Switch to Virgin Media - loads of concerns

Hello, and sorry to bother you guys again.

I have been waiting for a year for my area to have fibre, but since I live in a cul-de-sac with very few houses (8 total I think) and all populated by elderly people, I really doubt that the "Under Review" will change anytime soon.

The only alternative I have at the moment is Virgin which surprisingly arrives here.

At the moment I am with Sky (no complaints whatsoever for now), but it's an ADSL, with a small 1Mbps(tested:0.8Mbps) Upload Stream and a 19Mbps Download.

I can cope with the download speeds, they are enough for me, but I really need more upload stream.
I use upload a lot as I host a cloud service for my family, Stream content from home when I'm out, and RDP into the server on a daily basis, and also Skype quality is a bit horrible.
Furthermore I download constantly a lot of niche stuff. I say that because I VERY occasionally download huge files with torrents or nzbs. It's mainly big downloads over years at slow speeds.
I also game a little bit so I need low pings to not have lag.

Having said that how would switching to Virgin Media benefit me, if at all?

IF they keep their word with downloads I am only really concerned about ping times and the p2p throttling.
I would get the 152Mbps bundle so even if they cut the upload speeds by 65% it would still be superior to what I have now. Normal download speeds will be fine, whilst p2p speeds are a bit of a mystery.

But DO they hold up to their promises with their normal download speeds?
Is the throttling accurate as they have written?

Thanks for answering and excuse the long post!

Edited by deleted (Wed 09-Sep-15 20:41:02)

Hello,

You will find it's like going from a Mini to a Ferrari. Virgin's modems do connect at the speeds advertised and often achieve it. However in some places they over sell so you get congestion. This means that the speeds often drop when lots of people are using it at the same time.

There are no download limits as they got rid of those months ago. However there are upload limits. http://my.virginmedia.com/traffic-management/traffic... click here and choose the package you are interested in to see what they are

I used to get 3mbps in the evenings and around 160 at night. I used to do 1-2TB a month without a problem.

I always found they throttled P2P and FTP over port 21 but never USENET which I used to get a solid 19MB/sec from.

Others will comment here to I am sure - but I left due to the poor speeds. I might look again when the speeds are doubled (starting 1st of October I believe) and then it'll be like going from a Mini to a space shuttle.

I've been with Virgin a long time, back to the mid 1990's when it was installed as Bradford Cable. I'm on the 100meg package, which only has 6Mbps upload speed, a concern of mine as I upload a lot of stuff for radio stations - complete shows on a daily basis.

I don't suffer much with local congestion, speed tests are pretty consistent at 105/6 with ping times of 22-30ms. Quite often the bottleneck will be the remote server I am connecting to not being able to handle the full 6Mbps I'm throwing at it

I take radio shows from people all over the world, coming in by various means. Dropbox, WeTransfer, P2P, pCloud, Google Docs, Hightail - these download pretty quickly. I have to edit and tag files then upload to the server that runs the station and that's always been my slowest point. More so with the traffic management in place on uploads.

I try and do the bulk of uploading after midnight as I can often exceed 1.5Gb in a days traffic. Having said that, I have uploaded a heck of a lot in daytime and not really noticed being throttled.

As for streaming, most of the time I'm OK with BBC iPlayer in HD, as an example. That's on top of everything else that's connected. We have 3 PC's, three laptops, 3 smart phones, 3 tablets, a smart TV, a smart PVR and a VOIP phone. Our daughter's boyfriend visits with his phone and tablet and I have a 24/7 radio stream going out too.

My only niggle is that when things go wrong they can take ages to rectify. The overseas call centre tend to be pretty useless, always call in UK daytime to speak to a UK based operator or lose your hair through pulling it out in frustration.

They are about to double all the speeds again, we should go to 200Mbps down but no info on the upload speeds that will go with that. Virgin have new technology in the pipeline to go faster still and word has it they will eventually have better upload speed, but not just yet.

As with any ISP, a lot depends on where you are and the number of people connected in that area. I seem to be one of the lucky ones, despite living in a big town.

So do you suggest I wait out until the new speeds roll out?

No, not at all. By the time you order and they install your area may have been upgraded, it's supposed to be 'any time now'.

I'd probably suggest getting the 100/6 service and let them bump it to 200/? rather than the 152 - saves a few pounds.

what do you mean by "let them bump it up?"

the speed upgrades are offered to existing customers which is how they get an ever increasing average speed year on year

paid or free?

Free, though you sort of pay for it with the annual price rises that are a feature of Virgin Media

hmm, so every year the price rises even with no upgrades?
not too sure I can cope with that.