[UK] Thinking of switching ISP from BE to Virgin Media

[Zoom7000]

I'm currently with BE Broadband for my Internet connection. I pay ?18.26/Month for on average 10Mbps (on a good day!). In addition to this, I pay ?14.60/Month to BT for standard line rental. I make no calls whatsoever using my home phone and merely use it for receiving calls and the Internet connection. So, currently in total, I pay ?32.86/Month for Phone and Internet. I've been looking at alternatives, namely Virgin Media, who are much more competitve.

Virgin Media are currently offering:

60Mbps (?18.50/Month) + Telephone Line (?13.90/Month) = ?32.40/Month (Discounted @ ?23.15/Month for the first 6 months) and also, I get ?57.57 if I order through Top Cashback.

Seems like a no brainer, however, there are a few things that have stopped me from switching so far:

Traffic Management/Shaping: Just how bad is it? I do occasionally download the odd heafty packages, ISO, movies, iTunes stuff, BBC iPlayer (HD), 4oD, Steam etc etc. sometimes all in 1 go. I've read that VM do at times throttle you down to 75% of the speed. However, right now I'm only getting nearly 10Mbps anyway, so I'm thinking it won't be all that bad if they throttle me down to 75% now and then, which is 15Mbps.

Virgin Media Super Hub: Or as it's been called, the SuperDud or PooperHub. Is it as bad as everyone makes out? Just what is wrong with it? Currently I'm using BE's Thompson TG587n v2, which isn't anything special itself.

Customer Service: Albeit based in Bulgaria, BE's support has been pretty brilliant everytime I have had to call and I've had no major issue. I used to be a VM customer at a previous address and I've dealt with my fellow Indian compatriots and at times, it has been rather annoying! However, whenever there has been a physical problem, VM have no issues sending out an engineer, whereas if I have a problem with BE, they usually say it's a BT issue that they need to fix and getting an engineer out with BT is next to impossible at times!

So, the question is, should I make the switch and get better value, or should I stick to the peace of mind of BE (~80% of the time) but not as good value.

[jakem1]

I switched from BE to VM two weeks ago. Like you, I thought BE's customer service was excellent and I only left them because my speeds were consistently getting slower and BE had no plans to offer a fibre service in the near future.

So far Virgin have been OK. My speeds were excellent in the first week but unfortunately have been pretty flaky since due to a problem at Virgin's end that is taking a little too long to sort out. However, the speeds I'm getting are still better than what I had with BE so I'm not too upset about it...yet.

Virgin's customer service has been so-so. Some staff have been good and some hopeless but they've been happy to credit my account a couple of times for the disruptions I've faced. The installation service was excellent though. I had an engineer come out to do a survey (I had a slightly tricky installation that I wanted them to double check before I signed up) within a week of calling them and the installation happened a week later. Amazingly both engineers came out on Saturdays which was great.

The traffic shaping doesn't seem too bad. It only applies to torrents and is only applied per day. I haven't got the figures to hand but I think you can download about 7GB per day before shaping kicks in (apologies if this is wrong but I know it's relatively generous) Once shaping kicks you will only find that torrents are slowed down. Normal web traffic including streaming like iPlayer will continue to work as normal.

Good luck.

[CG-88]

One of the guys I used to live with had virgin and it was OK. Speed was good, very reliable but the default virgin box was horrible!!! Any internet problem related directly to that box. I replaced it with a netgear one and everything pretty much doubled in speed. Was incredible.

I'm just on sky broadband at the moment as it is part of my package and I think I prefer it, speed is good on downloads etc and it is unlimited and my monthly is <?20 inc line rental and calls.

But tbh, virgin is good, if I didnt have sky tv I would want virgin.

[Dan~]

I can't add anything to this really, but we have just Virgin Media Boradband + Telephone and it's cheap. We didn't want TV etc.

We've had Broadband since the beginning (One of the first towns to get broadband) and that was with NTL, now VM. and we've had the odd faults, but for years now not had a problem.

There is always a company miles ahead of everyone else (thats VM) and always will be. They keep upgrading speeds, for free etc.

If you chose VM, you won't regret it :)

[jakem1]

One of the guys I used to live with had virgin and it was OK. Speed was good, very reliable but the default virgin box was horrible!!! Any internet problem related directly to that box. I replaced it with a netgear one and everything pretty much doubled in speed. Was incredible.

I'm just on sky broadband at the moment as it is part of my package and I think I prefer it, speed is good on downloads etc and it is unlimited and my monthly is <?20 inc line rental and calls.

But tbh, virgin is good, if I didnt have sky tv I would want virgin.

The Virgin Super Hub is just a modified Netgear router. However, it can be run as a modem only in "Modem Mode" and you can use your own router if you need something a little more powerful.

[CG-88]

The Virgin Super Hub is just a modified Netgear router. However, it can be run as a modem only in "Modem Mode" and you can use your own router if you need something a little more powerful.

Ah right I wasnt aware of that. Would that explain a significant speed increase between switching routers?

[jakem1]

Ah right I wasnt aware of that. Would that explain a significant speed increase between switching routers?

Most of the complaints I've seen about the Super Hub relate to its wireless performance and it's lack of advanced features, both of which can be improved with a better router. A better router could improve throughput onto your LAN but it won't improve the speed that the modem connects to the WAN.

[arrisb]

I haven't got a SuperHub so cannot comment on that but hopefully the linked chart will offer some kind of insight:

http://www.virginmedia.com/images/STM_30Mb_above_800pxB.jpg

[Zoom7000]

Thanks for the info guys. Forgot to mention that I don't use torrents. Never have and probably never will.

In relation to switching though, I just strolled across some of the fibre broadband options such as Sky and BT Infinity. Do these fair better or worse in comparison to Virgin Media? I've done some quick Googling and noticed that Sky never traffic manage your connection and BT only traffic manage P2P. I'm presuming P2P here means torrents services? Which wouldn't be an issue for me.

[Inklin]

Virgin Media is a good ISP, high speeds (by current uk standards) at an affordable price (though I feel it is still lacking in the upload department with their 10:1 ratio considering BT infinity offers 20Mb upload on their 80Mb package).

I've had very few issues with them but when things do go wrong they really do go wrong and it can take them weeks, if not months in some cases to resolve issues and are known to keep changing fix dates.

The superhub does suck, wireless signal strength is generally crap unless you're right next to it, you are best to put it in modem mode and connect your own router for optimum performance, Though I hear a new "superhub 2" will be coming soon and it is apparently made by Samsung..

[jakem1]

Thanks for the info guys. Forgot to mention that I don't use torrents. Never have and probably never will.

In that case you won't be effected by traffic shaping on VM.

In relation to switching though, I just strolled across some of the fibre broadband options such as Sky and BT Infinity. Do these fair better or worse in comparison to Virgin Media? I've done some quick Googling and noticed that Sky never traffic manage your connection and BT only traffic manage P2P. I'm presuming P2P here means torrents services? Which wouldn't be an issue for me.

I believe that BT only shape torrent traffic but that that's easy to get around with encryption. BT's download speeds are slower than Virgin's top speeds (76Mbps vs 100/120 Mbps) but their top upload speeds are faster (19Mbps vs 10/12Mbps). Also, BT's customer service is attrocious.

I've had very few issues with them but when things do go wrong they really do go wrong and it can take them weeks, if not months in some cases to resolve issues and are known to keep changing fix dates.

Yep, that's happened to me three times now :laugh:

[arrisb]

The traffic management is related to standard traffic as well, not just torrents (e.g. browsing, Steam downloads, mp3's etc.)

[wmoley2k]

I've had VM in the last 3 houses I've lived at. Went from fantastic, to rubbish, and back to good. First house was a house of gadget people and sports nuts. Went for the whole package: 50Mb broadband, XL TV with Sky Sports and phone. Not a fault with the service. Switched house April 2011, still got Virgin, but the housemate set it up herself and went for broadband only (no phone or TV). The SuperHub back then was atrocious. Paid for 30Mb and was lucky to get 18Mb on a good day. Wander out of the living room, and it dropped to sub-10Mb speeds, with regular dropouts. I was on the third floor, which was just impossible. To top that, because we were on the cheaper option, the customer service was awful. Gave up on them fixing it so I bought a router and some high-gain antennae, and all was fine once it was put into modem only mode (bar a couple of crashes). Moved again back in June, new house has 60Mb, pretty much full speed everywhere apart from my bedroom (again, in the attic, with the router on the ground floor), but I still get 30-40Mb usually. Either they have fixed the SuperHub problems, or it's hit and miss and we got unlucky in my old house. Apparently bringing out a new one with external antenna at some point. Overall, I say it is worth it.

EDIT: Oh, and I have downloaded a couple of tens of Gb's at a time and not had an issue with traffic management, so you should be good unless you download that amount constantly.

[Zoom7000]

The Virgin Media 60Mb (+ Phone Line) package looks best for me at ?32.40/Month as opposed to BT Infinity at ?40.80/Month (?26 Internet + ?14.60 Line Rental)

So, the common consensus seems to be to run the Super Hub in Modem Only Mode with my own router. Any recommendations as to which router I should go for?

[Sir Topham Hatt]

I'm with Virgin Media. Chose them a few months back because of their deals and as I was moving to a cable area, higher internet speeds. I too was concerned but have not bad internet now.

I did have Sky which was great (no shaping, no limiting in anyway) but as they didn't use FibreOptic then I opted for Virgin Media.

Traffic Management/Shaping: I can't say I've noticed this. Five years ago I did notice it, but now everything seems okay. I left my PC on from about 3pm until 9am the next day, it had downloaded about 50GB (although the speed of the file was slow).

Virgin Media Super Hub: Is okay. The interface has just been updated and is now more complicated (trying to be user-friendly). I like the NetGear type interfaces. In fact, I am certain their superhub is a NetGear unit. For the first week, wireless was awful. I had a laptop next to the router and it wouldn't connect. However after that, it actually worked and is now pretty good.

I don't use my own router. Maybe this is why other "tests" haven't used the full speed (see point 2 below).

Customer Service: I emailed asking for a longer cable (the engineer left me with about a metre's worth). I got no reply. But as yet I haven't had any reason to call them. There was an outage a couple of months ago and their Twitter feed was helpful with a couple of links to check the service outage where I could see my area was affected anyway.

Some pointers:

1) Ask for a longer "cable" cable. Like I say, I didn't think about this until after the engineer left so ended up paying a few pounds for a longer one from eBay.

2) Don't bother with the 60MB+ internet. While I do get that speed, the amount of time my internet usage actually uses it all is very rarely. I would have been better getting the cheaper 30MB line and paying less, or getting their basic TV package for around the same price (I wonder if they would change it now?).

3) When I ordered, I received a letter in the post which looked like someone had just done it on their computer asking if I needed anything to contact him. I haven't done as yet but the hand-written envelope made me think: :shiftyninja:. Also, I keep receiving junk mail through the letter box advising me of their latest deals (not addressed to me, just a generic mail shot).

4) Still waiting for TopCashback payment. I had to manually raise a claim as it didn't track (mine never track these days).

[+InsaneNutter MVC]

I've been with Virgin Media for 11 years now and have never personally had any problems. I started on dialup, then 512k broadband and am now on 100mbit broadband, always got the advertised speed.

From what i hear the Superhub is rubbish, I have always run it in modem mode however and used my own router. I've never had any problems what so ever like that, I can tell you the superhub does lack features so if you are a power user using your own router will be a must.

To see if traffic management will affect you have a look here: http://www.virginmed...bove_800pxB.jpg

So, the common consensus seems to be to run the Super Hub in Modem Only Mode with my own router. Any recommendations as to which router I should go for?

Asus RT-N16 flashed with the Tomato firmware, its rock solid and will easily cope with a 100mbit connection.

[witalit]

I've had VM for around 2 years. Superb internet speeds I get a full 6MB/s from some sites (I am on 50mb service). Had little to no downtime and on the XL service no throttling or traffice management. Couldn't ask for better really!

[StrikedOut]

I have the 100Mb connection and it is very good, uploads are a little poor at 5Mb but I can live with it. Thankfully I havent had to use the customer service as its reputation isnt great but then BT's is worse! I also use the superhub and get good wireless connection all around my flat (3 floors up) and in our carpark. The updated interface isnt great but I have it setup as I want it so I dont need to go in there any more.

[vanx]

I'm a happy bunny with Virgin. An upgrade from 50 to 100 (with 120 to follow) was smooth. Not particularly happy about traffic management on 100MB tier, but they are combining those who were previously on 50MB with users who subscribed to 100 right off the bat, so I guess it's here to stay.

[Kriz]

Even with the updated interface on the new Virgin SuperHub, the wifi aspect of it is pretty shocking. My PS3 is not even 2.5m away from the hub and it was only getting 69% signal. Not only that, whatever the signal was whenever i was streaming media from the PC (PS3 Media Server) the buffering of files and general playback was atrocious. Used the superhub as a Modem only, connected my own Netgear Buffalo wireless router, no problems since. Perfect speed & connection, if you have your own wireless router, by all means go for the Virgin deal, if not then i wouldnt rely on the Superhub itself, you WILL have problems.

[ShMaunder]

Good service to have when everything is working. Bad times when things go wrong. Customer services are based in India and they were consistently asking if I was connected via wireless every time we phoned them (nothing to do with the problem) - even after quoting the Hub's fluctuating power levels they had no idea what I was talking about and still asking about the wireless. Took 3 months to sort a re-occurring line drop after 5 engineer visits - apparently there was a cable loose in the street cabinet.

Never had any problem with the "SuperHub" functionality except the lack of local DNS server; they were a vast improvement over the old DOCSIS2 routers.