50mb broadband - throttled or not?

I'm on 20 meg cable and throttling is absolutely killing me, I can hit the limit in 20 minutes!

Virgin's throttling page was updated a few days ago and claims that 50 meg (or XXL) cable is not throttled. My mate rang them up last week and they said it would. I rang them just now, the rep had "never heard that term" when I asked about throttling and passed me on to "technical support" - or rather, fobbed me off onto some naff call center.

I'm not entirely sure what the guy said as I could hear every conversation within a 5 metre radius of his desk, but he said there was "capping" on the 20 meg broadband and that 50 meg broadband had exactly the same capping as 20 meg.

I want to upgrade to 50 meg (and can, in my area) if it will get rid of these limits, but I don't want to spend more money if it doesn't! Anyone have any experience with XXL, or know the answer?

Edited by ZoFreX (Tue 07-Apr-09 14:03:12)

Right, just spoke to no less than four more people, and I have informations:

1) The general tech support people have not been trained on 50 meg and so can't answer questions on it (not that that stopped the first person I spoke to!)
2) 50MB is *not* throttled (woo!)
3) You can cancel within 30 days, or downgrade to 20MB any time you want, although upgrading does renew the 12 month minimum contract term.
4) Setup fees total £80. There was some confusion on this point so I will be ringing again. One person told me that this charge was mostly for the Netgear wireless N router, which was non-optional. The website, and a different rep, told me that the router is optional, but the person I spoke to said that it is free and not taking the option makes no difference to the price. According to her, it is £50 for activation and £30 for installation.

Outstanding questions:
1) Is there really no money to be saved by turning down a router I neither want, nor, despite what they insist, need?
2) What is this router? No one could give me a model number, at the least I'm hoping it can offset some of the installation charge via eBay

After reading the Virgin Traffic Management policy
(http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffi...)
it appears from that there isn't any throttling.

But I know how frustrate you are. I'm on a 20Mb connection and there level of service I get is rubbish. I rarely get above a 10Mb download speed.

Quite frankly since Ntl became/merged into Virgin Media, my service has been poor. I get pedestrian download speed all day long.

Anyway, let us know how you get along with the 50Mb connection.

In reply to a post by ZoFreX:

Right, just spoke to no less than four more people, and I have informations:

1) The general tech support people have not been trained on 50 meg and so can't answer questions on it (not that that stopped the first person I spoke to!)

You are surprised? Guys in my area got it installed and had some silly issues and were told by Tech Support that 50mb hadn't even started rolling out yet!

2) 50MB is *not* throttled (woo!)

For now.....

3) You can cancel within 30 days, or downgrade to 20MB any time you want, although upgrading does renew the 12 month minimum contract term.

Nice to know

4) Setup fees total £80. There was some confusion on this point so I will be ringing again. One person told me that this charge was mostly for the Netgear wireless N router, which was non-optional. The website, and a different rep, told me that the router is optional, but the person I spoke to said that it is free and not taking the option makes no difference to the price. According to her, it is £50 for activation and £30 for installation.

It is £30 for installation and £50 activation but that does include the router. However, I'm not 100% sure if the router is yours or on "long term loan"

Outstanding questions:
1) Is there really no money to be saved by turning down a router I neither want, nor, despite what they insist, need?

It would appear not.

2) What is this router? No one could give me a model number, at the least I'm hoping it can offset some of the installation charge via eBay

It's a Netgear WNR2000 and from other posts there appears to be a nice problems with it not playing nicely with 50Mb....but as I said, I don't know if the router is yours or a loaner.

I will ask about ownership of the router next time I ring. I might take it and just use it as a wireless access point - I certainly won't be using it as a router as we've spent the last week building our own router!

(Ubuntu GNU/Linux computer with two network cards, plus iptables, dhcpd, and Linux UPnP Internet Gateway Device, if you're interested).

The bloke in tech support that seemed to know his stuff said that throttling was unlikely to be rolled out on 50 meg anytime soon... I know this isn't exactly binding but it's nice to hear, and if they do roll it out I'll just go back to 20.

And no, I don't expect all of tech support to be trained on a product only a few people can get... but I expect them to tell me they know nothing rather than bull****ing and confusing me!

24/7 yes, trained, no. Was told I should call customer services with my questions.

1) Yes, the router is free and you own it but:
2) "So could I hypothetically sell the router on eBay?" - "I'm not sure about that, there may be legal issues"
3) Installation charges - not a clue

In reply to a post by ZoFreX:

2) "So could I hypothetically sell the router on eBay?" - "I'm not sure about that, there may be legal issues"

On VM's 50Mb FAQ page, it says:

Why do I need a new wireless router?
Your new 50Mb broadband comes with a wireless 'N' router as part of your package⁶.

and down at the bottom of the page:

⁶Equipment remains property of Virgin Media.