Virgin Media Business Broadband

[chambohambo]

How much does it cost anyone know? and what service speeds do they offer? also is there a traffic management policy for business customers?

[Stuart]

http://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/products__solutions/broadband__internet_services/business_broadband.aspx

[Kymmy]

Just remember as well that business install costs more £50 if you already have cable or £99 if you don't) also all prices are exclusive of VAT.. There is no STM on 4mb or 10Mb but I believe it is on 20Mb though at a lot higher level than residential and also outside of business hours only.

Also fixed IP's are only available on 4/10Mb though not sure if that is now chargable monthly (when I got my 5 IP's it was a single £10 payment on ex-NTL) Fixed IP's are only sticky and not guarunteed fixed and may change on a resegmentation. There is no true fixed rDNS as it's part of the standard VM address pool so you can not run an outgoing SMTP server without problems (you have to use the vm SMTP smarthost)

You're also on a 2 year minimum contract

[Chrysalis]

doesnt business cable have no improved QOS or contention ratio over residental? seems to be lacking for a business product.

[Kymmy]

CS quote a better contention ratio, but better than what is up for debate..

You are right though that it is now lacking as originally it had the following advantages

Better phone line SAL
Better upload speeds
No STM
Sticky IP's
Freephone support
24 hour support

All that was about 15-20 pound more than residential but on a 2 year contract. Now residential has freephone support, has 50Mb with no limit based STM as such and soon all of the residential products will have better upload ratios (no word yet on if business cable will follow or keep ahead with it's upload speed)

If I had a better option here (no adsl2/FTTH/LLU here in the village only ADSL Max) then I'd seriously consider dropping VMB until they got their backsides into gear

[Chrysalis]

From what I know business shares with residental with no QOS. Thats why I asked the question.

[PowerUser]

This is also scrutineered by Fair usage policy!..Which has now got rather silly,as you know.

[Kymmy]

Yep but the Business FUP is likely to be different from residential

[sollp]

http://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/products__solutions/broadband__internet_services/big_red_internet/BRI_landing.aspx?gclid=COOV2PLS66QCFdP92AodGnmV2A

---------- Post added at 14:55 ---------- Previous post was at 14:53 ----------

doesnt business cable have no improved QOS or contention ratio over residental? seems to be lacking for a business product.

Lets not forget that they provide proper business MIA,DIA that cost thousands per month, this is a low cost business broadband product.

[Kymmy]

SollP, as with the other VMB threads the BRI is linked to :rolleyes: the BRI though is only another form of leased line and not relevant to VM broadband users as in Asymetrical cable users..

[qasdfdsaq]

Kymmy, you mention you can get 50mb on VM's business broadband but I've been checking the site for a while and it only mentions 10mb and 20mb options (and 4mb on the features page). I don't see a 50mb business broadband option anywhere. Do you have a direct link?

[Kymmy]

Kymmy, you mention you can get 50mb on VM's business broadband but I've been checking the site for a while and it only mentions 10mb and 20mb options (and 4mb on the features page). I don't see a 50mb business broadband option anywhere. Do you have a direct link?

Nope as I never said that VMB has 50Mb, what I did say was

Now residential has freephone support, has 50Mb with no limit based STM as such and soon all of the residential products will have better upload ratios (no word yet on if business cable will follow or keep ahead with it's upload speed)

[ccarmock]

50 Mb/s is planned for the busines broadband range, but no firm dates are being quoted as yet. Business sales told me 'end of this year or early next' However they did confirm that the 50 Mb/s business service will have a try fixed IP address (not a the current offering of a sticky DHCP assigned address) Whether proper reverse DNS woudl be offered too he didn't know.

Kymmy they do charge all new customers £10 a month for fixed IP address options, but they have not charged customers that had that free as part of their original contract.

Also no news was available on whether upstream bandwidth would be increased. I suggested to the sales person I spoke to that this was essential as the benefits of the current business offering no longer stack up.

[qasdfdsaq]

Kymmy: Sorry, misread. Nearly 2am and under the influence of sleeping pills... :P

ccarmock: Thanks for the info. My consumer 50mb BB is getting installed tomorrow and if they announce the new business one within my 28-day money back guarantee I might just take a look. Otherwise I guess I'll stick with this.

[Squiggle]

Have been looking to swap to Virgin, but for the life of me apart from the improved upload bandwidth I can't see why anyone would pick the business offering over the standard residential package.

[ccarmock]

For me the key isue is the ability to have a fixed (sticky) IP address on the business services. Though at the moment that is only on th 4 Mb/s and 10 Mb/s service.

The 10 Mb/s service has a 768 kbps upload bandwidth. They are being cagy about confirming what that wil increase to.

On the 4 & 10 Mb/s there is no form of STM on the business services, though as Kymmy says we believe there is on the 20 Mb/s business service

[Kymmy]

Have been looking to swap to Virgin, but for the life of me apart from the improved upload bandwidth I can't see why anyone would pick the business offering over the standard residential package.

Fixed IP's in my case as I run a few servers from home where we run our business from... the NO STM isn;t really that relevant as they're mail/web servers that don;t have a lot of bandwidth and when I do my own downloading (about 10gb a day) it's always about 8am I start that and it's finished long before midday

[qasdfdsaq]

To be honest given these points I'd have no reason to choose VM's business services at the moment - in pretty much all respects O2/Be's service is better at a lower price (assuming you have a reasonably good line...) if you can get it.

I for one get twice the upload, free fixed IP, and free 24/7 support for half the price.

[Kymmy]

Can't get anything above 6.5 ADSL Max here, also I do get 5 fixed IP's.. Hence for the mean time I stick with Cable.. Still hoping though that the upgraded uploads on residential coming soon will also find their way onto the business products..

Also the phone line is included in the cost of VMB, where as with your O2/BE it will be seperate.. On the newer VMB packages you may pay extra for the fixed IP's but all calls to 01/02/03 are free 24/7

[ccarmock]

I am on the new package - in fact calls to many overseas landlines are free too - including the US, Europe, South Africa etc. There is a 2p call setup charge but the call is unmetered for the first hour.

[ccarmock]

Latest info from VM Business is that the new business cable broadband products will launch early in the new year. The current 10 & 20 Mb/s services will have improved upstream bandwidth (though they won't say what that will be yet). The 50 Mb/s bsuiness broadband service will launch, and true static IP addresses will be available on the 50 Mb/s and 20 Mb/s services.

The person I spoke to said a lot of the delay has been caused by the move to true static IP addresses as opposed to DHCP assigned long lease addresses.

[Kymmy]

Early next year... so probably the beginning of 2013 :rolleyes: :p:

I'd be happy purely with the increased upoad, my sticky IP's suit fine as I'm happy with the smarthost for outgoing emails, in fact for incoming I transferred everything over to google earlier this year as the spam attempts on the mail server was just swamping it and effecting the web servers

Still though you never know that we might see a you know what!!!

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2011/03/38.gif

[qasdfdsaq]

If the increased upload is better than 1/10th the download, maybe 50/10, and there was better contention ratios than the home product I'd probably consider it. Don't need fixed IPs, I just need fast, reliable upstream for working from home and remote desktop from not home.

Don't suppose there's any news on the 100mbit rolling out to business customers is there?

[ccarmock]

They did say that the 100 Mb/s business service should follow after the residential roll out. Business services always used to have an upstream bandwidth greater than the corresponding residential service, so hopefully when they make the changes this will still be the case.

[moony1234]

It is highly unlikely that the 50mb business upload speed will be >5mbit at initial launch early next year.

20mb may be replaced with something more competitive against ADSL2+ offerings...

Higher upstream will probably come later next year.

Reverse DNS will be offered :)

[ccarmock]

Doyou mean the 20 Mb/s cable upstream will become competative with ADSL2+ offerings or that the 20 Mb/s cable service will be repalced by an ADSL 2+ service?

[moony1234]

Sorry, the downstream on cable [currently 20mb product] will become competitive with the ADSL2+ 24mbit downstream which competitors offer. All cable products should beat the ADSL2+ upstream speeds as far as I know.

[ccarmock]

understood - many thanks - I wos concerend that VMB were considering withdrawing the 20 Mb/s cable offering.

Do you think that will be at the time of launch of Fixed IP on 20 Mb/s or sometime later?

Lastly do you think the VMB 10 Mb/s upstream will also change?

[Kymmy]

I see that the VMB website now has a built in shop for ordering services. Still only 10/20Mb though as a standalone or (EXTRA) with phoneline call/package
Interesting that they've messed up the details as they show 10Mb Extra as .7 upload and 10Mb as .5 upload (seems to be a mishmash of the old 10/4 details also shown on the 20mb details :rolleyes: )

Hopefully this will mean that they're getting ready for better offerings soon..

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2011/03/38.gif

[telfordcable]

How come Virgin Media Business Broadband only get 10 or 20 Meg but no 30, 50 or 100 Meg at all ?

Doesn't make any sense at all ?

[Kymmy]

Separately administered company I suppose.. though there is rumour of other packages coming soon

[weesteev]

It does because business offers data packages, why would a small business need a 50Mb connection, if they need that kind of bandwidth then they are best to get something like a managed broadband service instead.

Although talk of 50Mb for SMB has been rumoured for a while now...

[Chrysalis]

because it cuts into more lucrative markets.

[Kymmy]

It really does though cut a lot of small businesses from the customer pool. They've got their Big Red Internet for everyone else so I don't see why they're bypassing the small guy especially in this economy.

[Ignitionnet]

Yep 50Mb business service is coming soon.

It wasn't around before due in no small part to the need to have static IP addresses as part of the deal. Customers will be wanting those in return for the likely quite big premium over the residential service.

[Chrysalis]

will it have the full 5mbit upload?

[Ignitionnet]

Ya.

[Kymmy]

Yep 50Mb business service is coming soon.

It wasn't around before due in no small part to the need to have static IP addresses as part of the deal. Customers will be wanting those in return for the likely quite big premium over the residential service.

The 20Mb service has yet to have static IP's so not much of an excuse ;)

[Ignitionnet]

Depends on how many complaints and requests for static IPs they got really.

[ccarmock]

They often don't have the top residential tier available for sometime. Their offerings right now have been left well behind by others and they know that. They are due to launch a 30 Mb/s and a 50 Mb/s service. Both will have the option of a true fixed IP address(s) with the option to have multiple routable IP addresses if required.

I gather the development work to offer a fixed IP address that won't change even across network resegmention has taken longer than they thought, but hear that new services are due within approx 6 weeks and then true fixed IP address (as opposed to the current 'sticky' IP addresses) will be offered across the tiers.

I hear that the upload bandwidth will match the residential ones (whereas prior to the upgrades the business service exceeded the corresponding residential tier).

[m74uk]

My company has signed up for 100mb upload & download via a dedicated line.
(I believe we're having to dig up the street for it)

Can't remember the exact price but it's something in the region of £12,000 per Annam

[ccarmock]

That will be one of the Virgin Media Business leased line services, which have been available for some time. Hwoever the new services due to launch will be based on Cable broadband.

[APS]

Anyone know when the higher speeds and new options will be available for business broadband, please? We were told March by business sales at the start of the year. March has come and gone and still no sign of improvements.

[ccarmock]

Anyone know when the higher speeds and new options will be available for business broadband, please? We were told March by business sales at the start of the year. March has come and gone and still no sign of improvements.

I was told first week of May...... March was a date quoted previously, but it slipped - I am wondering if this was due to the fact that the new Business services will use the same Superhub as the resildential services and they are waiting for new firmware?

[Ignitionnet]

I was told first week of May...... March was a date quoted previously, but it slipped - I am wondering if this was due to the fact that the new Business services will use the same Superhub as the resildential services and they are waiting for new firmware?

Nah.

[ccarmock]

Nah.

Ah ok - any idea why they delayed then?

[pip08456]

They don't want business customers complaning about the plooperhub???????????

[Kymmy]

Nah to the first week in May or the Superhub firmware???

:p: