It's one of those things where if it works then it's fine. If your service went down overnight for a few minutes and came back up and you were on 1000/100 though it's not a guarantee that anybody at Virgin Media would be able to fix it, as mad as that sounds.

I'm fortunate that I've got BT FTTP in my area so I can stay on their 900/100 service or use other providers over the same fiber.

I had planned on moving to my own hardware rather than the 5X but that's gone out the window now.

If retentions call me and can offer me the actual service I'm after then I'll give it a go and thoroughly test it but I'll still be ready to jump ship.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

Unless they are the only choice. I could go back to FTTC at 30mbps; but here VM is the only high speed option.

There is only so long they can rely on being the one option though. Openreach and smaller providers are still rolling out at a decent pace.

I'm lucky as I have OR FTTP and YouFibre, so I'll likely never have to suffer them again.

In reply to a post by Skie:

There is only so long they can rely on being the one option though. Openreach and smaller providers are still rolling out at a decent pace.

There are multiple problems in my area... 1) OR have no ducts; so retro fit is painful. 2) poles have been errected by one of the two AltNets which stops OR using them 3) many small blocks of flats where neither AltNet can get wayleave. VM's predecessors were in the street in the 1990s and have their own ducts, they have also agreed (20+ years ago) access to the flats.

I'm lucky as I have OR FTTP and YouFibre, so I'll likely never have to suffer them again.

Very useful; I would easily be with Hey! or Toob as they are both in my road, but neither can get a respond from the block owners (neither can I). At least VM can offer me 1000 / 100 but at £72/m I've decided I can live without.

I can see why OR have skipped the town so far... no ducts, and no poles, and lots of anti-pole locals means I suspect we might see OR FTTP in 2035....

In reply to a post by chriscdotcodotuk:

If retentions call me and can offer me the actual service I'm after then I'll give it a go and thoroughly test it but I'll still be ready to jump ship.

nexfibre's CEO needs to get a couple of additional ISPs on to the network, or VM's rubbish customer services will cost them income.

I used to be on them in London for ages. I even stupidly thought it would be a good idea to just get a new drop cable re-installed after we completely re-did the house, following pandemic. That was a mistake!

There are 3 things wrong with Virgin Murder as a customer:

1. The old HFC cable network is just heaving and tired in many franchise areas. It needs "a fork in it", as the yanks would say. The sooner it's dead and buried the better.

2. Customer Service is a contradiction in terms. It's as woeful now as it was when they took over my old Cable London / Telewest Blueyonder account some near twenty years ago.

3. Get better install/repair subbies. Openreach are far better in this regard.

In reply to a post by Pheasant:

There are 3 things wrong with Virgin Murder as a customer:
1. The old HFC cable network is just heaving and tired in many franchise areas. It needs "a fork in it", as the yanks would say. The sooner it's dead and buried the better.

In many areas there are just too many homes per segment, and as speeds have gone up, despite the move from DOCSIS 2.0 to 3.0 and 3.1, it just isn’t enough. Then you have the problems that each area was built by different firms to different quality standards, some have lots of RF noise ingress causing packet loss. Its a mixed bag.

At least if you follow ISPreview (used to be this sites news) the management have started the investment to replace the coax with a GPON FTTP deployment. Hopefully the 1990s ducts will be in better shape than OR’s non-duct DIG areas.

2. Customer Service is a contradiction in terms. It's as woeful now as it was when they took over my old Cable London / Telewest Blueyonder account some near twenty years ago.

The only workaround for this is to use the Community Forum.; those guys are great.

3. Get better install/repair subbies. Openreach are far better in this regard.

Still plenty of horror stories about OR subs.

Considering they're partly owned by Telefonica and Liberty Global its very hard to see them getting chummy with any other providers unfortunately.

Today I had a call from the retentions team who basically spent 15mins saying almost nothing of use other than "you cant upgrade to 2gig and you just have to leave and come back".

What an absolute joke that the retentions team, the team who try and keep customers, said "just leave". They did say I should send a formal complaint but that was it. Baffling really.

In reply to a post by chriscdotcodotuk:

Considering they're partly owned by Telefonica and Liberty Global its very hard to see them getting chummy with any other providers unfortunately.

Understood, other than they keep saying they are a full fibre wholesale operator! (https://www.nexfibre.co.uk/)

Today I had a call from the retentions team who basically spent 15mins saying almost nothing of use other than "you cant upgrade to 2gig and you just have to leave and come back".

Likely need more training.

What an absolute joke that the retentions team, the team who try and keep customers, said "just leave". They did say I should send a formal complaint but that was it. Baffling really.

Probably don't really have a clue about nexfibre areas.

Several buildings in my area under my housing estate management have gone live with Nexfibre and I also noticed that those postcodes with Nexfibre turn the Virgin Media page to a dark grey theme instead of the usual red.

I also didn't know the Gig2 service was symmetrical for VM as I see 2000Mbps average download speed 200Mbps average upload speed in the bullet points.

This can be somewhat misleading for a customer wishing to consider taking VM via Nexfibre. Also £70 for Gig2 service is very expensive especially when you consider 3Gbps from Community Fibre is sold for £56 per month. I honestly don't know how they will attract a lot of customers on their network.

Nexfibre will indeed need to bring in more Altnets. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexfibre#Wholesale_par... I see that it is rumoured that Zen Internet may join their network as TBC. Still Zen is also an expensive provider and will be difficult for them to compete with the cheaper Altnets.

Openreach FTTP or CityFibre are far better choices that would've excited me more. The strange thing is that I have little excitement for Nexfibre coming as my second FTTP overbuild after Community Fibre.

Probably the only compelling case for me to use VM is if it does not use CGNAT via Nexfibre. Is this the case for their service?