Virgin or BT question but with a twist

Cyprio

Cyprio

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Right, thinking of upgrading from a bog standard 'up to 8mb' package (getting around 6mb) to a fibre connection. All other flats in the house we live in are on Virgin cable and anecdotally tell me their connection has been reliable.

I'm in two minds though as 1) I have heard/read very bad things about Virgin - both in terms of customer service and speeds. 2) Would the fact that everyone else in the house has Virgin slow my connection down?

I live in Herne Hill, South London. SW2 2QP

Any thoughts?

Thanks
 
The problem with cable is that you share the bandwidth with others on the cable back to the centre. The performance you get will depend on how many subscribers are served by your cable and what they are doing - you may notice nothing, you may notice a performance drop - no one can tell you and other non-local to you performance will not predict what will happen to you. I've also had a bad customer experience with Virgin, so tend to avoid them at all costs.

BT also have their fare share of detractors, but at least with fibre, you're not limited by the back haul to the exchange. Where I am (Wiltshire) I have FTTC and experience no slowdown during the day/night with my fibre connection (note BT are NOT my ISP, but they provide the back haul from my house to the ISPs Point of Presence on the UK network.
 
My experience with Virgin is not fantastic at least. India call centres are very poor and unhelpful, internet - certainly slower than it should be, but a defective wifi modem crowns it all.
 
arad85 said:
The problem with cable is that you share the bandwidth with others on the cable back to the centre. The performance you get will depend on how many subscribers are served by your cable and what they are doing - you may notice nothing, you may notice a performance drop - no one can tell you and other non-local to you performance will not predict what will happen to you. I've also had a bad customer experience with Virgin, so tend to avoid them at all costs.

BT also have their fare share of detractors, but at least with fibre, you're not limited by the back haul to the exchange. Where I am (Wiltshire) I have FTTC and experience no slowdown during the day/night with my fibre connection (note BT are NOT my ISP, but they provide the back haul from my house to the ISPs Point of Presence on the UK network.
Click to expand...

Sorry, my mistake i meant Virgin Fibre Optic (or is this still cable?)

Also do you know of a good way to check if my local cabinet is FTTC?
 
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Hmm, have also just seen that Sky (who have just bought out Be There, my existing ISP) offer fibre for £20, unlimited d/l and a 12m contract. All terms much better than BT or Virgin.
 
Have to say I've been on virgin cable for many years.

Recently had minor problems and ended up with a free upgrade and new superhub. Much better than the old one and no real hassle.

I think it's just pot luck.

I can't have have Adsl due to a very old phone line. Recently I got a phone call from BT offering me heaven and earth until I asked them when they were going to offer me fibre optic, they went sheepish when they checked and its probably going to be 2015 before I can lol
 
You could look at Plusnet http://www.plus.net/home-broadband/. I've been with them for over a year and find them very reliable. Speeds vary and are generally around the 6Mbps mark but this is in inner London and just regular cabling. I compared with other users in the area, including Virgin, and it beats most of them. Plusnet are owned by BT so you don't have any problems with phone line changes and, although you don't get the fancy looking hub with the regular service, just a regular looking hub, they are just cheaper. They also do cable.
 
arad85 said:
The problem with cable is that you share the bandwidth with others on the cable back to the centre. The performance you get will depend on how many subscribers are served by your cable and what they are doing
Click to expand...

That's called Contention. It happens regardless of what provider your on. If you think BT provide enough backhaul to each street cab to provide a true 1:1 (speed x subscribers) service you are woefully mistaken. Have a look at 1:1 Cable Connections with guaranteed full time bandwidth and you will find their VERY expensive.

Just because you don't experience slowdowns yet doesn't mean this wont be the case once infinity really kicks into gear especially once more ISPs start leasing the lines as the case with ADSL. All Technologys have their "seet period" and ADSL was originally sold on a contention ratio of 50:1 it took years before contention started kicking in. Running fiber to the exchange is expensive and all FTTC is doing is taking fiber from the exchange closer to the home by dumping the end point in the street. Your still sharing that bandwidth with all the people on ADSL.

Unless your on an Analogue service with Virgin then your connection will be "Fiber Optic" in the same way as BT is. Fiber is run to the cabinet in the street and then the connection to your home is done over copper. If I recall rightly the only thing Virgin do in the old analogue areas is phone and TV if they offer you >10mb broadband it will be digital.
 
unplugged said:
That's called Contention. It happens regardless of what provider your on. If you think BT provide enough backhaul to each street cab to provide a true 1:1 (speed x subscribers) service you are woefully mistaken. Have a look at 1:1 Cable Connections with guaranteed full time bandwidth and you will find their VERY expensive.

Just because you don't experience slowdowns yet doesn't mean this wont be the case once infinity really kicks into gear especially once more ISPs start leasing the lines as the case with ADSL. All Technologys have their "seet period" and ADSL was originally sold on a contention ratio of 50:1 it took years before contention started kicking in. Running fiber to the exchange is expensive and all FTTC is doing is taking fiber from the exchange closer to the home by dumping the end point in the street. Your still sharing that bandwidth with all the people on ADSL.

Unless your on an Analogue service with Virgin then your connection will be "Fiber Optic" in the same way as BT is. Fiber is run to the cabinet in the street and then the connection to your home is done over copper. If I recall rightly the only thing Virgin do in the old analogue areas is phone and TV if they offer you >10mb broadband it will be digital.
Click to expand...

Thanks. Managed to find that our local cabinet is FTTC enabled.

Just need to consider pro's and con's of each. :)
 
unplugged said:
That's called Contention.
Click to expand...
Well... yes and no. I was trying to make the point that with cable you are sharing the bandwidth of the cable going past your house. You have to look at the network as a whole to understand where the contention occurs.

FTTC (and ADSL) is not contended between your house and cabinet (you have a dedicated pair of lines) and is not contended between the cabinet and exchange (for FTTC it's a fibre connection which has more than enough bandwidth to provide full speed to people in a cab). Where it is contended is between the exchange and your ISPs PoP and this depends totally on BTs digital backhaul from your exchange - it is here the contention appears on BTs network.

The difference with cable is that until you get to the fibre in the network (at the neighbourhood distribution point), you are contending with other people on the same cable. This is because the network is effectively a single cable supplying a number of homes and the modems interoperate to share the bandwidth across the single cable. Depending on the neighbourhood size, you may or may not see an issue with this. Once you are at the cable providers exchange, you then have to contend with other users and the contention there depends on your cable providers bandwidth between its local exchanges and their PoP on the Internet.
 
Heard back from the neighbour that he gets 30mb on a Virgin 30mb cable connection so reckon i'll be heading for that. Virgin are now offering a year contract (with no phone line).
 
I get 62mb on their 60mb service
 
I've been with Virgin cable since it was Telewest (joined about 2001).

On average we get exactly the speed we pay for (no up to:bonk:) currently about 20.5Mb on a 20Mb connection:D.

We've had some reliability issues lately (because they're doing nationwide maintenance to clean up the network) but in the past we suffered an outage about once every 2 years.

Customer service is brilliant even when we phone India - the last time we rang India, the guy told me how many times our modem had reset itself in the preceding month and that he was sending an engineer with a new modem/router. When I said I could fit one if he mailed it - he replied that an engineer was just over 24hrs away and a posted one would be about 4 days, so it was a no-brainer:thumbs:.
 
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