FTTC or Virgin Media cable?

My Sky contract is up, and i have got my MAC.

Just wondered what you folks think I should go for next. Virgin Media seems to be spending lots on marketing, adverts everywhere, letters through the door, banners on local buses etc. and they can offer up to 50Mb for £35 a month, less if I take out a phoneline with them.

BT Infinity seems to be best bang for buck for £25 a month, and my line can reportedly support 33Mb down and 7.8Mb up. At the moment I am on 3Mb down and 0.7Mb up on ADSL max.

I am on the brink of applying for Infinity and using my MAC, but dislike the 18 month contract. And on their site there seems to be no info about a cooling off period where I can change my mind and terminate within 28 days unlike VM.

In reply to a post by JLamy:

My Sky contract is up, and i have got my MAC.

Just wondered what you folks think I should go for next. Virgin Media seems to be spending lots on marketing, adverts everywhere, letters through the door, banners on local buses etc. and they can offer up to 50Mb for £35 a month, less if I take out a phoneline with them.

BT Infinity seems to be best bang for buck for £25 a month, and my line can reportedly support 33Mb down and 7.8Mb up. At the moment I am on 3Mb down and 0.7Mb up on ADSL max.

I am on the brink of applying for Infinity and using my MAC, but dislike the 18 month contract. And on their site there seems to be no info about a cooling off period where I can change my mind and terminate within 28 days unlike VM.

hey .... i cant really say what FTTC is like or at the same time what VM are like in your area...as you can see from my speedtest sig below im usually hitting full speed with Vm..

you also have the choice of taking tv with VM........

as you say you have a 28 day get out with VM..i'd give them a go and see how you get on..you can always leave and go to FTTC if you are not happy with your service ..


edit: just did a speedtest on tbb,still within peak hours and showing full speed..

Edited by djfunkdup (Thu 25-Nov-10 21:30:27)

Glad you having a positive experience with them so far. Does anyone know if I take out the TV and the phone it will affect my throughput of the broadband? I understand that everything comes in via one coax cable.

Only the TV shares the coax, phone is delivered via second phone cable and as far as I know TV has no impact on the BB.

In reply to a post by JLamy:

Glad you having a positive experience with them so far. Does anyone know if I take out the TV and the phone it will affect my throughput of the broadband? I understand that everything comes in via one coax cable.

well it's not really 'so far'..i'v been on the 50Mb since it came out and it has always performed this way..
and no the tv input does not affect the bb......even while recording 2 ch in Hd and watching a 3rd channel the bb remains the same

I only say 'so far' as I have read about some users that had great connection to poor speeds within a short time. This is on the virgin media customer forums.

Good to hear that having TV no detriment to broadband.

For their phone line, would this be seperate to my existing phoneline I have with BT now?

yes its a seperate phoneline

Hey, VM are now unfortunately using traffic management on all packages

I with sky atm, even though I sync at 18.5Mb my through put is around 14Mb,

My friend who lives down the road from me has VM Cable 20MB

My ping is lower from him, also I can surf the net faster, only time he beat me in download large files before the traffic management kicks in

you might want to look at some of the non bt Retail FTTC providers

Hey, VM are now unfortunately using traffic management on all packages

On the 50Mbps cable?

yea there been some articles on TB forums about it including the cahnces in the TC