefore you do not get 20mbit all day/night.

Err, maybe you think so, but you can only download overnight now otherwise your stuck with 5mbit all day, which if you work it out is WORSE than adsl1/2.

Dont forget overnight STM comes into play soon, what you going to do then?

Yep..VM are not too happy about BT's comments and are moaning at the BBC to remove it, but why should they have to? VM lie all the time.

P.S If your line kept dropping like that it's most likely that something was wrong with your cabling/faceplate etc or noise ratio was too high, easily fixable.

[Nicosia]

But you do d/l over 3GB, therefore you do not get 20mbit all day/night.

Err, maybe you think so, but you can only download overnight now otherwise your stuck with 5mbit all day, which if you work it out is WORSE than adsl1/2.

Dont forget overnight STM comes into play soon, what you going to do then?

Yep..VM are not too happy about BT's comments and are moaning at the BBC to remove it, but why should they have to? VM lie all the time.

P.S If your line kept dropping like that it's most likely that something was wrong with your cabling/faceplate etc or noise ratio was too high, easily fixable.

over night? 24/7 smt?!?! i hope they will increase the dl limit then if its going to be 24/7 caps, well for people who dont dl much its ok but i keep finding more to dland get carried away and mu meter doesent help like psp games and online greek tv and youtube i use a lot.and rappidshare. if they do 24/7 capping ill never be able to use the connection i may aswell have no connection its like paying for this great connection and not be allowed to use it:S whats wrong with VM? if they are going to mae 24/7 caps they should at least mae the packages cheaper espesially when adsl do 4megs faster already for cheaper with no caps..

but the thing is the ukonline tech support line said because of the quality of my line and the distance from exchange 2.3km i will never get higher then 8meg but i left ntl for ukonline as soon as they offerd 8meg ill never leave vm even though there was no limit to dl with ukonline i was dling about 500GB on some months and they dident say anything, ive been capped 7 times now with vm one last night also within 2 weeks, so well see what happens but i still rather vm with cap and ful 20megs rather then adsl with no faster then 8megs

vm shouldent as bbc to remove them they should remove the caps and increase the upload

[TraxData]

over night? 24/7 smt?!?! i hope they will increase the dl limit then if its going to be 24/7 caps, well for people who dont dl much its ok but i keep finding more to dland get carried away and mu meter doesent help like psp games and online greek tv and youtube i use a lot.and rappidshare. if they do 24/7 capping ill never be able to use the connection i may aswell have no connection its like paying for this great connection and not be allowed to use it:S whats wrong with VM? if they are going to mae 24/7 caps they should at least mae the packages cheaper espesially when adsl do 4megs faster already for cheaper with no caps..

but the thing is the ukonline tech support line said because of the quality of my line and the distance from exchange 2.3km i will never get higher then 8meg but i left ntl for ukonline as soon as they offerd 8meg ill never leave vm even though there was no limit to dl with ukonline i was dling about 500GB on some months and they dident say anything, ive been capped 7 times now with vm one last night also within 2 weeks, so well see what happens but i still rather vm with cap and ful 20megs rather then adsl with no faster then 8megs

vm shouldent as bbc to remove them they should remove the caps and increase the upload


Although 2.3Km away, if the line is good you can get around 10+mbit on that, requires good faceplates, good wiring (internal) etc as well though.

What you fail to see is getting 8mbit through ADSL+2 you'll get higher speed and be able to download more than you can with VM, if your only getting 20mbit for say 8 hours/day there is no reason to move from ADSL+2 imo.

VM is not a company you should choose to be loyal to, as far as they are concerned your connection should only be used for looking at emails faster.

Yes overnight STM is already on the tables for rollout, no the limits are not going to be any higher.

[smeagoly1]

Even though when I had 20meg cable with them, I had no real problems, great pings and speeds. Their draconian STM Policy would negate all this if as you say, you may have a few heavy users in the household.

I's avoid their ADSL package like the plague though.

Others recommended like Be and O2 do sound great value, but this all depends on the distance and quality of the BT line and exchange.

A new BT line install should be around £125. But if you get the sky package, they will so I understand, refund this by means of so much off your monthly bills for 3 months or so.

If it's just gaming, i would still go for VM cable in my area. Always had very good steady low pings. But trhen again I don't download very much thesedays.