Sadly, not all experiences are as good as yours. My father and my girlfriend are both on Virgin Cable; the former in Perth and the latter in Dundee. My dad’s never had a problem, regularly hammers the connection with iPlayer and loves it. I can’t comment on figures as he’s not measured anything, but by all accounts he’s happy.

My girlfriend on the other hand has had nothing but trouble. Sub-dialup speeds. Connection dropping. Preimum rate phone calls to India to try and resolve issues that they blame on her… but which after an hour are diagnosed as “a fault on our system”. At one point, her fees for these calls were higher than her monthly bill. Thankfully they refund these charges if the fault is found to be their own.

They’ve also started recently “capping” her connection, saying she’s making too much use of it. Given that my father downloads more on his connection, I find this hard to believe. I also went over their terms and agreements with a fine-toothed comb. There is no mention whatsoever of a speed cap, so they’re in breach of contract. Or they’re saying it’s capping when it’s another problem with their system and they’re losing money refunding her premium rate “support” call costs.

Two sides to every coin. The author should think himself lucky he’s one of the problem-free users.

Points all taken. But nothing you’ve said above is exclusive to Virgin – that’s exactly the reason BT and TalkTalk missed out on my money. The latter in particular.

I’ll keep you updated should any problems arise, but for now I’m just thankful I’m online.

Dave, you’re utterly right. These problems aren’t exclusive to Virgin and I have friends and acquaintances with similar problems with virtually any provider you care to mention. Like my father, I also know plenty who’s online life is a dream.

As with any company, what’s important is how they deal with things when they *do* go wrong. And Virgin do a p*ss-poor job of it, frankly.

Given the nature of cable and how it works, I’d say your best source of information on whether it’s worth going for resides with your immediate neighbours. Chances are, if they’ve had no problems with the line then neither will you. Of course, if all of them have it then you’re likely to face problems with contention ratios…!

This is my personal experience, nothing more. As long as that experience is positive that’s what I’ll recount here. If it sours you’ll be the first to read about it.

I do think these comments are a sad indictment on the state of the broadband industry, though. The fact is that you could substitute the name Virgin for any other ISP in my original post and I’d get just as many tales of bad experiences.