they dont have the obligation that BT do to have certian 0845 pricing, as a result VM are pretty expensive for 0845/0844 etc.

higher connection fees.

and BT are obligated to allow alternative call providers to work on their lines.

In reply to a post by foxuk:

Just under 10% increase when inflation is running way lower.... On that logic our i7 would cost about £4 billion as it does so much more than a ZX81....... weird!

One's a service the other is a piece of hardware and are completely incomparable so there's zero logic to be had there.

EDIT: Perhaps a better comparison if you're talking about inflation would be to check the current 'inflation' rate of average broadband usage per household. The infrastructure to support that costs money.

Edited by deleted (Tue 20-Aug-13 13:21:22)

Glad it makes sense to somebody. Virgin Media pricing is beyond my comprehension. Everybody seems to be on a different price and in general the longer you're with them the higher it is. I don't know how they get away with being so opaque.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

One's a service the other is a piece of hardware and are completely incomparable so there's zero logic to be had there.

It may be a 'little advanced' for you as it compares different things......

Do you always have to be such an insulting troll?

JDS

P.S. I'm still not playing your little game - anyone who could assess logic would have cottoned on by now.

Accusing someone of being an insulting troll doesn't make them so. I actually find your accusation pretty churlish. My posts have been far from insulting and I am sorry if you find disagreement with your point of view so insulting. I would recommend avoiding discussion forums if you have a problem with other points of view.

Broadband usage has increased dramatically and, hence, the cost to provide it has increased. Virgin have overstretched themselves with their speed doubling programme and are trying to recoup infrastructure costs by rinsing the larger part of their customer base with cost increases.

Using a PC more just results in a higher electricity bill, incidentally the reason electricity is priced per unit is because there's a higher incremental cost to the supplier the more of it you use. The cost to provide the components within the PC doesn't go up the more heavily the machine is used hence the comparison is invalid. There's nothing advanced about that in any way.

The cost of providing the infrastructure has dropped though not as much as you might think as it's largely based around civil engineering work and installation costs rather than the actual hardware, the infrastructure required has increased considerably.

I didn't say I liked it, I merely said it made sense, which it does. The majority of VM's customers are on 30Mb, so that's the largest base to rinse with one price rise.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Virgin have overstretched themselves with their speed doubling programme

That's hardly anybodies fault but their own. They obviously decided the only way to compete with Infinity when BT doubled their speeds (probably at zero cost as they just started out with a conservative profile) was to push their creaking infastructure past sensible limits by offering doubled speeds too. To make matters worse sticking to advertising "unlimited" forced them into removing just about all teeth from the STM so now they have to tolerate people constantly seeding torrents in many areas leading to high congestion and presumably more and more customers realising they aren't getting a decent service quitting for alternatives.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

... are trying to recoup infrastructure costs by rinsing the larger part of their customer base with cost increases.

Well I for one won't tolerate a 17% hike since January. Assuming I get notified I'll be calling in and if they don't remove that increase I'll be running that interesting project we discussed in the other thread 24x7 until late October when I'll be back home full time at which point I'll re-order FTTC, pray that Openreach have got their act together after a year, and eventually ditch cable. If that's how it pans out I'll be sure to let you know just how much a VM60 connection can deliver each day - that crawler in the past was more limited by the compression of results files on the ITX I was running it on so this time around I'll try an I5

I can't say I blame you at all. It's a pretty rapid and large series of price increases.

There's rather a provocative amount of work to be done on the network to get things ready for the next tier and keeping up with VDSL on upstream.

I am still thinking BT doubled in reaction to an earlier VM speed increase, the vast majority of speed increases in the past decade have been VM led. I blame noone but VM themselves for the position they are in.

Of course customers need to realise nothing is free in the end, these speed increases were either paid for by previous profits, or future price rises.

Also we cant forget VM have recently changed ownership as well.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 21-Aug-13 14:48:15)

Most people meekly sat and waited a year for their doubling while new customers were getting it immediately. After my aborted Infinity install a year ago I called in and got a doubled package at less than new customer price. It's only recently that my area was doubled. The jitter on my own connection is rather high but I can normally force a full 60Mbps+ out of it with multiple http connections.

If VM continue to run their business like a car boot stall and I can haggle their increase away I'll probably stick with them - if not I may risk TalkTalk who are cheap as chips but I'll check all the deals before I take that option. They used to have an abysmal reputation but I see far fewer complaints that look legitimate these days.