Virgin Media O2 Tries to Reclaim UK’s Fastest WiFi Guarantee
The battle for which broadband ISP can offer the UK’s fastest WiFi guarantee has continued today after Virgin Media (VMO2) announced that they were boosting their own guarantee from 20Mbps to 30Mbps at no extra cost (i.e. a minimum download speed of 30Mbps via WiFi in every room, or you get £100 back).
The original guarantee, which launched in September 2022 (here), made headlines by claiming to deliver the “UK’s Fastest WiFi Guarantee” (with a 20Mbps minimum speed) in “every room or money back.” But this ignored that fact that alternative network operator Connect Fibre had, in June 2022, already made a similar claim by promising a minimum speed of 30 Mbps in every room (here) – this also cost £8 extra.
So, on the one hand, Connect Fibre already had the fastest WiFi guarantee, yet on the other hand their fixed line network coverage is only a miniscule fraction of Virgin Media’s and so their use of “UK” was similarly questionable.
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The debate then took another turn this month when Sky Broadband launched the “UK’s fastest WiFi guarantee, of any major provider” with their “WiFi Max’s speed guarantee of up to 25mps in every room” for an extra £10 per month (here).
Just to be clear, Sky’s guarantee was expressed as “up to” 25Mbps because it only set that minimum speed on their top “Ultrafast” or faster broadband packages, while those on their slower “Superfast” plans were only guaranteed a minimum of 10Mbps. Suffice to say that Virgin Media’s boost from 20Mbps to 30Mbps is a direct response to this.
Gareth Lister, Director of Connectivity at VMO2, said:
“The sky really isn’t the limit at Virgin Media O2, which is why we’ve upgraded our speed promise at no extra cost so our customers can continue to enjoy the UK’s fastest WiFi guarantee. We’re always looking at ways to improve the experience we deliver, and with a boosted WiFi guarantee our customers can rest assured we’ve got them covered in every room.”
Should customers see their download speeds (via WiFi) drop to below 30Mbps, they can, if required, request up to three WiFi Pods at no extra cost to help boost the connectivity around their home. And if they’re still not receiving 30Mbps or more, Virgin Media will add £100 credit to their next bill (Sky’s guarantee only covers one month of broadband and WiFi Max service, and they also tie you to an 18-month term, while VMO2 uses 30-days).
The upgraded speed promise is said to be available to all new and existing customers who take Virgin Media’s WiFi guarantee, with no need for existing customers to reboot their Hub or take any action for the updated minimum speed to apply. The fact that they aren’t requiring a kit change suggests that they have enough performance data, and thus confidence, in their existing kit to be able to support the new claim.
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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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
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I called them out on this a few days ago: https://twitter.com/BenjaminEHowe/status/1681399837344911360
Yawn. These WiFi speed guarantees are such a waste of time – 30mbps is so easy to achieve with modern technology. With an inexpensive TP-Link router and an inexpensive mesh repeater, I was easily pushing Virgin Media’s 250Mbps service at full speed to every room in my house. Now I have a slightly more expensive TP Link Deco setup that is running a wireless backbone capable of a reliable 750Mbps and pushes my now 500Mbps service to every room of the house, at full speed, anywhere. It’ll do 200Mbps at the far end of the garden behind the garage!
If an ISP actually wanted to offer a proper WiFi speed guarantee, they’d be guaranteeing relative to the package speed – sure, cap it at 400Mbps or something, but offer something worth actually guaranteeing.
£8 a month! This is manipulative marketing preying on technically illiterate customers. Shame on them.
No doubt for the products where this is “included”, it’s branded as some incredible value-add that justifies the high price.
What next?
“Eco low-power reduction GUARANTEE – We promise our GigaHub won’t consume more than or your money back. Only £5 month, or £8 a month when combined with our
Monthly Bill Payment GUARANTEE – giving you piece of mind that we are looking after your finanaical health by promising to charge you every single month for the services you use.”
Completely and utterly pointless. We are on M250, but even when we were on the M100 package, the performance of the bundled “Superhub 3” was a disaster. In some cases, the internet speed could just be 10Mbps or less, depending on the device. However, for most devices in pretty much all rooms, the bundled Superhub would provide 20-30Mbps.
Given I was disappointed to be receiving just 20Mbps or less when we were paying for 100 (and now 250), its an insult to receive just 30Mbps when you’re paying for 1000Mbps!
And these Wi-Fi boosters that VM supply are account specific, so you can’t buy boosters from elsewhere, and you can’t keep them for other ISPs if you decide to leave.
You’re honestly just better off getting a solution from elsewhere, one which you pay for yourself but which can be used with any ISP. For example, TP Link Deco S4, which in any room, I can now get 50Mbps+ on my phones and 150Mbps+ on the laptops. The signal is also much stronger with the Deco S4 compared to the Not-So-Super Hub 3.
“And these Wi-Fi boosters that VM supply are account specific, so you can’t buy boosters from elsewhere, and you can’t keep them for other ISPs if you decide to leave.”
Which is great for VM, because anybody who has shonky wifi and chooses to accept or pay for VM’s boosters will be less likely to leave. VM will have tons of data from probably hundreds of thousands of home wifi scans using their Connect app, they’ll know the balance between free and paid pods, uptake rates, non-return rates versus non-return charges, and the likely small payout numbers for the £100. All of this will drive a precisely calculated NPV, and it’ll probably be a big positive number. This isn’t being done to give customers more, it’s being done to make VM more money.
Those wifi pods do not work at all, I had one ordered after a lot of struggiling to get one…. it never worked, just sits in it’s box – I got my house wired for Ethernet instead, much better!
If you have Ethernet in various places, I’d look at something like multiple wired WAPs around the house such as the TP Link Omada WAPs I have.
It’s not perfect but it’s so far the best wifi performance I’ve been able to get and reduced issues compared to my old BT Wholehome e.g. network discovery
The only downside is you may need a controller, although I use a docker image on my home server.
Moaney friday I see.
I guess it’s a testament to how good most things are nowadays that people expect full speed on a wireless connection in what are truly challenging situations for a piece of kit the isp is basically giving away.
The other aspect is the customer’s equipment, customers may expect full speed on their cheap when new device that only does Wi-Fi g that Max’s at 52mbs when next to the Wi-Fi ap, or expect every device to pull 1gb simultaneously.
I do have skin in this gripe, I pay £27 (inc sim) for 1gb and my virtual machine (connected via Ethernet directly to the modem j at best gets ~700mbs down, up from the 200mbs I was getting the other month.
I am impatiently awaiting for the 2 full fibre altnets in my area to offer service so I can ditch vm.
I’m happy with the 30mbs I can get from the top of the garden but I’m not using vm’s Wi-Fi. I have a Tenda mesh which has many faults especially dropping iot stuff connected at G.
You can’t expect Wi-Fi to run at full speeds in all locations in your home unless you have lots of ap’s wired back to your physical infrastructure.
Even having a lot of access points can be a digital equivalent of shooting yourself in the foot.
I wonder what all of these mesh extenders will do in the long term for spectrum congestion if you have lots of technically illiterate people buying them under the assumption that it will be the magic pill to cure them of their WiFi issues.
How can they guarantee 30Mbps when some older devices, and even ‘Chinese specials’, potentially use the 2.4Ghz band only, and at a maximum of 54Mbps in ideal conditions?
As soon as you walk away from the same room as the HUB it would easily drop below 30Mbps.
54Mps was the maximum on 2.4 GHz for 802.11g (or Wifi 3). VM can proably safely assume 802.11n (Wifi 4) as the absolute minimum these days.
Safe bet to make because 802.11n has been around for more than a decade.
IoT devices will probably get an exclusion too from any WiFi guarantee
Is it just me or does anyone else think boosting their own guarantee from 20Mbps to 30Mbps it totally pointless and a ludicrously pitiful example of marketing BS? I mean, if my own virgin media wifi didn’t hit over 100Mbps on my xbox I’d be seriously kicking off.
Sure but it goes to demonstrate that you’re not the customer for this product. WiFi is really designed mobile devices and not a stationary one.
You probably know that already though.
For everyone else who is curious: Run an ethernet cable along the skirting board or under the carpet to the Xbox. Failing that, get a reliable mesh system preferably on an ethernet backhaul or just go for a standalone access point when WiFi 7 becomes available.
I’ve just checked the One Network map and Virgin Media are shown as due to start works in the Bessacarr and Cantley areas of Doncaster by the end of July 2023. This is one of the few areas of the city which currently does not have VM, although CityFibre went live in this area last year.
Can someone confirm what VM’s plans are? Are they actually going to lay the fibre this time? If so, is part of Project Lightning, Project Mustang or Nexfibre? Will it be FTTP?
Need some answers guys. Thx!
Virgin Media may claim a 30-day term, but if it’s anything like our experience of cancelling with them it’ll be 35 days, two of which are taken up trying to get in contact with their staff who only do cancellations via 15 minute texting windows, half a day after you made your original request.