Re: Virgin Broadband still worth it?
 

We probably sit on separate sides of an experience fence. My VM segment has no latency nor overutilization issues and never has.

I suppose my view is coloured by the aluminium cable I've got between house and PCP.

Re: Virgin Broadband still worth it?
 

But your suggestion that people would only take FTTC if they were desperate or had no VM option was totally disingenuous basing it on the bad wiring from your house to the cabinet.

If you have never had any latency or congestion issues, you are truly blessed and I would suggest in the minority. My own and friends experience of VM along with lots of evidence online (come on, we all know the VM congestion issues well) is not repeated in such numbers for FTTC in general. More isolated incidents with odd ISP's rather than the repeated congestion at VM due to polices of upgrading areas only after the problem has been an issue for a long period.

Of course that is inter-spaced once every 5 years with VM shouting about doing major upgrades and actually being pro-active in some area's for a short period before falling back in to the repeat cycle of congestion again. All except those few and far between magic lucky areas such as yours ;)

So my opinion still stands as to the question in this thread, VM is not worth it. The hassle or the extra speed. Even before you throw the faster FTTC speeds in to the mix.

Re: Virgin Broadband still worth it?
 

Been with Virgin for 8 years and never had any congestion or latency issues (outside of short lived faults). Can't comment on VDSL as never had it.

Re: Virgin Broadband still worth it?
 

Similar for 6 years now. People's experience here clearly varies, and congestion is a problem in some areas for people and not others.

Virgin Media really need to jump on congestion issues faster than they have traditionally, as that seems to be the key detractor from their service. If they could anticipate and/or respond to congestion issues quickly, why wouldn't they always win over a current FTTC / VDSL service?

Re: Virgin Broadband still worth it?
 

People's experience will always vary. The difference is that BTWholesale tend to sort out congestion issues within weeks (days in some cases) rather than months or years.

VM have earned a reputation on this justified or not, the ball's in their court to try and persuade otherwise.

Re: Virgin Broadband still worth it?
 

totally agree - it's time VM were more proactive about this for sure

Re: Virgin Broadband still worth it?
 

Brand loyalty is daft. Go for whatever service is best for you - and what's best for you will vary on needs, region, demand, etc.

Re: Virgin Broadband still worth it?
 

People tend to congregate to forums because they have issues so there is an inherent bias against products/vendors. (Now I'm not saying this isn't warranted or the issues aren't major.)

What is hard to judge is what percentage of users are experiencing issues and how that issue affects the majority of users. Abstracting an issue - say a car has round indicators while others use square. There could be a vocal minority complaining about the shape of the indicator and how it spoils the look of the car while the majority don't care as they can't see it from inside and as long as the right one flashes when needed that's what matters. Of course if it was shown that round indicators have some inherent weakness that square doesn't there is more of a case and if sufficient people find that weakness unacceptable the maker may need a rethink, but it's not simple to move from round to square (or visa versa) and keep everything else running while changeover happens.

Same is true for BB. One vendor may be weak in an area important to you but if the majority don't care the vendor is unlikely spend resource unless that area is indicative of some other issue that will need to be fixed. And any fix can be complicated, you may fix for some then break something else for others. All vendors have issues and most are trying to sort out issues but within budgets and technical challenges that can be very complex.

Re: Virgin Broadband still worth it?
 

well said dude and I agree for the most part. There are those rare occasions though where (or maybe not so rare) $$$ comes before everything else and common sense and customer service go out the window and everyone gets screwed. Shub1 is the prime example of this; it never should have been released to start off with and with every firmware upgrade they broke something else and it didn't only affect a "minority of customers".

Re: Virgin Broadband still worth it?
 

I became a cable customer for TV in 1998 in the London Borough of Haringey, moved from BT to Cable London for broadband in 2001, and have always had cable broadband since then. The most relevant period is from 2005 when I moved into my house. The broadband service has mainly been very good, the worst outage being the time some years ago when my TV and broadband abruptly stopped. It took days for VM to get a technician out, who fixed the problem. He said that my next door neighbours had had cable installed, and the installer had nicked my connection. Not pleased....

Re: Virgin Broadband still worth it?
 

That sort of happened to me. I didn't lose service but speeds dropped off. Seems engineer either called to another house to fix or a new install had swapped with my "good" connection to please their customer.

I think that having tidier boxes and better engineers now means things are done better so we all (in our street) get better service rather than relying on simple swaps at the cabinet.

---
On a related note my brother in law living out in the sticks was getting really, really poor speeds, much worse than expected. Eventually an engineer with some knowledge came out and found the connecting cottage and "nicked" or tapped onto one of his pair of connections for their ADSL. A simple snip to remove that and he got something much better.