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 Digg.com Facebook Google Bookmarks N4G Gamerblips del.icio.us Reddit Slashdot.org StumbleUpon hmm,i'm with Virgin and i was only on the 2mb package,however,i have never had any problems with it,and i have been quite surprised at times at how fast things download(especially on XBOX LIVE)
i just found out last week that i am to get a free upgrade to 10mb,so i'm happy A few years ago I'd have been in the group of "f*cking raging" broadband users. NTL sucked sweaty monkey balls.
Since we switched to Sky's unlimited 16Mb package it's been great. Obviously, the odd bit of downtime and the speed can get a bit clunky at peak times, but for the most part we sit at about 12Mb download rate. But then we do live only a few hundred yards from our exchange :) Into my 2nd year and notice probblems all the time,but was not like this to start .Had 3 ps3 a pc and phone and all was ok,now have 1 ps3 and pc and both suffer from times. I'm with TalkTalk at home, get max speed all of the time, download speed never drops, probably because we're in an area of old people that don't understand computers. In fact, we get greater than the stated speed a lot of the time it seems :\. Heard their service isn't good but we've never had to use them.
With Tiscali at uni, speed is low for a city, and constantly dips to below 1mbps, then again we're in an area full of students. Yes I'm not happy with it too. Terribly slow!
1080p movies? Yeah right Microsoft - Impossible to download them straight away.
All my connections from router to PS3, Xbox 360 and laptop are wired because wireless is frigging useless and slow!
For 1080p movies - Blu ray FTW! Well I'm with virgin, who are really bad for network throttling! If i have a heavy night of downloading they cut my speed down so low the internet is almost unusable the next day :(.
Any way I called them up to get my mac number off them a few weeks back but they offered me the same 8mb line for Ł9.98 a month.
So any way 8mb for Ł9.98 with network throttling I can live with. My O2 into my flat is excellent, but because I am in a dense area, the wifi signal seems to have issues at various points in the day... They still need to sort this out. To begin with all was good with our 8mb wireless setup. Now I just use good old fashioned leads as over the last few months it has been terrible for dropped connections and lag.
Yeah totally agree that providers should be more honest, what's the point of paying for 24mb when you're only getting half of that? I was with BT and paying for 8meg. I did a test and realised I was only getting 0.7. I knew that we were on an old line and a long way from the exchange but c'mon! Rang BT who said "You're getting more than that!" They tested it and (with pride) said "You're getting nearly two!". Hmmm, still paying for 8 though, aren't I?
Anyway, changed to Virgin's 20mb line and am actually getting 17.8. Brilliant.
Funnily enough, between telling BT I was going and having Virgin installed, BT were only giving me 0.24 (B*stards!) i havent posted a single comment in a year or so. i still visit the site every day.
this subject has struck a particular chord with me so i have come out of retirement for this thread.
im with talktalk, have been for over 4 years. up until a month ago i didnt really have cause for complaint and was verging on satisfied, i live in cornwall where nothing works, we have no services or anything down here, its like a third world country. but my BB speed wasnt too bad considering.
but for the last month my dl speed as been between 0.1 -0.4mb, upload can be as low as 0.05mb. its like being back on dialup but worse because of the added frustration.
ive phoned talktalk countless times, spoken to numerous unhelpful, unaudible, individuals who either, cant understand me, i cant understand them, they tell me nothing is wrong with my line, there is something wrong with my line but its nothing to do with them, that they'll transfer me to the right department even though id spent 5 minutes listening to a stupid robotic woman pressing the right numbers to be directed to tech support, they then transfer me to sales. ironically if i could talk to the moronic robot woman i would make more headway into solving my problem. that i have to take their speed test online and someone will get back to me.... they havent.
im moving in a week or two. to exeter where there is cable, typically it doesnt quite run to my apartment, it stops just short apparently, thrilling.
either way if anyones read this far i can honestly say you'll regret going with talktalk if you experience anything like i have the last month. its cheap for a reason, its crap. I'm with Virgin Media! just got upgraded to 10mb & it is rubbish, fastest download speed i've had is about 1.2mb, but most of the time i'm only getting about 200kb which is slower than what i got with the 2mb line lol
its great how things work lol 20mb through Virgin, can't really complain. On it's own it is pricey, but as part of a package it doesn't work out too badly at all. In a shared house it is really important (my old 8mb Homechoice just got slower and slower after tiscali took them over).
Haven't ever really had much issue with throttling, although it is apparent from time to time. 2MB/sec on iplayer is great, nearly the same with downloads on xbl. I am thinking about going down to 10mb though, as the others in the house don't use it so often anymore.
Also it hardly ever goes down. As I use it for work, that is vital. Its cos the UK's generally crap at everything. The only good things are concerts and the Premiership It's a similar story on my end. The provider I've been with for near 1 1/2 years started out fine for the most part, yet over the last few months has gone back and forth between speeds. It's so bad that quite often during peak hours in the evening I can't even load websites. My patience has been worn thin at this point and frankly I look forward to terminating the connection at the end of next month. RE oOPuPPeTOo
If you read Virgins fair usage policy it says they will slow you down for 24 hours if you download alot in peak times.
I had been getting a really slow connection with Sky I was getting 160kbps and couldn't find what the problem was. I had 4 engineers out and 2 routers everyone seems to complain about Skys customer service but I never had a problem as they rang me everyday until it was sorted for about month. Now am getting 5mbs, day and night and I live about 2.5 miles from the exchange I just got the free 10mb upgrade too. I do hit over 9mb which is all good but that doesn't last very long. Virgin are tw@ts for cutting your download speed to 2.5mb for 5hours after your downstream hits just 1500mb. They say it only affects 5% of customers which is complete shite. I do all my major download during the off peak times but I still get screwed over in the day. When using youtube, iPlayer, Spotify, downloading xbox and ps3 content and playing online games, it doesn't take long to hit that 1.5gb limit.
http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html That right there, is what I call Grade A shit customer service. You can hardly take your money away from them fast enough! They don't put that link on the front page do they it's about 4 different links until you can find it True.
Put me in the "dissatisfied" bracket or more appropriately: "f*cking dissatisfied"!
I'm supposed to get a 4mb connection from that cowboy company called 'Talk Talk'. Turns out I've been hooked up with a dog's dinner of a connection averaging around 1.2mb.
Bloody cheek.
You can check your actual, current internet speed here :
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7416471.stm I'm pretty happy with Be Unlimited, get occasional random cut offs, but nothing major. Stated speed is 24MB, but I get a decent enough 8-16 most of the time (mainly at peak times as well).
What's this I hear about the government wanting to put 50p extra onto our bills for an upgrade to the lines or something? you're quite right, im not impressed at all. the real joke is i went into a carphone warehouse store and got put through to their talktalk customer service team where i had to endure a 10 minute apology and begging plea from another barely understandable representative. when i told her i was moving and would like them to disconnect me she said she could set up a line in my new place for me. to her credit she didnt give up without a fight, she went as far to assure me she would personally see to it that i never expierenced problems with my line or with their customer support lines again. an extremely valiant offer, one which is of course inpossible for her to keep so i politely declined.
the whole thing is a complete joke, i cant wait till i can cancel my DD so that they can no longer extort money from me. I can't complain at the speed I'm getting at work.
http://www.speedtest.net/result/501205596.png i'd be happy with mine if it wouldn't cut off during my days off. was intent on a good session of L4D with some mates but as soon as the game loaded bang goes the broadband. kept turning on and off sporadicaly over saturday and sunday. Currently I've got an 8mb Virgin line and it's ****ING abysmal. Normally download around 30k a sec if I'm lucky. I cannot play ANY games online at all as the ping + packet loss is truly ridiculous. Unfortunately they don't seem to care about it either. When I move back to Southampton next month I'm getting my old 24mb Be connection back :) And I will only be living around the corner from the exchange ^^
I do not recommend Virgin DSL connections to anyone. Apparently their cable connections aren't too bad though. Oh God Broadband and the lies nearly every company tells you! I'm currently with Tiscali on a supposed 8meg connection(I've never seen it above 4 and usually it's below 2.3/2.4meg), I live literally 200 yeards from our exchange on an estate of mainly old people. 8meg is the highest I can even hope for no matter what I pay, though, as we live in Cumbria(which, like the guy from Cornwall said about where he lives os like a third world nation)and there are NO plans to upgrade our rate/exchange at all which rules out anything that might make me able to get a faster connection.
However, I'd be elated if my connection even ran at 5 or 6 meg tbh and paying for 8 while ofyen getting 2.4 ios disgraceful-then add in hw often it just drops out and it gets daft. Also, Tiscali have a problem with Sony/PSN for some reason. If there's an update that everyone's updating you can bet everyone complaining that they can't even detect it is on Tiscali! Every time. When Home launched-couldn't get PSN. Firmware-can't find PSN. And it's countrywide too-everyonme with Tiscali can't get PSN if it's above average in terms of traffic. Now, when this happened a year or so back and loads of us complained they somehiow fixed it but now they just deny that and say they don't have a clue!
I have a mate who explained why it can happen to one ISP and not others but I don't remember now! Seems, like usual, though, that companies in the UK are allowed to tell you any old crap to get a sale and never haveto give you what you're paying for!
TBH, I'm, effin' livid as there's no way I see of this ever improving unless I move my disabled ass away from the support network I have up here! i'm using their cable connection at 10meg. when its working it certainly runs well. use speedtest.net to check my connection speed quite a lot and its usually hovering between 9.65 and 10.41. it just seems to be waiting until you've arranged for a game with a few mates before it cuts off. :x i pay for 8mb from BT and get around 7 without any noticeable slowdowns, the service seems pretty reliable too as it doesn't seem to go down. My current broadband, with Tiscali, can go up to 8Mbps, but obviously, it depends on the area you live in. These people complaining, they probably live in areas not really suited for broadband, so what did they expect? If you live near the sea, you'll more than likely be able to have fibre-optic, because the cables are used under the water, or so I've heard.
I say my broadband goes to 8Mbps, but the highest it's gone is about 5Mbps. As I said, it's down to what area you're living in.
I might yet change to Virgin Media. They seem to have superb broadband. Would have to convince the parents though. i've been with virgin since the dawn of broadband and can honestly say i hav never had any issues with downloads speeds, connections issues or anything else. currently i have 50 meg and it is the best service i have ever had, i have never had a lower rate than 43 meg and usually average about 47 meg. yes maybe a little pricey when compared to the adsl offerings of some other providers but there is nothing that touches a cable system and as speeds get faster and faster the copper phone systems cannot cope... hense BT planning on installing fibre optics soon. if only the money grabbing BT had seen the future back when they had the bottomless pockets and installed the fibres back then we could all have blistering speeds and more consistant connections. BT could hav sorted this all out many years ago but would not spend the dosh, and the cable companies were only allowed to install at about 50% of the country thanks to the government being in the pockets of big business at the time (SKY TV AND BT to name a couple) that limited the install of cable tv/phone systems.
END OF RANT I've been with bt nearly 5 years now and i've never had any major problems i've got the 8mb connection which usually sits between 5 and 6mbps during peak times more then plenty for what i use it for I'm at uni and its like having dial up some times. Most times i dont even bother with live cos its so fooking slow how this for frustration, I cant get cable broadband but houses 1/2 a kilometer down my road can :evil: Zen Internet for me!
Have been using them for the past 3-4 years and have yet to have any speed/downtime problems at all, the only calls I've had to make was for password retrieval (which was my fault anyway).
Fantastic technical support with knowledgeable people and not just script-readers, that are based in the UK and speak English you can understand, not the cheapest, but definitely the best I've come across. be glad your not in ireland. seriously 8meg is the maxium you can get anywhere. I once got 1 meg download speed and nearly crapped my pants at how fast that was!!!!! I am really annoyed with my Internet service, the most I get is 2,20Mbps and my upload speed is 400kbps. I want faster broadband but no service provider has fiber optic service in my area so this is the fastest connection I can get and I live in a London Bourogh! THATS BECAUSE THEY ****ING LIE TO US.
'OH HERE YOU GO, A 10 MEGABIT CONNECTION, THAT'LL BE SO AND SO A MONTH, BUT HEY HERE'S THE CATCH ------ IT AIN'T REALLY 10 MEG BECAUSE DUE TO WHATEVER BULLSHIT REASON, YOU'LL ONLY GONNA HAVE 5 MEG, BUT YOUR GONNA PAY FOR 10 NOT 5, NO ITS NOT OUR FAULT, ITS JUST THE WAY IT IS, SORRY...'
**** THAT!
YES I'M ANGRY, YES I SHOUT AND YYYYYYYYEEEEEEESSSSS
ITS TIME TO RISE UP AGAINST OUR INTERNET OPPRESSORS!!!!!! I'm still waiting for BT to catch up with the other big players and start offering speeds greater than the standard 8Mb/s. :cry: I've been told that there is a problem with the telephone exchange in our area that limits the speed of broadband for many people including myself. Which has apparently been the case for nearly five years now, and **** all has been done to correct it. As soon as ISP's stop lieng to the users about what speed they will actually get, and also start to bring out 20-40MB/S Speeds, I will be happy.
Lieng = Telling us we get a speed, when we clearly dont. If they label the package as 10MB/s , it should then be 10MB/s no matter how far away we are from the nearest internet junction. I'm with AOL and I absolutely HATE them. But they're the cheapest and the only one to offer 2mbs in our area, which sounds win-win but the amount of random cut-offs we get is astounding, especially after some bad weather or during peak time. Once, last year, the internet died for about three weeks, so I rang AOL, who told me to ring Netgear (the company who made our router), they told me to ring AOL again and it was backwards and forwards all afternoon until AOL FINALLY dispatched someone to repair the wire. Voila, next day it returned. But, If I had a penny for every time I've been disconnected from a game of Counter-Strike then i'd be able to pay for that new 50mbs fibre-optic connection laying down around here. Sigh, living in the countryside is rubbish (almost as rubbish as AOL). If you can get it, get Virgin 50MB. AMAZING speeds!! I had 20MB before but this is the dogs wotsits! Exactly, I live in a fairly rural part of Ireland and have a 1MB connection. I can get a wireless 2MB connection but would have to pay in the region of ?60 a month for it, no thanks.
We are supposedly among the worst countries in Europe when it comes to broadband speed and coverage. I know I'm gonna get flack but I actually work for a very large and well known telecoms company. As an engineer I am almost always getting questions as to why BB can be so random when it comes to speed. Line length can be a major factor, most BB in a city will work with a certain amount of stability for a distance of up to 4km. There are varying factors to this rule, dB loss being greater on thinner copper/aluminuim wire (normally of 0.3-0.4mm)then the thicker 0.5mm copper wire.
Fibre optic cabling is an ideal solution to all these issues. Fibre after all does not degrade a signal, but the truth is that funding the cabling is immense. The cost of seeking permits and digging up public highways is huge. We are told it costs around Ł100 per metre for a road/footpath to be dug up and ducting to be layed. That would mean a 100m run would cost Ł10000. That would barely cover some shorter roads!
A lot of people seem to think that the distance from their exchange is as the crow flies. This is seldom the case. Truth is that the cabling has been in the ground for a very long time and when the network was originally mapped out BB was not even a twinkle in some boffins eye.
With regard to the capping of BB that is something only your service provider can answer.
If you do find that your BB does drop out though check your line annd listen for noise. Specifically crackling or a hum. This would indicate a high resistance partial break in the line or an abnormal contact on the line. Finally always make sure that there is a filter plugged in wherever a phone/fax connected to the line. Analogue signals and digital signals do not mix, the filter is there for a reason!
I'm gonna go and hide now!!! I'm perfectly happy with Virgin here, just upgraded to 50mb. Getting 50mb day and night. The closest anyone can offer in my area is 3.5mb ADSL. Another prime example (DRM is another! :wink: ) why consumer advocacy groups are of vital interest to the consumer. Someone has to keep the more unscrupulous companies in check; government often doesn't seem to do it until the issue is drawn directly in to the limelight and the stink is too great for the matter to be swept under the carpet.
I don't expect service to be 100% perfect every time (as Michael J. Fox once said, you can strive for excellence; perfection is the realm of God/insert higher being/force/entity, etc.) but I damn well want what I pay for! If a company says it can't guarantee X-amount-of-MB and that's what you are paying for then it should keep constant measurements over a month, calculate what your monthly subscription amounts to per MB per day assuming 100% daily usage and deduct the times when you don't have access to the full amount. Why is it that the industries that deal with less physically tangible matters (i.e. banks' electronic transfers and transactions, IT software, broad band, etc.) get away with all sorts of downright scams where such would be met with an onslaught of lawsuits were it in a different field? Bah! Humbug! Make the necessary infrastructure investments and don't even think about passing the costs on to the consumers after you've been bilking them for years with lower download rates than promised! :evil: Apparently Australia is even worse; no "unlimited usage" plans according to my sister and brother-in-law. I have read that the Aussie government has been promoting a multi-billion plan to overhaul the Australian internet infrastructure and has sided against the existing national phone/internet provider that had a monopoly on the situation. :lol: :lol: working in the technical side of the Broad Band industry as I do this makes me laugh. People forget so quickly that everyone bar the fibre to door or cab networks rely on the BT network which is how old now? There's your problem. As for pipes, the company I work for has massive bandwidth spare but it's worthless if your BT telephone line is rubbish, still most lines aren't too bad.
If people are willing to fund the billions of pounds it has been estimated to wire up the UK with fibre to the door then it would be all good and well and we can all enjoy 100mbps plus, but we're British and we won't pay for it, plus the market is very cut throat too driving down profit and cost. So I think we are going to have to lump it for a few years yet, there is some very clever tech being developed and implemented to try and get over the copper cables limits. Oh and the 50 pence on every fixed landline is said to make only 200 mil, it's estimated it needs to really be Ł1.50 instead to make a difference. Perhaps taking a page from Sweden's IT infrastructure playbook might help. Years ago there was a concentrated push by the Swedish government that enacted a decree whereby *every* resident in Sweden must be able to gain high-speed internet broadband access! If they haven't already completed that project they look set to do so on schedule. There's a reason why Sweden is ranked as one of, if not *the*, most IT savvy and connected European nation. Political will can make a world of difference.
Disclaimer: If you happen to live out in the very rural forested areas, smack dab in the middle of two county lines you might find you are out of luck as neither county will want to assume the costs and responsibility of providing broad band in such a situation barring a sizable settlement is in the area. I didn't mention it before because you learn in my business to take everything with a huge pinch of salt but supposedly fibre is going to be run to the cabinets! There is an exchange in the west end of london (can't remember the name) and supposedly the upton park TE marked down as the first to be converted in the country. Where the funding is coming from god only knows. BT Total broadband its never failed me. well to the cab is better then anything the UK has now, I also believe it's going to be the way it goes. I'm looking forward to the supposed new speeds coming with the BT 21st century network roll out. See what speeds people actually get.
And yes, if the general public actually knew the costs involved in installing just a new copper line to there house, I think they would have a different attitude. You're not that b*stard engineer who was sent to solve my broadband woes about a year ago are you?
He came to my house, I made him a tea. He unscrewed a few phone sockets. He had a p*ss then he f*cked off having not solved the problem.
B*stard.
He said he was going off to look at the "exchange" and never returned. What kind of coded speak that was I will never know. Im on Virgin media... and what a buch of gimps they are.
I noticed I was having problems with my download service and they were capping me for no reason. I searched high and low to find out why this was. Every time I downloaded a demo, or large patch over 500 meg my speed would be quarted. I ended up phoning them to find out what the issue was to be told it wasnt my connection but the PC's it was connected to (despite having no prior problems since) and my firewalls. As I was tied to them for 12 months there wasnt much I could do but grin and bear it. Until my friend 2 months later sent me this:
http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/forums/index.cfm?action=showthread&threadid=285318&forumid=2
Now I dont download a lot. Just the odd patch, mod and demo, but for them to lie and charge me for a service I was not fully getting was unbeleivable. You only get full spead on offpeak times (midnight or after)... and DEFINATELY not one of the 5% (last thing I downloaded over 500 meg was Ubuntu in April).
I since tested this with a few friends of mine and this "traffic shaping" seems to be the same across the board. And when I challenged Virgin and their callcentres in India about this each time they cut me off.
I'm still biding my time about this till my contract runs out. Then Im moving to Be. Heard good words about them :)
After Telewest were bought over, all Virgin Media have brought in is misery trying to offer services of over 50 meg to customers which they will never, ever get. Haha, no I work for an ISP. Not BT, but I've heard that a few times, the going to exchange and never returning part, but that's usually cause they run out of time or fix the fault. It's pretty rare for tel sockets to be left off! Their SUPPOSED to react nicely to tea and biccy's. Oh yeah... I forgot to add
"I want my telewest back!!" | 
