In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If it was me, I'd be edging for both connections anyway...
Why? When one breaks I can still work, though without the nice bits like static IP etc but can still be productive.

This.

Go with a 'consumer' grade service for one of them, as a general household connection and take a business service for the second one so that you can either expense it if employed or claim back on your tax return if self-employed.

It's a solution I would take here if it were at all feasible, but isn't right now (no Virgin Media, no FTTC, no second line available).

I think it's all about calculated risk. I work from home from time to time and have the VM 60mbps service. Get solid speeds, no congestion on my network segment and luckily touch wood there have been no drops in service.

I don't use the superhub for any routing functionality, I just stick it into modem mode.

If you're only working from home every now and then, and feel you may benefit from the 120/12 speeds and have your own good router then that's the way I'd personally go.

The VM network is more vulnerable to issues than xDSL networks due to its shared nature.

I work from home every day so there's no real calculation to be made for me, I'm just hamstrung by circumstance.

Until this most recent address xDSL was way more stable for me than VM.

A MASSIVE thank you to everyone who has taken the time to respond. I'll take on board your comments and I think In the first instance i'm going to go for Fiber. Perhaps if I can justify the cost some sort of backup connection with VM.

Cool. Please be aware:

In reply to a post by c9550927:

I think things might have moved on now?, also with the business virgin media packages I _think_ you dont get lumped in with the residential guys so shouldn't feel the pain so much even if the UBR is over subscribed, right?.

Afraid you do get lumped in with the residential guys. Their congestion is your congestion.

Why on earth do they do that?. I was under the impression the business customers are isolated (via some sort of QOS implementation), so whilst you share the same UBR the throttling won't affect you. then again I thought the upload was far more generous than a measly 3MB, thats seriously disappointing.

Some areas are business only, some are residential only.

I had to have a manual order put in at a previous address as the address was business only.

You don't have the same throttling levels but congestion affects business users in a similar manner to residential.

Yep, it's 5% at the moment - 60Mb is 3Mb upstream.

Which (unless they don't count ACKs, which I doubt) means that if you're running flat out on the downstream (unlikely, I know) you won't get much upstream at all.

I keep toying with dumping the VM broadband and going to PlusNet fibre. But I don't do enough upstream-heavy stuff from home to make it worth jumping into another minimum term contract.