Something i cant quite grasp

I just cant quite grasp what Virgin media seem to be upto.

Virgin media have stated that they are pouring more and more money into their broadband rather than TV as its their biggest earner, YET their network seems to be getting worse.

They r pouring the money in hoping to attract more custom and keep their custom happy yet they r also introducing rediculous STM times which seem to be annoying more and more people and quite a number in my area have switched to the likes of Sky, Orange, AOL and Talk Talk because of the awful level of service they are getting from Virgin.

So what i cant grasp is why pour money in and offer a worse level of service, if they want people to stop downloading a lot why are they forcing people to upgrade to a faster service by putting levels of STM on those to a level where people will want to goto which would cause more and more problems as the heavy downloaders will be downloading just as much as they did on 4mb but even faster.

I cant seem to grasp what they are trying to do, and i really dont think they do also and i think they are just thrashing around seeing how much people will take before all hell breaks loose with their customers.

I have no idea what Virgin are about mate, absolutely none. I think that sometime after re-branding took place and after the 20 Mbit upgrade they realised the network couldn't cope. They've overstretched themselves and STM is their solution. When these new STM times go national I fully expect sparks to fly. I experienced them today first hand and honestly could'nt tell you how much I'd downloaded, or what "time zone" I was in, or when my full speed was restored or anything, it's all very hit & miss. If you have large files to download between 10am - 9pm you need to sit down and work it out precisely beforehand or your gonna get STM'd

Edited by deleted (Sat 19-Apr-08 20:27:04)

if u read my comments from last weekend, i came home after being away for 2 days and PC and modem was off and when i put it on i was instantly STM'd.

Now that is really taking the biscuit.

no Jim that was us on this forum, we reported you to Virgin, we told them you had a terabit hard drive to fill up when you returned from your hols they were waiting for you!

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Edited by deleted (Sat 19-Apr-08 21:49:35)

i downloaded an Antivirus update and that was it LOL!

Its the British way Jim.

Be it Virgin, 'New' Labour or Britain in general we have been overcome with the 'look how much it costs' mentality. We seem to have this idea that if we say how much money we are pouring in then it�s got to be smashing!!

Its typical spin to try and cover up mistakes by saying you�re spending lots of money. The government seems to get caught out quite often with double announcements regarding investment in this and that.

I don�t know how much a good cable infrastructure costs to set up, run and maintain, but I read somewhere that VM said they were �investing� �1m a week into upgrades � sounds good but if that was only for the next couple of weeks or so it doesn�t sound quite so good any more!!

I think what I am trying to say is VM are saying what they think they have to say to keep people happy. I�m sure they are putting vast sums of money into the network, but they probably aren�t much vaster (excuse the English) than their regular maintenance budget.

What would we all think if VM issued a press release saying something along the lines of �The network is pretty stuffed in places and we don�t know when we are going to be able to afford to sort it�? That would be honest and noble but commercial suicide � could you imagine the adverts from their competitors the next day?

Of course if VM or broadband in general was operated as a not for profit company then the network would get so much more investment � just look how much the rail network has improved since the running of the infrastructure was switched to this model!!!

Anyway I think you can see that sometimes being a cynical skeptic means that you don�t get your hopes up for things that may well not happen in the timescale you are expecting them in.

Cheers

Grim

PS
You�ll never guess how much my new kitchen cost!!!

If you reckon that it would easily cost �5 billions to setup VM's network today, their quoted �50 million upgrade programme represents just 1% -- a pitiful amount.
And we're supposed to be impressed?