1 to 2 hours if you watch iPlayer on its low quality settings.

Essentially if you have not upgraded to the 30 Meg tier, Virgin Media is encouraging you to.

I used to have the Virgin TV service but I wasn't very impressed. Most of the HD channels had lip sync issues and they didn't offer some major channels available on Sky.

When they announced they wouldn't be carrying the F1 channel in HD, that was last the straw. (I know that's probably more down to Sky not selling it to them but that's business.) The only advantage Virgin had was the On Demand service but I'd say over the last year Sky have surpassed them in that area, too.

Unfortunately switching to Sky broadband is not an option until FTTC is rolled out to my street. Something which has been delayed by 9 months so far.

So on my 60mbps I can only get 8 minutes of full throughput before throttling? If they advertised that I bet they wouldn't get many people buying thr product.

The charts are ridiculous. I understand them but my wife and parents would just look bemused.

As others have said - the network obviously can't cope with the volume of traffic.

I would happily have stayed on 30mbps before they doubled it and just left it as that without throttling. At least then I knew where I stood.

Edited by deleted (Wed 17-Apr-13 19:38:07)

As I read it I you have something large to download or stream then avoiding throttling under this new scheme means you'll need to limit the rate to not much over 600Kbps on the 60Mbps package (never exceed 4.5GB over two hours). I had faster broadband that that in 2001.

I used to try to keep under STM thresholds but the new scheme means very slow downloads if what you want is over 3.5GB on 30 4.5Gb on 60 and 5.7GB on 100 so I'll just ignore the rules from now on and take the STM hit if it comes which is what I suspect many others will do too. I suspect that this is counterproductive for VM.

Don't forget that the limits are in BYTES and the line speeds are in BITS, there are 8 Bits in a Byte.

More like 6 Mega bits per second if you don't ever want to trigger it.

Would I rather have a 70 Mbps service with burst to 120 Mbps or a constant 6 or 7 Mbps from ADSL? Very much a decision for the individual and how they use their connection.

On the old system on 30 Meg, if you did 3.5GB in the evening window, you were limited for five hours, so it is not like this is new, and the reductions are lower than they were at the start of the year.

A lot of comments almost are worded as if the STM is totally new, maybe many did not realise that Virgin Media had STM

Yep - got the sums wrong. Doh

Yes I got the sums wrong.

I think I'd still just let anything download flat out and take any STM hit rather than throttle back to ADSL speeds. Quite probably once the download completed I wouldn't need the top speed anyway or to download more. If I did download more though what would be the point of doing so at 6Mbps if 60% of my headline speed was available? I can't see the new STM stopping constant torrent seeding either although the upstream limits do look quite draconian

So I've downloaded 3.5 GB and I've got a 2 hour speed restriction. If I turn my router off I'll have full speed again in 2 hours. But what if I leave it on? In the third Virgin Media example it says I could be traffic managed all the way to 11 pm. But it doesn't say what extends the time you spend on management. How much can I use the connection in those 2 hours without risking the speed restrictions being extended beyond the two hours?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Believe you go back to the start of a new 2750 MB in one hour.

Turns out this is not the case. I blew the limit today and the download finished at 5 pm. Now it's 7.30 pm and the limiter is still active. I have used the connection for basic browsing nothing more. So you definitely don't get a new 2750 MB allowance. Which again raises the question what triggers extensions to the 2 hour limiter? Surely VM have to be transparent about this.

Update: 9.30 pm it is back to full speed.

Edited by deleted (Sun 28-Apr-13 21:29:43)

That sounds very much like the old STM - breach a limit and you get 5 hours of throttling. They probably haven't rolled the new scheme out to every CMTS yet.