Virgin Media Cable: Yea or Nay?

I've just moved into a flat with 3 friends of mine, and we're looking for a broadband provider. Unfortunately the building only seems to be wired with cable, and the only cable provider I can find in the area is Virgin Media.

What are your general experiences with VM?

One of my friends and I are gamers, and the other two probably use it more for general browsing. Now, I'm a complete newbie to cable broadband, so I've a few (probably silly) questions:

1) If you have a cable connection, is the actual speed you get still dependant on your distance from the exchange? My friends and I are thinking of taking advantage of the special offer on 20Mb but I'm curious is we'll actually get anywhere near that.

2) Can you have more than one modem plugged into the connection? 3 of the 4 bedrooms seem to have a cable connection, and I'm wondering how we're gonna connect up 4 machines.

3) What is their acceptable use policy like? I don't think I've ever been affected by one, but with 4 of us using the same connection I think its a bit more likely to happen.

Any other hints/ tips/ suggestions/ warnings?

I've had DSL in the past, but switched back to cable a while back and am very happy with the service. I'd say go for it. In answer to your questions:-

1) Highest I've hit on 20meg so far is 13meg, but that is probably due to how many connections I have max to my usenet provider - when I was on 10meg I maxed out frequently. Rates at peak times are "shaped", down to about 5meg - this is without downloading too much either. It is notable that even when hitting whatever max I get on usenet, my web browsing remains unimpaired now - when I was on 10meg, maxing the download on usenet (understandably) slowed web browsing - this suggests to me I am getting the full 20meg. AFAIK, distance from the exchange is irrelevant - it's a fibre-optic connection right up to the green box on/near your street.

2) Only 1 cable modem AFAIK, just get a router to distribute to connection.

3) I'm yet to experience the 4hr throttle for downloading too much though if you look at other ISPs, VM has a more lenient policy than most as it only works on bandwidth used in peak periods.

The best thing for me is the rock-solid connection. The only time my BB has been down is due to a genuine fault on the system, rather than the line drops that I had previously experienced frequently with DSL.

I have a basic 4Meg connection and it has never, ever let me down over the two years I've had it.

VM provide a v good service on packages that dont contain their 20mb cable offering.
If youve only got 4 peeps in the house including yourself id go for the 4mb package and split it so you each get 1mb each.

I had the 4mb package lasy year, and other than the odd day with major packet loss and slow loading pages the service was fine.

The 20mb package however is shocking and is constantly up and down, giving you less performance than the 4mb stable package.

Ill leave that decision up to you but dont do what most people do and think oo 20mb wow thats fast, i want it. Then get it and be very disappointed.

I've been with VM for a little over a month now and have been very happy with the service i've been getting, before I was only able to get 2mb on my dsl line due to the distance from the exchange but with cable that's not an issue and i'm now getting a near solid 20mb connection. As for gaming i've found it to be very good, have no problems hosting full 8 player rooms on my 360.

As someone has already mentioned you get 30 days to decide if you want to keep it once the service is active

Thanks for your replies guys, I was getting worried that we were lumped in an area with only one provider, and a bad one at that.

I think we might at least try the 20Mb, just while they've got it on the reduced-for-12-months offer. I can't think of a better time to give it a go, and then if it is poor we'll just downgrade to the 4mb at the end of the year instead of stumping up more for the same connection.

The only issue now is linking the 4 machines. Only 3 rooms have a cable connection, and the gamers in us aren't that keen on wireless.

Oh, and one last thing. Through all the cable stuff I've read I've never heard line rental mentioned. The cable network is owned by VM, not BT, so am I right in guessing that you don't need to pay an equivalent if you just have a cable broadband connection? Like I said, I'm sured to down-the-phone line BB, so this is new to me.

Edited by deleted (Tue 10-Jul-07 22:28:21)