Virgin Media on the Gaget Show

The Gadget Show seem obsessed with getting ISP's to drop the "Up To" from their description of download speeds in favour of something more "realistic". It's not gonna happen because you can't accurately predict ADSL speeds delivered over a phone line.

The guy from Virgin Media said they would not be dropping the "Up To" description on their website.

So what about cable, The Gadget show should have asked him about about this description on their website regarding download speeds delivered over cable ...

" it doesn't matter how far you live from the exchange. Since it's delivered by cable, your download speeds aren't affected by the distance your PC is from the telephone exchange."

There's plenty of people paying for Virgin's 20 Mbit cable service that are receiving nowhere near that speed, Virgin convenienty omit any mention of contention on their website, they are misleading people into thinking you sign up for 20 Mbit & that's what you'll get ... not true!
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Edited by deleted (Mon 26-Nov-07 21:45:21)

Certainly connection speed is not an issue, but actual download speeds are.

I missed this weeks - didn't see anything coming out of the show as the conclusion seemed obvious

well this week they said ...

1. the 2 largest UK ISP's, Virgin Media & BT will not be dropping the "up to" description.

2. they quoted a report ("Which" I think) stating that approx 21% of UK broadband subscribers actually achieve the download speeds advertised by ISP's

3. Something about OFCOM reviewing the way ISP's advertise their services

Edited by deleted (Mon 26-Nov-07 21:59:11)

God bless the British Taxpayers.

One big difference between Cable and ADSL is that Cable connects to the network at the full speed regardless of the cable length. What speed you actually get is another thing.

Cable may connect at 20mbit, but get 1mbit or 18mbit at any given time.
ADSL may connect at any speed "up to" the maximum subscribed to, and then may not get the full speed that the device connected at.

Mmm well with ADSL no one downloads at 8Mbps from the Internet ever.

We download from the Internet at up to 7150Kbps (on Max), then there is the added overheads of an ATM network to add to this, bringing us to the 8Mbps connection headline speed.

The issue is a hard one to cover without going into the technicalities which pretty much allow providers to wriggle out.

In reply to:

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God bless the British Taxpayers.

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Since when did taxes fund the BBC?

doesnt our tv licenses fund the bbc - that is tax ?

try telling that to Virgin Media

He claimed my connection which is currently 689kb/s was acceptable under the terms of UPTO 20mb

In reply to:

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doesnt our tv licenses fund the bbc - that is tax ?

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I suppose it depends on your definition of a tax. I'm a UK taxpayer, but choose not to fund the BBC at the moment.