Virgin has just come in area

Virgin has just come in my area after 15 years of waiting I’m with EE no problems whatsoever 500mg, been offered 1Gb with Virgin for £31.99 brilliant. I’ve had nothing but complaints from people saying how bad the internet is. It’s perfect then can go again but not for hours it can e anything to 1 to 3 days until it’s fixed.

Before entering contract I might just stick with EE.

Is it true they are tripe? Customer services is tripe as I’ve been on phone and chat with them.

In reply to a post by MapooUK:

Is it true they are tripe?

They are very regional. I'm in the Hampshire/Surrey border area and have really no technical issues, but people in other parts of the country can. Most of those are on the OLD cable TV network. If you are a NEW area then likely your cabling is by nexfibre which means it will be different.

Customer services is the same country wide... hopefully you don't need.

In reply to a post by MapooUK:

Virgin has just come in my area after 15 years of waiting

WOW!

In reply to a post by Nervous:

WOW!

Virgin Media is the anchor ISP for the really new nexfibre FTTP network. This has been rolling out for a few years now and is building in areas where none of Virgin Media's predecessors have been (e.g. NTL, Telewest or the companies before). Eventually nexfibre will offer other ISPs on the network; but today they only offer Virgin Media service as they are working closely together.
https://www.nexfibre.co.uk/

Edited by jchamier (Sun 16-Mar-25 14:37:16)

Depends on area, but the main reason they are considered rubbish by some people especially gamers and users of latency sensitive programs is Latency and Jitter.
Day to day use like streaming and web surfing by most people will be fine.

In reply to a post by Nervous:

Depends on area, but the main reason they are considered rubbish by some people especially gamers and users of latency sensitive programs is Latency and Jitter.

This is often a symptom of the physical cable-tv coax areas (DOCSIS) which is still the majority of the country. Newer areas using non cable-TV cabling show different effects on these. See my BQM for a fairly average trace from a cable-tv coax area.

you will be lucky if your house is on the database the nextfibre update to virgin seem very dodgy with half of any street nextfibre install to missing off the VM system. not a good start when your signing a contract and they dont know a contractor installed points outside your garden

For me it is baffling how you had to wait 15 years for VM when you already had Openreach FTTP agreed as part of the wayleave process.

But anyway, it seems your story is similar to mine. We also never had any Virgin Media COAX available. We only have Community Fibre last 2 years.

However, last year in June a wayleave was agreed for Virgin Media nexfibre, which my housing estate EastendHomes agreed with SCCI Alphatrack. The only hypothesis for this is that SCCI do our communal TV aerial system so the wayleave was probably simpler. Also the previous Technical Services Manager left his position so that might have been a contributing factor for the wayleave agreement.

Initially it was showing as live before it went back to "Keep me posted". All the other buildings apparently are live now in my estate except for 3 buildings.

As I've always said before wayleave is only part of the story. Just like Community Fibre they claimed it will be only 12 weeks to complete. But it has been 9 months and not all places have gone live for VM. For Community Fibre it took 20 months to complete in my building.

I'm not too optimistic on the service quality and perhaps for me Openreach FTTP is generally a better service than nexfibre due to 650 ISPs and more affordable prices. While VM might have offered you £31.99 but it will massively price hike at the end of the contract. You need to be aware of this and quickly migrate on time or haggle with them.

There is very little choice on VM and most of the packages are asymmetric. You have to pay £5 extra for symmetrical. Maybe the only plus side is that there's no CGNAT but it also means no IPv6 either. There's also no ONT, you are stuck with their router, which if you want to use your own you have to put it in modem mode since most routers don't have a Fibre SFP+ port. You need a special router that has SFP+ port to directly plug the Virgin Media Fibre cable into it.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

There is very little choice on VM and most of the packages are asymmetric. You have to pay £5 extra for symmetrical. Maybe the only plus side is that there's no CGNAT but it also means no IPv6 either.

Which ISPs on Openreach offer symmetric packages? I know BT has launched some packages but only in BDUK areas (so certain areas of England only, no Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland). The fact that's only £5 extra and they do it in all of the areas they provide fibre to is a massive selling point.

If I could, I would rather have 500/500 than 1000/100 but nobody offers that. It's also really hard to search for plans by upload speed because everyone wants to shove the download speed in your face, front and centre. I guarantee Virgin having symmetric speeds for only a fiver extra will sell to certain people. A shame they still don't have IPv6 though.

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

There's also no ONT, you are stuck with their router, which if you want to use your own you have to put it in modem mode since most routers don't have a Fibre SFP+ port. You need a special router that has SFP+ port to directly plug the Virgin Media Fibre cable into it.

You could buy a media converter. I did that recently in my home because I decided to run a fibre cable from my switch downstairs to the bedroom upstairs. I'll add an SFP card to my desktop eventually but the media converter does the job for now.

Openreach will offer symmetric packages this April 2025 but of-course none of us know yet, which ISPs will be offering those services. I'm aware it is going to be extremely expensive at £122 a month!

But I expect that in future prices will go down naturally. The strongest point of Openreach is that they offer their packages to 650 different ISPs. You have a much larger scale of options to choose from with more router choice.

Of-course my original post was speaking from my perspective having Community Fibre already that does have symmetrical speeds. The problem is that they no longer offer to have CGNAT removed for their 500Mbps/1Gbps packages. You now need to opt for their 3Gbps. This is especially a problem when you require port forwarding particularly for old style games that use Games for Windows Live or other games like S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Clear Sky where you cannot host your own Multiplayer servers or join servers.

From my point of view of-course symmetrical speeds is less relevant. I'd still in some respects prefer to have Openreach as a second network provider compared to Virgin Media. Because like you say they don't have IPv6 while it may be no big deal at least I would have more choice on Openreach like with BT presently do. The danger of price hiking is always there. VM will drastically hike up their prices unlike other Altnets. If you only have VM available and it is the only anchor ISP on the nexfibre network they will take advantage and can price hike.

There are reports even on these forums that people who have another Altnet available, use this as a tactic to haggle with Virgin Media to get their prices down! If you have multiple choices or ISPs then VM and others cannot monopolise you!

In reply to a post by aidanh:

In reply to a post by BLaZiNgSPEED:

There's also no ONT, you are stuck with their router, which if you want to use your own you have to put it in modem mode since most routers don't have a Fibre SFP+ port. You need a special router that has SFP+ port to directly plug the Virgin Media Fibre cable into it.

You could buy a media converter. I did that recently in my home because I decided to run a fibre cable from my switch downstairs to the bedroom upstairs. I'll add an SFP card to my desktop eventually but the media converter does the job for now.

Ok, that's great to know! But I just had a look at those media converters and the majority of them are only 1Gbps support. What happens if you chose a 2Gbps package on VM? Then that Media Converter will not support those speeds and you will be capped at 1Gbps.

I cannot find a media converter that supports higher than 1000Mbps. I have found this https://www.startech.com/en-gb/networking-io/et91000sc2 while it claims to support Maximum Data Transfer Rate 2000 Mbps (full duplex mode) the title and the name still shows as 1000 Mbps and it costs £197.99 GBP incl. VAT!

I could buy a new router like the rt-ax89x that seems like a more rational choice https://www.asus.com/uk/networking-iot-servers/wifi-...
That has the 10G SFP+ port included. But that still means I have to shell out for a new router should the Virgin Media hub be causing problems. Maybe, just maybe like others have mentioned on these forums if in future other ISPs join the nexfibre network they might offer to either install an ONT or they will manufacture a special router similarly like the Hub 5x that will have an SFP+ port included.