Virgin Broadband - Fiber Optic Any good?

chouglez

chouglez

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I had just tendered my 3 months cancellation notice to BeThere. They suck big time. [Don't listen to what ever your B-I-L(Wife's Bro) says :'(]

Thinking about moving to Virgin Broadband which says that they use fiber optics cable and the distance from the exchange is irrelevant.

Can anyone second that please. Just don't want to end up with another scumbag ISP provider(s)
 
I'm fairly sure that if you can get cable, the line speed is guaranteed, but the way it is shared is different.
 
They're all scumbag isp's.
Virgins Broadband is expensive but extremely reliable, I cant remember any downtime in the last 4 years.
Originally Telewest who new how to treat their customers, then bought by ntl who also bought Virgin and now use their name, make no mistake this is still ntl running the show along with their shoddy customer service and pricing ethics/practices, but It'd suit me to change my name if my reputation was in the gutter.
Luckily, it never breaks, so I've never had to be charged money to call them on their phone to tell them it broke.
Do plenty of research, there is a lot of disquiet about speed capping on the sly and general "not as advertised" issues, but there is with a lot of isp's.
 
Have been with Virgin/NTL for the past two years and never had any issues with speed, accessibility, etc.
 
Virgin - superb, really no issues, ever !

Well I say ever, I did have to call them when my BB went down, they had to ring me back as the 'mac' man was on another call, yep, he rang back in a timely manner, was very polite and we established that it was my router that was shagged, job sorted.

I like the fact that they rang me back, did line checks, as far as I am concerned their customer service was about the best I have EVER had from any call centre and the reliability of service has been 100% in about 4 or 5 years and for £17.99 a month or whatever it is, i'm keeping it !

Save a couple of quid at your peril !
 
Depends whether you mean Virgin Cable or Virgin ADSL, as they supply both. If it is cable it will be a fibre cable but if ADSL will use BT's existing cables. Until 21CN is implemented in your area, which is BT's upgrade to fibre

Hope that made sense
 
Been with Virgin 10 years since the early times of NTL. Not a problem, I am on 4meg which is actually 3.2meg and we are all about to be uprgraded to 10meg for free.
So allowing for overdescription, we should get 5-6 meg.

I think they are brill and would recommend.

www.virginmedia.com/evenfaster
 
I'm on virgin BB.

They just upgraded mine to 10mb and thats the speed I get!

I often get 1.25mb/sec

even when I was on 4mb it was faster.
 
Just out of curiosity, what problems have you had with Be? I've found them to be excellent, as have many of my friends.

Just curious :)
 
I'm on Virgin.
How do you check speed? It is supposed to be 10meg. They are charging me £35/month for it anyway.
 
I have 20mb with Virgin and can confirm it is VERY quick indeed. Only get 1mb up though so it ain't all roses.
 
I've been with Virgin/NTL for about 6 years. The technology is grat, very reliable BUT the customer service is shocking. I moved a year ago and they gave me someone elses phone number. When putting that right they deleted my webspace and email addresses which they could not restore.

I have often thought about moving but there is no real option if you want cable BB as opposed to ADSL.

I love Virgin but HATE thier customer service department.!!
 
I was with Virgin for years (- NTL - Telewest - United Artists). There was only half decent customer service with United Artists.

There can still be reliability issues with cable - don't believe anyone that tells you otherwise.

For me there are two issues with Virgin Cable. One is the worst customer service experience in the industry. Service wasn't brilliant with Telewest - then they got into bed with NTHell and its all been downhill since then. The second factor is that, if you do go the cable route, then you lose some of the flexibility to switch in the future. I moved four lines away from them so I could get better deals, and service, with another supplier over copper.
 
I've had vm bb for 10 years, with very little problems. On my 3rd modem now and the other 2 where replaced within a week (one went faulty and the other was due to a bb speed increase). The reason it was not done quicker was that fact that I scheduled the eng visits for my days off, as I worked shifts.

Performance as always been good and had very few problems with their customer services, although not the best.
 
taxi said:
I've had vm bb for 10 years, with very little problems. On my 3rd modem now and the other 2 where replaced within a week (one went faulty and the other was due to a bb speed increase). The reason it was not done quicker was that fact that I scheduled the eng visits for my days off, as I worked shifts.

Performance as always been good and had very few problems with their customer services, although not the best.
Click to expand...

I've had much the same experience with VM, phone support is carp but if there is a problem it's fixed quickly .

just upgraded to the V+ TV service and it's :thumbs:. Being able to record 2 channels whilst watching a third makes Sky cry :D
 
And with the V+ box you get on demand stuff. Sky can't touch that because it requires a two way comms link.

I had a Virgin engineer out recently (now theres a thought??) who tells me they are developing a software upgrade to the V+ to let you create playlists on the music on demand. You'll be able to create playlist for parties etc, If hooked up to surround sound et vola music videos all night at your booze ups.
 
The only problem with Virgin is when it goes wrong. I know that sounds obvious, but as soon as you need to get in touch with their Customer services people, that's when you start having problems.

Ringin their sales lines, you tend to get through fairly quickly, however, ring their support lines and you could be on hold for 45 mintues to an hour before they tell you it's a problem with your PC.

I phoned them with an issue a while back, told them what the issue was with the kit, they refused to believe me, send 3 engineers over a 2 week period, then end up swapping the bit of kit that I told them was faulty in the first place. Problem sorted.
 
I was with virgin.net., never again, :thumbsdown: customer service is really bad,:shake: speed at 8mb service was 335kb :( at best, now with BT getting 7.2mb, :woot:
 
Notts_Dave said:
And with the V+ box you get on demand stuff. Sky can't touch that because it requires a two way comms link.

I had a Virgin engineer out recently (now theres a thought??) who tells me they are developing a software upgrade to the V+ to let you create playlists on the music on demand. You'll be able to create playlist for parties etc, If hooked up to surround sound et vola music videos all night at your booze ups.
Click to expand...

V+ is absolutely great, but using the menu system is like wading in treacle :bonk::bonk:
 
Just a quick note....

It is true that "cable" providers do not generally have the same distance related problems as a traditional xDSL type service, unless the main fibre is a long way from your door.

However, many ISP's don't actually utilise BT's network, just the "last mile" from the exchange to your house, so they tend to have better services.

The thing to remember with all "broadband" services is that they are shared between a number of users, so it's a contended service. Some, like Easynet/Sky don't tend to overload the number of users on one link, others (Pipex I think) do, so it's worth having a look on some of the forums etc to see what you're getting.

Luckily I used to work for a large ISP and have a business class DSL service which (touch wood, cross fingers) I still get FOC even though I haven't worked for them in over 2 years......

.
 
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