[29clepayJainync]

Well after suffering horrendous problems with British Telecom and poor speeds, along with totally shocking throttling ( never hit anywhere near my sync at peak, plus 6kb/s torrent speeds almost 24/7 ) i was released from my BT contract early.

So it seems Telewest are now Virgin? I want a package with a phone for about £40 per month which is what I am paying currently. Do they do such a package, I also want be know if they throttle the life out of the connection at peak times?

[mirex]

I think they are good, internet speeds tend to float around full speed to about 75% at peak times roughly. Customer service is good, and their pricing is good also.

I think you will be able to use the Sky vs Virgin thing to good use to get a better deal, just ring them saying you are considering going to Sky but wanted to see what virgin would offer.


I currently get 10mb internet, the best tv package, unlimited telephone calls, with one normal cable box and two HD V+ boxes for £80 per month ex.VAT. Got that deal after saying i was considering going to Sky.

But there are deals going on, £30 for broadband, phone and cable. http://allyours.virginmedia.com/webs...ct.do?id=11039

[eskimosik]

Im on 10mb with virgin.

NEVER got less than 10mb at anytime in the day. Even 3pm till 6pm. Still get 1250kb/s downloads 24/7

Should be upgraded to 20mb in a few weeks.

I only pay £27 a month too

[brorialsibers]

Im on 10mb virgin with my phone rental £37 excellent connection great torrent speeds and as far as im aware you download and upload as much as you want.
can you get cable in your area?

[xanax-buy-online.com]

Im on 10mb virgin with my phone rental £37 excellent connection great torrent speeds and as far as im aware you download and upload as much as you want.
can you get cable in your area?

It's surposidly no limits, but then there is a fair usage policy. Basically, unless you download at 1MB/sec 24/7 you'll be ok.

[BEyng6hj]

I am on Virgin (used to be NTL) and I think the last time I had a problem was a few years ago when it went down for a few hours on Christmas Eve.

[29clepayJainync]

cool, well no bad replies. i will look in to ordering in the next few days. [thumbup]

[BEyng6hj]

Plus the advantage of cable is that they have more room to upgrade. 100Mbit (maybe even faster) should be possible on cable in the coming years. But I don't see BT being able to do that unless they do a major upgrade of their network.

[brorialsibers]

If the bandwidth is availible on a torrent it easily goes straight to 1.1MB/s the only downside side is the upload speed which i have found to be around 56KB/s, but setting Utorrent to about 45KB/s for upload and webrowsing/FTP/HTTP downloads are still really quick.

[Xibizopt]

Another good vote - Never really had any problems with them. Having a few issues at the moment with the connection randomly dropping but I think that's probably because the Modem is on it's last legs Should be upped to 20Mb here soon too [thumbup]

[xanax-buy-online.com]

Plus the advantage of cable is that they have more room to upgrade. 100Mbit (maybe even faster) should be possible on cable in the coming years. But I don't see BT being able to do that unless they do a major upgrade of their network.

They're trialing 50Mbps connections at the moment, but IIRC it requires a whole new modem and channel bonding, but yes IMO ADSL can't offer speeds anywhere near what VM can.

[happyman]

Glad to hear you're out of the misery of BT Broadband. All I'd say is make sure it's the cable service that you will recieve and not the ADSL service as Virgins ADSL service is reportedly as bad, if not worse than BT's [shocked] [surrender] . (At least that's what I've gathered from reading the boards over at AG)

I'll be away from BTBroadband soon, I've payed until July (via telephone bill) so rather than risk BT Billing messing everything up I will jump ship in July. [thumbup]

[xanax-buy-online.com]

Glad to hear you're out of the misery of BT Broadband. All I'd say is make sure it's the cable service that you will recieve and not the ADSL service as Virgins ADSL service is reportedly as bad, if not worse than BT's [shocked] [surrender] . (At least that's what I've gathered from reading the boards over at AG)

I'll be away from BTBroadband soon, I've payed until July (via telephone bill) so rather than risk BT Billing messing everything up I will jump ship in July. [thumbup]

All ADSL unless it's unbundlled comes via BTWholesale, so even if you have adsl via "insert isp name" to an extent you're always on BT broadband in terms of cable quality and exchange capacity which are the two main causes for disconnections / slow speeds.

Just bear in mind, VM sell their products as upto speeds, as in you can get upto 10Mbps but it's not garunteed, but i'll think you'll find it'll be better than your current situation.

[happyman]

All ADSL unless it's unbundlled comes via BTWholesale, so even if you have adsl via "insert isp name" to an extent you're always on BT broadband in terms of cable quality and exchange capacity which are the two main causes for disconnections / slow speeds.

Yup, I'm aware of that. The big problem at BTB is that they have inherited the 'ellacoyas' traffic management systems that Pipex (IIRC) had from the recent buyout. With that has come port throttling on Port80 which is bringing down some users speeds to 56k dial up. Couple this with other network transfers also being throttled, results in a service that you can actually only get full speeds between the hours of 1AM and 7AM.

BTB of course deny this is happening, as they feel that their users are clueless idiots. [rolleyes]

Thankfully I've a few LLU options at my exchange (Bulldog, UKonline / Easynet / Sky, BE* (from July), Homechoice, Orange) and I'm also lucky enough to be in a cable area so Virgin Media are also at my disposal.

[eskimosik]

I was going to go with Be* but i would only get around 9mb at this house. At my old house we got 20mb on bulldog, right next to the exchange

So i went for cable because the upgrade path seems to be there. 10mb to 20mb for a start

[GogaMegaPiska]

If I wanted to change from BT ADSL to Virgin Cable, what kind of gap would I be talking without internet while they swapped em over, anyone know?

[Xibizopt]

Depends how soon you cancel the ADSL. ADSL uses the Phone line, Cable uses the Same Cable Inputs at the TV, nothing to do with the phone so there's nothing stopping you having both if you really wanted to

[DexOnenlyCymn]

Glad to hear you're out of the misery of BT Broadband. All I'd say is make sure it's the cable service that you will recieve and not the ADSL service as Virgins ADSL service is reportedly as bad, if not worse than BT's [shocked] [surrender] . (At least that's what I've gathered from reading the boards over at AG)

Sound advice... their ADSL service sucks ass. I was reaching no quicker than dialup speeds at peak times. Now with ADSL24 and have a flawless 3Mbit connection.

Cant go wrong with cable. My parents have had them for years and even though it's been taken over by that evil, shite company, the service is still good. I'd go with cable if it was soddin installed down my road!

[29clepayJainync]

Just ordered 10mb ( going up to 20mb soon! ), phone and MAX TV for £40 per month. Plus got a credit of £30 on my first bill.

[29clepayJainync]

Oh I need a wireless router, got a lot to pay out for atm. So what is a good, but cheap one that will serve 3 pc's?