Virgin Media UK’s 636Mbps Broadband and TV Upgrade Starts
Cable ISP Virgin Media UK has this morning announced that their new 636Mbps (41Mbps upload) capable “Ultimate Oomph” broadband, phone, mobile and TV bundle is now available. Existing customers, who currently receive an average speed of 516Mbps, will be upgraded to the new speed “at no extra cost.”
The upgrade was officially soft launched back in June 2020 (here), although for some reason it’s taken this long to flick the switch and make it live. The good news is that this is designed to work over the operator’s existing EuroDOCSIS 3.0 network, which means that you don’t need to be in one of their new gigabit-capable DOCSIS 3.1 areas in order to benefit.
The main difference with today’s announcement, aside from it actually going live for existing customers (we couldn’t see it live for new subscribers, yet), is that they’ve also boosted and confirmed the upload rate as 41Mbps (average).
Otherwise the upgrade from M500 to M600 is being rolled-out gradually to existing customers of Ultimate Oomph and that’s expected to be completed by the end of February 2021.
Annie Brooks, Executive Director of Product at Virgin Media, said:
“With our free broadband speed boost, Virgin Media’s Ultimate Oomph customers can enjoy a lightning-fast connection nine times faster than the national average.
Just the size of this upgrade, with an extra 120Mbps added, is faster than many other providers’ top broadband package. This highlights our commitment to giving customers more value and a fantastic service at a time when fast, reliable connectivity has never been more important.
Our Ultimate Oomph bundle offers an unrivalled connectivity and entertainment experience, with brilliant broadband, the best telly on the box, a mobile SIM with unlimited data, texts and minutes, plus inclusive home phone calls – so customers can always stay in touch with their loved ones.
This is the latest in a series of epic upgrades we’ve given our customers this year and, with more to come, there’s never been a better time to be a Virgin Media customer.”
As part of this new bundle, customers also benefit from Virgin Media’s Service Promise. If a customer experiences an issue which results in a loss of broadband connectivity, they will receive unlimited 4G mobile data for at least seven days on all the Virgin Mobile SIMs registered to their account. In addition, customers on the Ultimate Oomph bundle can also book a next day engineer appointment to help get their connection back up and running as quickly as possible.
Sadly, the new M600 tier is not currently available as either a standalone broadband or dual plan (broadband and phone) package, which does at least help to give their quad play bundle something a little more unique. On the other hand, most people would struggle to harness all of that downstream speed.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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Complete rip off if u want to upgrade from m500 to m600 you got to take out a oomph package disgusting really as i got the m500 standalone now
Well I just spoke to retentions and asked about this M600! and they said anyone who is on the M500 will be getting the M600 upgrade in the coming weeks/months………..
I said so you do not need to get the oomph bundle and they said no. As long as you get the M500, you will get the upgrade for free…….
I’ll check with VM and see if they can confirm that.
@Mark Jackson – Thanks 🙂
You can definitely have it standalone, I just called up as I’m out of contract and I’m now on M500 (With a SIM as that’s somehow cheaper) for £46/month.
I signed up for m100 browband and had connection problems since signing up. When I complained that I was not receiving the service that I was paying for, I was told that as a good will gesture they will upgrade my broadband from m100 to m200. This was 2 months ago and I am still waiting and getting through to Virgin Media us a nightmare.
Both official channels and unofficial channels have told me the “M600 upgrade will exclusively be for Ultimate Oomph customers,” which is what we expected.
They upgrade end users from 500M to 600M – without upgrading the shared bandwidth on the cable distribution network. That’s going to help with congestion and oversubscription ratios, not.
They don’t offer M500 in areas are highly over utilised.
But I had M500 and it did start to buckle in the evenings
You do realise increasing everyone’s speed actually helps with congestion and speed.
After several attempts finally got a person who knew how to sort my problem, upgraded to higher speed plus films and sports 2and half months later no films no sports This bundle at a cost of £113.00 . Plus WiFi is useless 25 feet from router any suggestions please Pete
That sounds expensive considering I was offered the Ultimate Oomph bundle for £90 per month. I would suggest getting a separate decent brand router and putting the Virgin hub in modem mode.
£90?LOL I was paying £49..
25feet? Do you have a good ‘line-of-sight’ with the WIFI router?
My BT wifi router is quite good, bizarrely it will go through 4 walls and is just about usable in the garden, but alas I have one bathroom wall that is slightly thicker and must have a metallic lining that kills WIFI reception completely (99%!). It’s quite strange (but as an electronics eng, I can somehow imagine my bathroom is some kind of miracle Faraday cage!).
Solution for me was to put the WIFI box on a little shelf at the top of the door (not hidden behind the door/wall, with a small cheap WIFI repeater in the corridor. Works like a dream now!
As much as I love blaming my internet provider for dropouts, 99% of the time it is simply the signal being degraded by something large/thick/metallic, or the wife shifting the WIFI box into the corner during cliched activities like hoovering.
PS If you have a choice between 2.6GHz and 5GHz on your wifi router (often showing up in the WIFI login connection ID), 2.6GHz will offer far superior range and distance through walls, but in theory may not be as fast as a 5GHz experience in the same room.
Higher frequencies really don’t like travelling through “hard” or “layered” objects (walls!).
Get a WiFi mesh system they are a little costly but black Friday is coming soon so you should get a good discount
Oh dear in areas that the speed drops loads at night this will make things 100x worsr
I wonder if there will be any speed increases for other tiers, I’m on 350/30.
It runs at 412/40 (sold as 350mb here) 600mb so can download warzone faster be nice lol
The modem sync speed is 402.5Mb down and 38.5Mb up for the 350mb package. Are you saying you sync higher than this?
41Mbps upload lol
Can’t wait for Cityfibre to activate their service in Derby
Me too! Can’t wait for the cityfibre to be switched on
I switched from BT after WiFi issues, VM had just cabled our street and offered Free installation etc. Like a fool I signed up with Virgin Media, also Virgin Mobile.
My smart TV (Samsung) is no longer surfing the VM super highway and the Virgin mobiles do not have reception at home – Hyde, Gtr Manchester.
I cannot contact Virgin Media, tried many times – worst company to contact ever.
I will vote with my feet soon !!!
Reported a fault last March still not repaired now I have no phone and no TV . tried phoning customer service no answer after over an hour then they cut me off so I phoned sales they answered immediately . can’t say any more with out swearing.
I just had a look at virgin and it says that the 1gig is out ? I’m in Charlton London SE7
hm…
I had to call up last week and stop them from downgrading me to the 100mbps package (we pay for 200mbps).
Apparently we use too much data and don’t pay enough so they were going to downgrade us…
So much for unlimited.
Virgin’s Traffic Management for the unlimited services (most except Fibre 20) is here:
https://www.virginmedia.com/help/virgin-media-broadband-traffic-management-policy
There is no traffic management for any unlimited broadband packages.
It would make no sense for VM to downgrade if you were paying for 200mbps unless you were trying to get a cheaper package price and they offered the lower 100mbps as part of that reduced offering. Customers downloading lots of data (large data) are better on faster connections as means you finish downloads quicker and don’t tie up the network constantly churning out traffic (mostly people don’t have a continuous 24/7 download going, its in bursts of activity).
I use lots of data between cloud and home storage, and I’ve never been downgraded.
I paid £49 for the top bundle and had 500mbps internet. I did 4.7TB 1 month and 14TB the next month – I never got told this. In fact had you been told that you would be the first. I’ve heard people be contacted for some stuff they have put on the internet but never for that. Surely you would come to the real media and not some tin pot site IF that were true?
So come on – keep the fairy tales for bed times eh?
We change our package back in April as I was after a reduction. £60 for 200mbps and TV was too much so they included a 2GB SIM and gave us a £10 reduction.
Email came through last month saying there sas a contract change and we would be moved to 100mbps.
I called them up and they said “we use a lot of data and are being downgraded as you don’t pay enough for that tier”.
If I called on my mobile it would have recorded the call but I was on landline as service here is not great.
I know a lot of people like to talk shit about Virgin but I am not one of them. The service has been fine here on a new build in the past 3 years. Only going down a few times. Overall I am happy with the service. But the CS is pretty bad.
Most will struggle to achieve anywhere near the 636Mb, especially with (the pathetic in comparison) 41Mb upload! Pretty pointless paying extra, for what I assume won’t be that good value knowing Virgin!
Hopefully people are starting to realise the importance of upload and they will improve.
(Stuck on Virgin due to the BT line (only alternative) being terrible. Did get a better deal by cancelling, then waiting until they phone with a better offer.)
Well, from my experience the 551 I got was awesome – although it did start to cave in the evenings – the area kept on going up and down on the speed one could get.
WHo knows is the answer.
I’m an M500 Oomph customer (now M600!) and I had a brief outage whilst my upgrade went through (I’m assuming they forcibly rebooted modems to pick up the speed change.)
I’m actually getting closer to ~670mbit on my desktop.(a lot of speedtest don’t seemingly thread enough to get there though)
Just tested (from an underpowered NUC device admittedly – it struggles with 600mbit):
Test1: Ping 6ms, ~634mb down, 41 and change up.
Test2: Ping 8ms, ~654mb down, 41 and change up.
Though i’m FTTP(RFoG) not HFC, and don’t have congestion issues (Just stabiltiy issues. I suspect it’s from all of the network upgrades, here’s hoping Docsis3.1 is here soon :P)
My Pi 4 connected via Ethernet easily gets to 650 Mbps, even during peak evening times.
See speedtest:
https://u.davwheat.dev/N3X1Zf.png
https://www.speedtest.net/result/c/15f5c539-ba70-4b61-8d87-1f4f90b7f2f6
Virgin media are a load of rubbish since I got their new router I have lost the use of my central heating, security cameras, house lights, door bells, printers in fact all the things in the house that requires WiFi. I have spent hours on my mobile ringing them (costing around £9 ) each time being given some excuse or being cut off. Wouldn’t recommend virgin to my worst enamy intact Iam looking at alternatives.
Virgin Media are so weird lately. If I want to upgrade from 350 to 500Mbps, I can either: take the broadband standalone and pay less, or upgrade to Ultimate Oomph and pay far far more and receive a SIM card and V6 box that I don’t need. They flat out refuse to add it to my current package, even though I can configure that package online.