Virgin Blames The Customers For Slowdown

Well, well, well. Their excuses get more pathetic by the day.

What do you think about this quote:

"Virgin Media -- previously known among gamers and other users for its high-speed access -- has "slowed (down) in some areas."

According to the Virgin Media exec, the problem boils down to users' PCs, not to those of the broadband network.

"The vast majority of users' PCs are not able to get 20 Mbps," he replied. Berkett added that Virgin Media has reacted by launching an "educational campaign" among UK customers"

(taken from a BetaNews article HERE)

So apparently it's all OUR fault and we need educated!

The cheek.

Edited by tazandpig (Thu 06-Dec-07 21:27:58)

i cant get anywhere near 20mb at the moment, im getting a max of 2mb at night and 700k in the day time.

the bloke is an idiot !

maybe when they installed the equipment into people's houses they should they have checked the pc's from the non literate users & when the upgrade took place they should of posted out details of the implications

how about they stop charging people to speak to tech support and actually offer a level of service

Going to chase up to see if this is accurate and what this educational bit is

I think its virgin media that need to be educated, they dont quite grasp the fact that the reason people want fast internet is to be able to download quickly.

I've pretty sure they've got that idea but the idea they don't have is network management.

They shouldn't be running a 20mbit service off an ageing Docsis1 network. Its really kinda daft to be honest.

Mind you, I shouldn't complain as I'm lucky enough to be in an ex-tw area that doesn't have major bandwidth issues can max 20mbit out on 1~2 connections during the day and 4 at night.

Things should hopefully get better with the rollout of Docsis 3 ( assuming they don't cheap out on it)

Indeed, I'm pretty interested to find out exactly how people's everybody's PCs are causing slow connections for everybody.

Colour me sceptical, but it sounds like bull. The only piece of equipment I can think of that could possibly cause issues in the end user premises is the modem, which Virgin supply themselves, and should be replacing if it is not capable of attaining the speeds they are providing. Home user network equipment shouldn't have any problems, and the idea of every single Virgin customer having PC configuration issues is nothing short of ridiculous.

The only other possibilities that spring to mind are some form of throttling, or capacity issues, both of which reside firmly in Virgin's side of the court.

Maybe they're saying every PC on their network is also acting as a relay to other PCs on the network, and most of them don't have enough juice to pass on packets to other VM cable users further along the "branches" of the network "tree"? In which case they're at best idiots, and at worst trying to cloud the issue with lies

But the more likely explanation is that they think every VM cable user is responsible for their own download speed being lousy, and that this is because they're too stupid to clear their cookies every few minutes

To be honest even if the FUP scales up, and they are charging more than �37 then the only people getting it will probably be VM staff. Many will simply decide to go for a provider that may be slower but offers a more consistent performance.

A nice headline speed needs to really provide something that shines in actual use otherwise its main advantage will be marketing and that alone

happy to give you my bit in support of this thread andrew