Virgin broadband three times faster than ADSL

The biggest finding here for me is that ADSL 2+ is only providing max 9Mb, I thought this was supposed to be delivering up to 20Mb??

By a_byrne22 on 27 Jul 2010

no I think this is an average. I am with TalkTalk and get about 11.7Mbit/s

By TimoGunt on 27 Jul 2010

Virgin 10mb

I on virgin 10mb service and get a minimum of 9mb connection whatever time i use the internet... Downloads of 1.1mb/s

By mjb3000 on 27 Jul 2010

With a 50:1 contention ratio on domestic adsl lines it's amazing how fast it goes!
Increasing the theoretical maximum throughput of the line is a pointless marketing scam, we need to drive down contention ratios. As I understand it, however, at the wholesale level anything less than 50:1 is terrifyingly expensive.

By andrew_dc_hancox on 27 Jul 2010

VirginMedia!

i can say that i have VirginMedia 50 meg and i get average speed of 45mbps, roughly 5.6MB download speed (which is around 45mpbs) i think mjb300 you are right for your speeds since if you have a 10mbit connection than you will get 1.2MBytes download speed so that no surprise your connection is actually very good. so the problem i have with virgin is around every month or so the internet cuts out, but the customer survice is very kind to credit me on my account..so i have no problems with virginmedia, and when they bring out 200mbps i will go for that...D

By mobilegnet on 27 Jul 2010

A work colleague got a visit from his ISP on Friday evening after he "upgraded" to ADSL2+ and his speed went down to about 1.5mbps. The engineer spent three hours re-wiring, changing settings, maving routers etc and now he gets a steady 16mbps - even at the bottom of the garden. Great service from the ISP but makes me wonder how many slow connections are actually down to faulty wiring or other problems within the home.

By Bassey1976 on 27 Jul 2010

Extra comment

Just to say i am currently in Russia (considered a developing country) and i am getting a steady 100mbps connection for the and you can get it anywhere in the big cities, so why UK cannot do when Russia already did it...

By mobilegnet on 27 Jul 2010

Russia faster

Well the UK lost the cold war and is now bankrupt!

The telecoms rot set in when the GPO was privatised and BT was born. It has been a slippery slope downhill since then.

It is time the government stepped in and just put fibre into 90% of homes. If not we will be unlikely to ever really get out of recession!

By bernardm3 on 27 Jul 2010

government

If we leave it to the government (of any flavour) we will be on 2Mbit/s for the next 10 years. No, I'm afraid it's an open market for someone to sew up, but the conditions, the market and the regulatory environment have to be right for this to happen. Virgin are trying (and winning in some ways), lets see what the competition can bring to improve service and drive down prices

By Mat1971 on 27 Jul 2010

100 year old technology

Don't forget, large parts of BT's network are 60-100 years old. My house is connected to a telegraph pole which was "state of the art" in 1928. The wonder is that ADSL works at all!
By comparison Virgin's network is delivered on co-ax (good 50 year old technology). Although co-ax has some distance limitations -if it's good enough to deliver all those dire TV channels it's good enough for broadband.
ADSL might actually be the worst invention of all time -if it hadn't worked BT would have had to put in fibre 10 years earlier.

By milliganp on 27 Jul 2010

Telephone Wiring

Re comment by @bassey1976; when BT first introduced ADSL they came out and replaced the master socket in each installation -now we rely on filters fitted to each and every outlet (and everbody forgets the sky box connection).
There is no doubt that getting the home wiring right can make a big difference.

By milliganp on 27 Jul 2010

Smug.

I have Virgin's 50meg service. It is *Genuinely* unlimited and there is *Zero* shaping and throttling at *Any* time of day.

I get 5mb/s downloads consistently on steam.

Sorry. :P

By rozman on 27 Jul 2010

@Milligamp
Virgin's network os only coax from the cabinet in the road to the house.

From the exchange to the cabinet it is fibre. As such the distance limitations are pretty much irrelevant.

By ngc001 on 27 Jul 2010

@ Rozman

I'd double check that (I just did).
The 50mb package does have unlimited downloads but is throttled.

Sky are the only ISP that don't impose throttles, filters or limits (on the max package).

Tbh... comparing internet access today is like comparing different vehicles. My car goes faster than your hovercraft... yeah, but my hovercraft isn't limited to land.

By JmLing on 28 Jul 2010

JmLing

You might want to check again,

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traf
fic.html

XXL (50mb) has N/A listed for traffic management at all times of day. No thresholds, no throttling, no limits.

By rozman on 28 Jul 2010

H2O Networks have an idea that might help us...

They have done some good work so far in Bournemouth (i think) and university campuses, using sewers to run fibre optic lines, no mess no road works for months on end. Now if the local councils or ISP's employed companies like these, we would have a good chance of at least getting fibre to the street cabinets.

By IainNIX on 28 Jul 2010

Rip off merchants!

Can anyone tell me why companies spend a fraction of the money today on R&D, charge more and more than ever for aged and decrepid technologies, and yet when there is a need to invest in an updated network, there is no money!

I'm sure there is money if you look into the pockets of the board of directors and shareholders

I would like to see the separation of the network inphrastructure from the provisioning of services. A consolidation of all the network imphrastructure into a non-profit organisation would allow for better use of the consolidated network, sufficient scope to charge a reasonable sum for use of the network inphrastructure by service providers and customers allowing funds to be raised for R&D and improvement and upgrading of the network

Service Providers will be able to share the network and provide whatever services they like without the overheads of developing and maintaining the imphrastructure that has for so long pushed up prices and been used as a tool to generate capital without providing real and honest value for money.

Prices for services should subsequently fall dramatically and improvements in services should also rise.

By j_woolliscroft on 29 Jul 2010

Villages dip out..still

I wish Virgin would hit our village, I've been on 512kb/sec for years now :-( Villages are not a high priority it seems. BT 'may' be going to 'fibre to the cabinet' next year? but I'm not holding my breath.

Most of you seem to be doing much better than me.

Steve

By Techno610 on 29 Jul 2010

Speed checks

Oddly whenever I've used speedtest.net it never seems to reckon I've got much more than 17.5mbps, yet I have definitely seen downloads of a constant 2.1MB/s on some servers like Steam which ties in with my 20mbps Virgin service.
Checked again now and today they show 17.8mbps and 1.8MB/s respectively which tallies.

By trgzbaby on 29 Jul 2010

Upload?

Everyone always forgets about upload speeds... Be Internet can offer 2.5Mb upload for additional costs which is the most I have every seen for ADSL2+ or Virgin. From a business perspective upload is more important than download on the whole.

By Chris_Snape on 29 Jul 2010

Upload?

Everyone always forgets about upload speeds... Be Internet can offer 2.5Mb upload for additional costs which is the most I have every seen for ADSL2+ or Virgin. From a business perspective upload is more important than download on the whole.

By Chris_Snape on 29 Jul 2010

Be There

I have it and although in theory it supposed to do upload speeds of 2,5mb sec its rarely more than 300kbs, which is still an improvement on most. Also the best download I've had from them is around 7mbs.

By ptp_producer on 29 Jul 2010

Upload?

Chris, Virgin have plans to move XXL customers up to a 10Mb/s upload rate within the next year; a 5:1 connection ratio is pretty much unheard of even amongst business packages. This will be BTs big kick up the @ss, hopefully they'll sort themselves out.

By urmaster on 29 Jul 2010

To Be fair

BT want to cable up Britain in the 80s but Thatcher said no to enable the Cable TV operators to get a toe in the door. Now they have all amalgamated in to Virgin Media and BT have missed the boat. Governments should either own everything and do a proper job or but out and let market forces do their stuff.

By Lorribot on 30 Jul 2010

Throttling & customer service

Hmmm, was very interested to read this. I tried the Virgin XL (20meg) package back in Christmas 2007 for a month and then cancelled it because I was getting such poor throughput and customer service.

Before then I was with PlusNet (ADSL) and was getting a steady 5.5meg (on an "up to 8meg service). When I switched to Virgin, I was only ever getting 1.5meg in the evenings as I was on the old NTL network and the throttling they applied was severe (apparently the contention ratio on the other part of the network which I believe was Cable & Wireless wasn't quite so bad). The amount of excuses and general crap I got back from their customer service made me vow never to go near them again. The icing on the cake was when their TV service packed in on Christmas Day and the TV guide was completely garbled!

I then switched back to a BT line and went with BE Unlimited and got a steady 16meg line. Now am with O2 broadband (who own BE) and still with 16meg speed. No throttling appears to be enforced (or if it is, it's no way as harsh as with Virgin), so even their "50meg service" makes me deeply suspicious.

ADSL may be slower, but it seems more reliable and getting 1.5Mb download speeds isn't bad at all.

By mrmmm on 30 Jul 2010

Throttling & customer service

Hmmm, was very interested to read this. I tried the Virgin XL (20meg) package back in Christmas 2007 for a month and then cancelled it because I was getting such poor throughput and customer service.

Before then I was with PlusNet (ADSL) and was getting a steady 5.5meg (on an "up to 8meg service). When I switched to Virgin, I was only ever getting 1.5meg in the evenings as I was on the old NTL network and the throttling they applied was severe (apparently the contention ratio on the other part of the network which I believe was Cable & Wireless wasn't quite so bad). The amount of excuses and general crap I got back from their customer service made me vow never to go near them again. The icing on the cake was when their TV service packed in on Christmas Day and the TV guide was completely garbled!

I then switched back to a BT line and went with BE Unlimited and got a steady 16meg line. Now am with O2 broadband (who own BE) and still with 16meg speed. No throttling appears to be enforced (or if it is, it's no way as harsh as with Virgin), so even their "50meg service" makes me deeply suspicious.

ADSL may be slower, but it seems more reliable and getting 1.5Mb download speeds isn't bad at all.

By mrmmm on 30 Jul 2010

Paul

JmLing, sorry to disagree with you; but I have SKY broadband, and at times it is SEVERELY throttled some days, especially after 5 P.M until midnight.

By rainman998 on 2 Aug 2010