Virgin Media to Double Broadband Speed

[Jong1]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21455795

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-21442348

[Chrysalis]

and peeps on here blame the speedtest servers for VM slowness :p

[General Maximus]

bravo to them. I think it is a fantastic story that ordinary Joe Bloggs has been able to go out and do what everyone wants to do and that is get fttp everywhere across the country. Having a 1gbit connection in the middle of no where is amazing. I would love to know whether that is per user or if it is a connection designed to be shared by X amount of users who paid into that fund in the village and the dude in the video just happened to be one of the first people connected.

---------- Post added at 20:42 ---------- Previous post was at 19:41 ----------

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

and peeps on here blame the speedtest servers for VM slowness :p

absolutely, at least we know what the Manchester server is capable of

All your small community needs is half a million pounds, some friendly farmers who will let you lay the cables on their land for no charge, lots of free volunteer labour, and a Russell Group professor to manage it....

[General Maximus]

sweet, when I win the National Lottery we are sorted

On a serious note though, if they can do all that with £500,000 I wonder how much they could do with £150 million from the Euro Millions.

[Chad]

Looks like those guys will be the favourites at the uSwitch awards next year for Fastest Home Broadband and Best Broadband Innovation.

http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/awards/2013/

Looks like Virgin have some stiff competition

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by Sirius

I see your 1994 and raise you Nynex in June 1993

I'll match your nynex and raise you Wigan are the better team!

I'll also add that of the mainstream ISP's (BT, SKY) VM are the only ones with STM.
BTW has anyone thought what will happen when BT and other rivals start offering FTTP?

ATM it is available "on demand" at a cost to providers of £1,500 for the first 500mts what terms they will come up with for users is unknown but as a guesstimate if they wanted to do free install you would be looking at >£35 pm and 18mth min contract.

On the plus side you would be looking at a rock solid 160Mbps down and 20Mbps up (potential to rise to 330/30).

As VM already have fibre "in place" and ducting to their customers they could respond but may/would have to move away from Docsis which would take investment.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Hugh

All your small community needs is half a million pounds, some friendly farmers who will let you lay the cables on their land for no charge, lots of free volunteer labour, and a Russell Group professor to manage it....

And therein lies the problem.

Big cities and urban areas are generally not full of generous farmers hanging about with empty fields.

(P.S. The "Russell Group professor" was actually an IT support guy rather than an academic )

VM have experimented with running FTTP over "cheap" infrastructure, e.g. poles and fields.

[Pauls9]

Mr Bolt said April to June for my upgrade (10MB to 20), but it happened yesterday

Now to get the upgrade to 30 MB: Customer Support tell me there's no extra monthly charge, but there's a £20 delivery charge for a Superhub and a new 12 month contract. Got that agreed by Pauls9's budget adviser, called back, got disconnected, called again, got transferred to Technical Support, who couldn't make any changes for 24 hours since the last change.

Ah well, try again tomorrow...

P.S. Could I negotiate better terms?

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Pauls9

Mr Bolt said April to June for my upgrade (10MB to 20), but it happened yesterday

Now to get the upgrade to 30 MB: Customer Support tell me there's no extra monthly charge, but there's a £20 delivery charge for a Superhub and a new 12 month contract. Got that agreed by Pauls9's budget adviser, called back, got disconnected, called again, got transferred to Technical Support, who couldn't make any changes for 24 hours since the last change.

Ah well, try again tomorrow...

P.S. Could I negotiate better terms?

It depends if you're in contract or not. If you're not in contract, just go through to retentions and tell them you're leaving.

[Pauls9]

Pretty sure I'm not in contract. Thanks Kushan.

[General Maximus]

you could do, but tbh a one off charge of £20 isn't bad going for a new router (if you need one) and an upgrade to 30mbit. If you are going to go to the effort of rining retentions I would also enquire what the jump to 60mbits would be. If it is only another £2 a month on something it would be well worth it for you.

[Kushan]

In either case, retentions will give him a far better deal than CS will. They'll probably even save him money and give him the Superhub for free.

[Pauls9]

Thanks guys. I'll give it a go. What's the worst that can happen?

[ntl.wotcha]

Lol, August 2012 they said for me. Now saying Aug 2013... lol... gotta love VM.