The good? The Bad?

Hi guys,

I'm thinking for joining the VM 50mb gang. I was with Telewest many years ago (on 0.5mb broadband, back in the day) and I found Blueyonder to be an excellent service. However much has changed since then, I'm currently on Be (an great ISP), however the connection in my new house isn't great. There's nothing Be can do about this.

So I'm tempted with the 50mb + phone for £28.

I was just wondering what peoples experience with the service is like (the cable service, customer service, additional services like the photo printing, and backup software)?


I really value peoples opinion on this forum, so thanks in advance for any advice.

Cheers
darius

PS I have a mac, I don't know if that limits any of the services (such as the backup service)?

Not sure if you realise it from your wording but the £28 is for the broadband and to get it at that price you have to take the phone as well which is £11.99 on top of that.

The broadband is good in most areas although there are odd pockets where it isn't so brilliant I think. My 20Mbps is fine.

Check for cashback deals (Quidco TopCashBack SimplifyDigital) - I got £125 back on 20Mbps +phone from SimplifyDigital when I signed up.

VM telephony is expensive if you use the landline. I bought an ATA and use VOIP through VOIPCheap for all outgoing calls.

After re-reading the offer I had noticed the total price of £28 + £11.99.

Atm I pay BT line rental (£10) + Be pro (£22) so cable would be more expensive, however I pay for a 24mb line and get 8mb, I'm hoping that 50mb cable would be better than that.

I didn't know that cable phones were expensive, I would get a skype phone or similar offer however VM don't make that offer particularly attractive (understandably so).

I'll look out for the cash-back deals thanks for the tip.

Cheers
darius

Am I missing something here.

50Mb with phone works out at £440.98 for the year.

£15 a month
for 3 months
£28 after that + Plus a Virgin Phone line for £11.99 a month.

-----------

50Mb without phone = £441 for the year.

£33 a month
for 3 months
£38 after that

---------------

so get the phone service, and save an extra 2pence per year

I see your point, however I guess if you didn't take the phone you'd have to factor in the BT line rental (assuming you want a house phone).

Cheers
darius

Go with O2 standard at £7.50/month and you should get sync of 8 and download of 6.5.

Big saving!

The 50mb service when working right give 52.4mbps speed. Using IDM I get 6.5-6.7mb/sec but virgin write to you if you use too much and tell you off. good luck with 100 then virgin!

Alternatively, see if you can get Fibre to the cabinet and upgrade from ADSL. I get around 34Mb downstream and 10Mb upstream, the latter more than 6x better than the cable equivalent. Cost unlikely to be much different from what you're paying now - BT Infinity Option 2 costs £24.99/month.

Those interested in the 50Mbps VM offer are probably as much attracted to the unlimited (subject to the occasional snotty letter if really hammered) nature of the product. I recently saw complaints that BT had a 100GB cap on Infinity Option 2. That has now been upgraded to 300GB which will be more than adequate for most users but is still less than you can download in peak time without getting throttled on the 20Mbps VM product.

VM are rumoured to be responding in part to the high upstreams offered by Infinity though by upgrading upload to 10% of download across their product range - hopefully complete end 2010 but not actually announced yet.

If 8Mbps is enough then a swap to O2 standard is the cheapest option.