I was there at a friends house when the Virgin engineer rang up his network guys wondering why my friends shiny 20 mbit service was only seeing 4 mbit and was told (he had it on speaker) "you wont get any more than that the UBR is oversubscribed"

I can't see it having changed much since then

Do you not realise that these services have a contention ratio? So no you don't have the right to complain if you don't always get 60mbps!!

Do you not realise that if the number of people sharing exceeds the planned contention ratio then the oversubscribed ubr described in the above post will never, during the normal times that folks expect to use the connection, be capable of achieving the advertised rate..

Further, according to Ofcom's code of practice:

27. For services such as cable broadband where the main cause of disparity between headline speed and actual throughput speed may be network capacity limitations, ISPs must provide all consumers as early as practicable within the sales process, and in any event before consumers are asked for personal financial details, with information that actual throughput speeds during peak hours may be lower than at other times of the day where this is material. Specifically, where peak time speeds are likely to be more than 10% below the headline speed of the service, the ISP must indicate the throughput speed that is likely to be achieved during peak times.

I submit that during the sign up process of the case above there was no such communication and that the degree of reduction was so far in excess of 10% that the engineer was surprised too

Edited by deleted (Tue 02-Apr-13 01:19:19)

@worldofadsl

I really do hate to contradict you but I do.

If a supplier enters into a contract to supply an item and then doesn't supply it (I hasten to add knowing at the time the contract was entered in to that they couldn't) it's called fraud.

The old charge used to be 'Obtaining a pecuniary advantage by deception'.
Yes I hear you comment about 'Terms and conditions' - I'm afraid Consumer Law also protects against Unfair terms and conditions.

Simply Virgin are selling more than they can provide. That is at best dishonest and may even be Criminal. It's time there was an open investigation into the selling practices of ISPs. In the same way as the Banks were forced to pay back 'insurance' ISPs should be forced to pay back for their under-provision.

Don't worry employees will probably be taken on by whoever buys them from the receiver.

Jon

P.S. The last time I had a discussion like this it was in the old days of NTL hourly cut off dial up. NTL actually had employees monitoring discussion boards to 'fire fight' complainers......

P.P.S. My connection improved after ordering a Sam Knows monitoring box NOT after posting about it, it was another who posted about the same circumstance here and was treated with the same discourteous slight implying possible paranoia - obfuscation is not really on.

Edited by deleted (Tue 02-Apr-13 10:12:57)

But a single user would get the maximum advertised but no matter what the advertising regulators say it is still an "UPTO SERVICE".

Cars, motorways and speed are not lame anologies.

And I stated the "pay per usage" ages ago and was shot down because that idea was draconean. Was that lame? It would stop all the users staying on-line 24x7 downloading HD content that they probably can't tell the difference between SD and HD anyway.

Most ISPs are just as greedy as VM. They are just battling with BT with regard to advertising the fastest speed in the UK.

In reply to a post by broadband66:

But a single user would get the maximum advertised but no matter what the advertising regulators say it is still an "UPTO SERVICE".

Obfuscation old chap.

If you had read what I had posted I was commenting on the 'unlimited' nature of the service.

Is shouting really necessary?

Wasn't it the German propaganda minister who invented the concept of shouting loud enough and long enough and people will believe?

I prefer the 'You can fool some of the people all of the time and all of the people some of the time but you can't fool all of the people all of the time.

BTW I honestly believe that Virgin are the best value ISP, I just hate miss-selling. If Virgin was a small company Trading Standards would be crawling all over them and they would have gone bankrupt from their legal bills. They don't need all the games and tricks.

The simple answer is to stop selling before the capacity is oversold.

They do know what their capacity is as they 'throttle' and 'cap' which should not be necessary if they were honest.

Jon

P.S. Perhaps you could explain your Idea that it is other user's fault that you don't get what you pay for and not Virgin's for overselling in the first place.

P.P.S. I don't use P2P and download a few Gb a day by FTP through my connection so we are really allies trying to get what we need. I just know you are blaming the wrong people who are only trying to get what they pay good money for.

Where is you evidence that the ubr is oversubscribed?

ADSL had upto 50 people sharing the 512kbps when first launched. Which potentially could make it slower than dial up. Not 100% sure what the current contention ratio on home user products is.

You are talking about a leased line here not broadband. VM are selling a shared product so how can you moan if you are not always able to max out your connection?

Do you actually understand the difference between a leased line and broadband?!?! Do you know the price difference?

This argument is crazy and people need to realise that you get what you pay for. Broadband is cheap because it is a shared service.

When have I ever said I don't get what I pay for?

I said that it is correct throttle users who simply want to download the internet. There are not many of these heavy users who are not downloading illegal content.

I also don't agree with people hosting high bandwidth servers over a broadband connection.