Virgin Media O2 UK Lays Groundwork for Faster Upload Speeds
Broadband ISP Virgin Media (VMO2) appears to be in the process of laying the groundwork for both faster upload speeds and latency times (ping), which comes after a growing number of the provider’s customers began reporting activation of the first DOCSIS 3.1 channels for upstream on their HUBs.
At present Virgin Media has already deployed the latest DOCSIS 3.1 technology to the downstream side of their mixed Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) and Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP via RFoG) network, which has long since made it possible for them to launch gigabit speed packages. But upstream performance has yet to benefit from this improvement and, until now, has remained stuck on the older DOCSIS 3.0 standard.
However, between 2020 and 2021 the operator did conduct a number of 2.2Gbps speed trials (here, here and here), yet only one of those enabled DOCSIS 3.1 on their upstream channels and was thus able to produce an upload speed of 214Mbps (the current best is just c. 55Mbps). But since then, the trail has gone cold, and we’ve been patiently waiting for any sign that VMO2 may be preparing to add D3.1 to their upstream connections.
The good news is that, since late July, a growing number of our readers – those who are also Virgin Media’s broadband customers – have been reporting (here) the activation of both an additional DOCSIS 3.0 and an additional DOCSIS 3.1 channel on the upstream side of their connections. The reports have come from across the UK and from people with different packages. We’ve since seen similar reports on VMO2’s own forum.
The new D3.1 upstream channel is fairly small and seemingly only appears to be harnessing QAM8 (Quadrature Amplitude Modulation), which is a common method of combining several amplitude modulation signals into a single channel for a bandwidth boost (used across everything from fixed line to wireless networks). But we suspect the channel will actually be much more capable than that, or routers may be reporting it incorrectly.
One other benefit of deploying D3.1 to the upstream side is that customers would benefit from faster latency times, which will be of particular interest to anybody who enjoys a spot of fast-paced online multiplayer gaming. Indeed, this is one area where Virgin Media has tended to be a bit deficient, and any improvement is thus likely to be given a warm welcome.
A Virgin Media spokesperson said:
“We have no changes to announce but we’re constantly upgrading and optimising our network to give all our customers faster and more reliable services.”
In our view, Virgin Media is clearly laying the groundwork for faster upstream performance, but there’s currently no clear indication of how long people might have to wait before they actually launch the boost. It may take a bit of time to fully deploy the change across their network, thus it could potentially be sometime in late 2022 or, more likely, during 2023 before we see any real product changes.
Customers will also only be able to take advantage of this if they have one of Virgin Media’s two DOCSIS 3.1 supporting routers, the HUB 4.0 and HUB 5.0. The older HUBs and SuperHubs are only able to support the DOCSIS 3.0 standard, although quite a lot of users have now upgraded to the latest kit.
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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Can’t wait. Maybe I’ll finally start winning some matches of FIFA online Seasons.
Some gaming skills are also required not just fast broadband 😉
I have maintenance on Tuesday morning in my area and a HUb 5 router on GIG1 will report on the forum if upload channels change, still normal 4 channel docsis 3.0 at the moment
Would be great news if they boost the upload speed and improve latency, I was a bit shocked getting 20ms pings when switching to virgin 1gbit when I used to get around 8ms on DSL 🙂
We have had maintenance twice in the last month to supposedly improve the network locally, but as far as I can tell nothing has really changed.
When I started getting DOCSIS upload it was after some random downtime, had some scheduled not long after but no further change.
(I’m the one who made the forum post)
I’m enjoying that this article has come out the day after I had my new connection activated and that I have left Virgin Media behind for good!
Unlike a lot of former Virgin customers, I had a relatively smooth ride but I’m so glad to give them the boot! Bye, bye!
Same here, new fibre is being put in my street from ms3 solutions and I will be able to get 1000 down and 1000 upload, bye bye virgin and all the latency that comes with 1gig
Don’t care to be honest – will never go back to VM. Their network remain unreliable in Telford – how do I know this? Because I seen facebook, twitter from Telford area complaints of slow speed, disconnection, high latency.
Agreed Phil i am from Telford aswell
I dont care about 02 or Virgin media
I’m using 5g home broadband
Plug and play broadband.
Ee unlimited phone sim only
And a Huawei 5g cpe Pro 2
That’s my broadband
Both VM and Openreach FTTC will vary in areas, Facebook/Twitter isn’t that useful as it will only have negative posts not positive. Best way is to speak to your neighbours and friends who live nearby.
As for 5G, works great for some people but I’d avoid long contracts if possible, its not uncommon for your speed to drop as more people connect to the mast. Its not for me, partly because VM isn’t too badly priced for me and partly because I cant get 5G :).
VM should be ok in their FTTP areas.
I agree Alex,
I have 5G as a backup and it’s gone down hill in the past 6 months – Literally struggled to get above 10mbs up when I used to get 100+ before it went public and the mast got loaded. Still 10 months to go.
VM missed my road, and they (I am sure) won’t ever be revisiting that idea – So I had a business line installed to cover me until maybe an Alt-net gets here but so far no one is showing interest in my town. I waited 6 months to get my line installed but it’s totally worth it so to anyone who is waiting for it or can get it – I say go for it
https://ibb.co/j5bKNMZ
A few years ago I said I would love Virgin to come here, that was before FTTC. But now hearing about how bad they are, I am glad they did not bother to come here, and I did not get stuck with them.
I don’t think Virgin will ever come to this city.
I am in Telford and my Virgin media service and speed are rock solid. Actually since the upgrade to DOCSIS 3.1, even though I have a SH3 on the whole the service has become a lot more reliable… no outages in about a year now.
@angry man
Your time is up, Buggs8 has been deleted 🙂
That much suck for Buggs8 – whoever that is – but thanks for the useless information anyway 🙂
To be quite honest virgin speeds are shockingly bad especially 1GB, never get 1GB or even close.
Varied speed up and down but never over 500Mb ♂️ and the ping is terrible.
Why would you talk of increasing speeds when you can’t supply the present speed? Oh and the hub 5 is non existent as they are having problems with it
Weird, I have no problems getting ~550mbps on my 500 package. Their supplied router is crap.
See what https://samknows.com/realspeed/ shows to the Hub (will need it out of modem mode).
Not a lot of devices can handle 1Gig via WiFi it’s more for sharing across multiple devices
Are you testing that via LAN cable to a site that can actually offer content at gigabit speeds?
I have 1 gig and hub 5 and my download is permanently 130-140mb/s via 2.5 ethernet on torrents.
You cant test on torrent, virgin and all the big ISP throttle downloads and especially uploads, try tele2 large test file download, do a google, they got multiple download locations all over EU, use a download manager, make 8 connection and you’ll see it reach your maximum line speeds assuming theres no faults.
Ligit sites are okay but gaming is rubbish because of latency. Do a test on fast.com its run by netflix, let it finish then you can adjust the settings and length of time the test should, make sure to tick the show all metrics something like that, so that while the test is going on you can see the values in latency during loaded and unloaded, download and upload.
Then try fttp if you have access to it, its light years difference.
By the way, I’m with andrew&Arnold, they never throttle nothing, its unfiltered internet, like it used to be, back in the 90s and 2000! I loved them so much, I decided to get a second line, and andrew&Arnold gave me static ip 4 block of 6 with that I set up my opnsense to connect to 5 different systems and games console with 1:1 NAT so that each machine gets it’s own external ip address and each system got the full ports… according to a simple test on Nintendo switch it’s a nat type A, they told me best I can achieve is a nat type B on a shared internet connection… and the bandwidth sharing is working perfectly across all my systems.
@John That’s not the case, Virgin used to heavily throttle upload but that’s not been a thing for a while. Since I joined Virgin 5ish years ago I haven’t ever had a problem using my full download and upload speed even as a heavy user utilising over 1.5TB bandwidth monthly.
The problem with Torrents is the fact they’re P2P and rely on the end user having a high upload/not throttling their upload via the torrent clients.
I’ve been with virgin since 2006 until 2021 when bt finally upgraded our street, let me tell you the hub2 was okay it was netgear, but that hub3 is a real p.o.s,, but that time they upgraded the speeds and gave me free hub3, I regret it so much, also modem mode used to work on hub3, but hub3 is just mad, modem mode just dont work, you can easily test it: modem mode, a single computer connected, look at task managers network meter, and try downloading something, say a large linux iso, you will realise if tcp traffic is flowing and then you start downloading using udp, you’ll notice the network utilisation going to under 1% then high, then low, it’s really erratic… so the modem mode is broken they’re saying intel chipset is the fault, but I know they’re clever and want to discourage p2p activity especially uploads… but if in doubt, take your system as is and try on a friends fttp, you’ll see plenty of connections happening and everything working perfectly. One other workaround is VPN, but that’s additional cost and they usually get clogged up as well, if there’s no copyright stuff, why can’t one just use the service they pay for, its madness. Look on their forum at virgin, do a google search it’ll pinpoint to the exact page. I posted all the screenshots and then… silence from the so-called helpers over there.
I’m just glad the abuse came to an end, where I pay and never get what I thought I was paying for.
Also the coaxial system was originally designed for video mainly, so it’s not even a proper broadband like fttp, that’s designed for data from the grounds up… virgin themselves are deploying fttp knowing the game it up as more folk educate themselves on technology. I had the NTL cable set top box with the sky movies etc. Back in 1997. Then had the be bethere for a while until sky bought them that was adsl, then got virgin around 2006 and tested upload and download using my 2 separate lines. I always had 2 lines…
Trust me I did all the testing using various methods, wasted plenty of money on hardware and time doing the tests taking around a month of my time… grabbing videos of youtube was allowed at full speed back in 2010, not sure what’s going on that scene nowadays.
now I got 2 independent fttp lines, couldn’t be happier.
I am on virgin media, I been with them for years. I am on 1GB link and I get mote than 1GB at times. Make sure you plug in via ethernet remember WiFi has limits of download.
I have also noticed I am getting days with more than 50mb upload.
I don’t understand the nuts and bolts of DOCSIS, but from what I’ve read DOCSIS 3.1 does suffer from issues related to latency and jitter. “For example, to handle higher noise rates or significant attenuation in older cable and deliver consistent throughputs, DOCSIS employs sophisticated encoding schemes which offer better robustness at the expense of some ms of extra latency. Depending on the encoding scheme, there will be a trade-off between guaranteed latency and increased packet loss and jitter due to noise”. Excessive jitter increases the amount of errors and the requirement for retransmissions.
Latency depends on various different factors, like routing distance to server, congestion on the core network, traffic shaping for prioritisaton of different data types, etc, as well as the capability of the destination server to cope with the amount of traffic.
Ultimately, latency differences between VMO2, Openreach/BT, Altnets and others will depend on their core DWDM/IP networks, routing distance to server as well as their access networks. Network round trip delay from London to New York is approximately 59 to 71ms, so if your gaming server is in the US that also affects your latency.
Hopefully once they’ve gone full FTTP they can ditch DOCSIS.
@Mike they are switching to XGS PON, in some areas they are already upgrading.
Latency/jitter is really caused by queueing delays, how scheduling in DOCSIS works and congestion. Low Latency DOCSIS and Proactive Grant Service (part of LLD) can make a big difference, if deployed.
VM don’t use interleave on upstream, they do a touch on downstream so that adds a bit. Other than that it’s media acquisition that’s the delay – a modem has to wait for a time slot where it can send a request, send that request, wait for the reply telling it when and for how long it may transmit, then wait for those time slots and repeat.
This is exactly the same kinda thing as PON however PON has a system more akin to the DoCSIS 3.1 feature Low Latency DoCSIS.
This new upstream should allow VM to use it, and as the 3.1 OFDMA channels use LDPC not FEC for error correction no interleave to speak of.
Some of the highest ping spikes come from queueing delays. AQM can make it better, but LLD does it even better, by using two queues.
PGS adds overhead to the upstream, so I don’t think it will see the light of day at VM => No change to the request/grant cycle, if LLD is deployed.
VM’s jitter is legendary and their ping is far higher than OR ISPs.
When your ping is on average 20-30ms higher than everyone else and then your jitter takes your ping up to 200/300/500ms randomly it makes online games unplayable.
Ever since I’ve had my new connection things have improved markedly.
I would like virgin cable TV and superfast fibre optic broadband to come to Hastings East Sussex
Virgin is a strange beast – people that can’t get it want it, those that can mostly wouldn’t touch it with a barge pole!
That’s just my personal experience anyway.
My parents have had VM since May, overall they feel like Talktalk, terrible CS but you use them for the price.
Their (first party) engineers who I’ve dealt with in person have been fantastic though, the day of installation the guy even fixed a mistake CS made when I had to reapply over the phone because their website messed up because they forgot to transfer the phone number.
Personally, I would switch to VM if I could because of the value of the ‘Ultimate Volt’ bundle, which is cheaper than the OR/Sky alternatives.
They have millions of customers, so they’re definitely doing some things right.
I’ve been their customer for many years. Service has been fine, they’re the fastest option I can get, and the threat of leaving for an inferior openreach FTTC product keeps them honest in their pricing to me.
I use whatsapp chat on the rare occasions that I need to talk to their customer support so the waiting is not so bad.
You generally only hear from those having issues, the same for most ISPs, so you will hear a lot of negative noise about them online.
Can’t beat Hyperoptic, Community fibre or g netork they all provide same upload as downloads plus cheaper then Virgin 02
Im with Hyperoptic.Virgin 02 way behind.
Way pay more for something you cant get but I can get it for cheaper.
Cool story bro, but utterly irrelevant to a story about Virgin.
Just saying Virgin 02 are way behind it’s relivent
It’s not relevant if, like 15 million+ homes, you can’t get any of the ISPs you mentioned but can get VMO2.
You have Hyperoptic: good for you.
I recently left virgin to my local isp powered by city fiber, not quite a gig but I get 900 mbps up and down and at nearly half the price. So if they can offer that, I don’t see why virgin can’t offer symmetrical speeds.
The max you will get is 945/945 – trust me on that I pay £335 a month and I was a little saddened to learn even a leased line can’t sync any higher however the speed is awesome especially when uploading. One thing is for sure, Overheads are spoilt for on VM’s network.
Because Virgin are upgrading an existing, ancient Infrastructure whereas CityFibre started out so they can offer the stuff they do. At some point VM will offer the same, but I doubt it will be cheap
@angry man
I can see you are not using a leased line now, using its only Monday to Friday 8am to 5pm. I wonder why 😉
@Funny Bone
What are you talking about? You can’t see anything. I sure AM using a leased line right now – In fact I runs 24/7 into my address – how’s that for 2022 technology!
Honestly – find something better to do.
I don’t know how to get the time and date up on a Imac so I have done another test showing that I did it just now. Changed the server too just to mix it up a bit
See! It’s not even in the hours/days/times you stated.
Must suck to be you 😀
https://ibb.co/SQgT8MN
@angry man
I can see you are in Yorkshire using a 10Mbps ADSL line from Talk Talk.
Then you are looking at the wrong person – sorry chum
Virgin’s network is not full fibre in most areas. They’re upgrading it.
‘The max you will get is 945/945’
Hrmm. https://www.speedtest.net/result/13571844205
Well I admit I am starting to wonder why my Leased Line is limited to around 942/943 each way – but this is the max I can get on that server using the app.
https://ibb.co/W5ZM2tp
If I go on to Librespeed I get a bit more down – it’s odd – I can’t access my Router and Daisy are turning out to be rather crap at support – so I don’t have much hope I will ever wonder why. But I thought a LL would be provisioned with the missing 60Mbps (Which is what I was told is being used to make sure traffic gets to where it needs to go?)
Yeah god knows…
https://www.speedtest.net/result/13572010327
I’m sure the support team can explain why it performs like that if you raise a case querying.
I did on the 17th still waiting.. Never mind it is what it is – It’s been fine for months and it’s still way better than anything else available.
I have virgin media. I have to have three 5G “backup” (it’s faster, in both directions). I wish I was in an FTTP town as I’d leave them in a snap. Unfortunately for me, neither 5G nor VM can be relied upon so I have made do with both at £20 each a month.
A lot of people berate VM and I think this gives an incorrect view. I have had VM for years now and I never had any serious latency or congestion issues. I know a lot of people do but considering they are a very large ISP the number of people complaining is low. Ofcom’s VM complaints about broadband are a lot higher than other ISPs but still not as high as people make them in internet forums.
Would I switch to an Alt Net 1gb symmetric service if I could? Most likely, but it will depend on price. I am currently on VM’s 1gb Volt Ultimate plan paying £ 80/month. This is equivalent to £50/month if you allow for £ 11 for Netflix Standard and £ 19 O2 Unlimited SIM with free roaming. At £50/month it will cheaper than BT’s FTTP Full Fibre 900 plan (£50.99) which is only broadband whereas on VM I get full TV package with all sports and a land line (not that I want it). An VM doesn’t increase prices during the contract like BT does. Personally I think contract increases should be banned but BT’s inflation plus an additional 3.9% is insult not just a rip off. And besides Openreach have not upgraded my pole so I can only get FTTC G.Fast (300mb) so it’s not even an option.
Alt Net 1gb symmetric service tends to cost around £35/month. I don’t do gaming nor I need crazy upload speeds so I am not even sure if I would go for a Alt Net 1gb symmetric service even if I could. I probably just do it to support the Alt Net expansion but I like all the stuff I get with VM.
“An VM doesn’t increase prices during the contract like BT does. ”
Now if you really are a customer then you just know that is mis information – however they do allow you to leave when they do – which seems to be once if not twice a year.
Actually you are right, VM does now increase prices mid contract too although they didn’t use to. So now they are about the same as the other big telcos.
Welcome Offers aren’t subject to price increases during the first 18m and if you’re on Gig1 it’s pricelocked for 24m with an 18m contract.
In saying that if you’re on Ultimate they’ll probably increase Tv or landline pricing.
Great. We need innovation and competition like this to force Openreach to remove the artifical caps put on the upload of their FTTP services. 110 mbps upload for a 1gbit download connection is very poor, I would love to see this uncapped to 250 or 500 mbps.
I am with unchainedISP – best ISP – they never throttle nothing, its unfiltered internet!
You also like to chat to yourself on here – so again cool story bro
You would hope at that price!
I don’t see how they would be able to do this. In order to increase upstream bandwidth they need to change their splits, which across their entire network would be very expensive to do. I seriously doubt they’d bother just to increase upload speeds for the 5% of their customers that need/want faster upload. Especially given they’re going to start transitioning to PON soon, why bother.
And it’s not like they can convert the existing upstream spectrum to D3.1 because then customers stuck on Hub 3 and lower won’t be able to have upstream. Unless they’re planning a mandatory switch to Hub 5… Which I doubt, again, the logistics and cost and customer service issues they’ll have wouldn’t be worth it. There are people still using Hub 1, believe it or not.
It’s too little too late anyway. I switched to CommunityFibre when they came to my area, they are offering symmetrical gigabit for £25 for 2 years… So why would I stay on VM when a deal like that exists. They are going to get hammered by FTTP competition in the coming years, because they have been way too slow with their own transition.
Nobody is “stuck on Hub 3” as they get a hub 4 if DOCSIS 3.1 is required.
“No one is stuck on Hub3” Oh really, I’m on 500 service and,VM say they won’t change it. And I hope you’re aware of the glaring faults with it that have been reported? Im praying it conks out for a replacement. Although they’ll just give us another Hub 3.
https://www.google.co.uk/url?sa=t&source=web&rct=j&url=https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2018/08/intel-coughs-to-puma-cpu-flaw-that-hit-virgin-media-hub-3-router.html&ved=2ahUKEwjrhqLc89j5AhVMOMAKHUy0AnUQFnoECDAQAQ&usg=AOvVaw2F4m5SYCRsS8OhrXbR58rg
Jim. Read his statement. He said IF 3.1 is required they’ll upgrade the Hub. 500Mb doesn’t require 3.1 so you’re on the Hub 3.
They need to take away spectrum from legacy modems in order to deploy OFDMA. As more customers are migrated to 3.1 modems, they can make the channel bigger.
What I meant was, if they upgrade their limited upstream spectrum to D3.1, then everyone with QE older than Hub 4 will be forced to upgrade to continue getting service. That’s gonna cost a lot of money and frustrate a lot of customers. Tons of people are still on Hub 3. I don’t think VM will really bother, considering very few people care about faster upstream, and VM is focused on upgrading to PON.
Alternatively, they could upgrade their splits to allocate more spectrum to upstream, leave some as D3.0 and the rest can be D3.1. But again, it’s very costly… I don’t see them making huge investments in coax at this point, they are getting crushed by FTTP providers. They are all hands on deck for transition to PON.
A quick look at VMO2’s 2022 Q2 results shows that, far from being crushed, their fixed line broadband subscribers are up as are year-on-year earnings.
They will come under pressure in the next few years but they can upgrade segments of the HFC network to maintain roughly comparable performance to Openreach FTTP until the PON upgrade is complete.
My biggest question is why has it taken vm so long to start using d3.1 on upstream?
Not a moan but a serious question, is it economics, apathy, not wanting to outpace the market?
If capability has been there then why did they not try and use it? Some customers would pay more for faster upstream, right now altnets are using faster upLoads as a welcome differentiator.
Virgin could have rolled out faster uploads via d3.1 years ago but chose not to.
VM did not complete the upgrade of the entire UK network to DOCSIS 3.1 until December 2021. It was a bigger project than everyone realises.
Economics mostly – each 3.1 upstream channel involves using part of a software license. New line cards necessary if the existing ones were 3.0-only.
Probably a few reasons, pricing, no competition, effort. Now that there’s a tonne of 1Gb providers out there including BT, they have to start working on it.
I put it down to apathy for the most part. Its the biggest croc of crap that networks can be ‘overbuilt’ – the internet isn’t like a road, having excess capacity allows for much less errors to occur (which take real time out of peoples lives). Significantly reduced contention ratios and just overall better product, for a relatively low cost at the time of provision vs inevitable redigging in the future.
Been with VM 02 in the past for broadband, never again. Nit tried Cityfibre yet but they are available to ne as is Virgin. We switched to BT full fibre at start of this year ..it Is way better and more reliable than VM .
We have had 02 based sims in our mobiles for years they will be going at end of contract in few months time as can’t connect to websites quite a lot of time…something that only started in last 12 months!
Hi
I have been onto O2 about this issue as well. Very poor performance on the 4g network where I live. At times the network does not load anything even though indicating a full connection. Voice calls are possible when this happens but of poor quality.
Virgin are frustrating and it would seam going to be in for a battle with companies like giganet. Cheaper and more flexible!
I still have a Hub 1. It has been working just fine for years. Eventually it will have to be replaced when the voice line goes digital, but otherwise I won’t risk changing it.
You will get the new hub 5 if you got hub1 if get it changed
No you’d get a hub 3.
You get hub5 or hub4 only for the gig package, anything else is just the plain old superhub3, I begged them for something other than hub3 even offered to pay for it, they refuses, they had the whip hand I suppose… but that’s all in the past, we turn the pages of history and remember a painful horrible company, they can go to hell we couldn’t care.
So many people are constantly complaining about VM, here’s my more positive experience.
I’ve been a VM customer on and off since the early 90s when they were Telewest in my area, the only serious problem I experienced was in the late 90’s when the duct and cable needed to be replaced under my then paved driveway, they ended-up paying for it to be taken-up and replaced like for like.
I don’t have any loyalty to any service provider, will switch away at the end of a contract to a better deal if I cannot negotiate an acceptable retentions deal.
Currently with VM on a retentions deal for broadband and ‘landline’ (the latter I no-longer use, just keep as its cheaper with than without), paying £19 PM for 200/20, I’m very happy with the product and customer service.
I personally have had far greater problems with BT, TalkTalk and other now Openreach based providers than with VM.
I suspect VM have decided to upgrade the downstream to DOCSIS 3.1 to get the most out of the legacy network to compete with the new alt-nets and offer a differential to Openreach. Perhaps the thinking is that by upgrading the downstream to 3.1, it will give them some leeway between now and the time they take to roll out FTTP across the network.
And I remember paying $15/pm in Moscow for 500/500 fibre to the door. 2018/19
England are so far behind the rest of the world in terms of internet infrastructure.
Just been reading that another broadband provider may be coming our way in 2023. 46 GBP gives us 1000/1000 fibre to the door, 62 GBP gives us 1000/52 and may start to look at jumping ship once the fttp is installed.
On our 5G three business, we get 700Mbs down and 30-60 up
VM broadband here went down yesterday during routine maintainance and when it came back up there were 2 extra upstream channels.
This does appear to be an ongoing national upgrade.