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How good is Virgins 50Mb broadband

I am currently with freedom2surf and using the 24Mb package which only ever seems to connect at about 13Mb I think this is mostly because of the distance to the exchange.
However our street has Virgin cable so it had crossed my mind to sign up to their 50Mb cable package, can anyone give me any pointers on just how good this service actually is at the moment?
 
from what l hear it all depends on the takeup in the area, however they tend to have pretty heavy restrictions at certain times regarding downloading.. tho lm unsure what they are.

hopefully someone can fill you in on these, pretty sure they are posted somewhere here tho, or might have been in a news article, l forget.
 
The Virgin Media website is a mess

Just reading all the terms and conditions and stuff about Free super-fast wireless routers then later they say in small print, Equipment remains the property of Virgin Media, then the bit about Traffic Management WHAT!!! :crap:
Then the bit about having the phone, seriously they are starting to sound like dodgy second-hand car dealers, who came up with this shi*te. It would be nice to hear from someone who actually uses them with the 50Mb broadband package. :shrug:
 
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I have the 50meg package, I am a moderate user and I have never seen a slow down and can download at over 5meg/s all day long. The only reason I have the VM is down to distance from the exchange if I could get any where near 13meg I would of been happy with that.
 
5Megs all day? Don't you mean 50 :) .

Just an FYI to the OP.

VM's 50Mbps product does not currently impose Traffic Management restrictions. That does not mean they won't add them in the future but at present it is largely unhindered and seems to be quite a good service.
 
He means downloading at 5 megabytes a second. Very nice if you can get it.:D


5Megs all day? Don't you mean 50 :) .

Just an FYI to the OP.

VM's 50Mbps product does not currently impose Traffic Management restrictions. That does not mean they won't add them in the future but at present it is largely unhindered and seems to be quite a good service.
 
With VM (oncable) you always rent the equipment, the price is included in your subs as things like cable modems won't work outside of the network so there would be no need to own it ??. I can't vouch for the 50mb but ive been using there 10mb service of a few years now and its great. It makes ADSL look like dialup. I never drop below about 9.5mb/s. As pointed out by Zen it removes the need to live next door to the BT exchange to get a decent speed. While BT are faffing around with upto 40mb us cable customers can look forward to 100mb within the next year or so.

Take the plunge, i would upgrade to 50 but at the minute im not using it enough to justify. The 50mb package currently has no managing in place as far as i'm aware.
 
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While BT are faffing around with upto 40mb us cable customers can look forward to 100mb within the next year or so.

heh, look forward umm until the internew is all on gigabit connections there is no way in hell one could really need 100meg connections or even achieve anywhere close to it.. my friend on VM down bedford way is on a 50meg connection, but last l heard hes only ever been able to max it out at around 20meg, and even then thats only been when downloading backups from servers which were on 100mbit connections that werent in use, the same server could only pull off a 10meg or less download when in use tho at its busyest your talking 5meg.

in any case the point is that while l would love a 50meg or more connection it would only come into its own when the remote infrastructure linking both our country and others can handle the need for that bandwidth, equally servers themselves would need pretty amazing bahaul to the servers serving data (gigbit connections would likely have to be stanardised, but they dont come cheap sadly)... equally the other issue would be users, lve found in areas where the Cable takeup is high the speed is very low, back in basingstoke or at least the areas l visited (helped peeps out with their computers a few times) where VM connections to cable were high the speed the avarage speed at daytimes for connections of 10meg or higher were around 5/8meg at non-peak periods however it tended to drop below the 2meg barrier at peak times, in places below 1meg (in the center of town at least), in perspespective its all well and good having a connection thats supposedly capable of up to 100meg but the likelyhood of finding out what ones maximum speed is beyond 15/20meg l find nearly impossible since there are very few places out there that can give truely accurate readings if at all (after all there is other traffic on the net that also consumes bandwidth therefor slowing connections down)
 
5Megs all day? Don't you mean 50 :) .

Just an FYI to the OP.

VM's 50Mbps product does not currently impose Traffic Management restrictions. That does not mean they won't add them in the future but at present it is largely unhindered and seems to be quite a good service.

I mean actual throughput ;) 5000k/s, DVD in about 12 mins from the newsgroups
 
Just checked my logs and max constant download i had was 6100k/s the lowest was 3800k/s the norm is prob 5300k/s.

A quick speed test.

 
VM 50mb here too.
Reliability is great, it almost never goes down.
Customer service, about half of the time its crap. The scousers are alright-decent, its the indians most of them havnt a clue.
Speed, perfect. Be aware though that most websites cant upload to you fast enough.

As for the pricing. Everything is VM's property, and really thats a good thing incase of if anything goes wrong with the modem or router youll get it replaced for free, unlike if youre with Sky/BT who only offer free equipment the first time you buy/subscribe from them.

Usually get the full 50mb speed... when downloading from websites that have the capability to upload that much.


Yeah, Telewest. Was and sort of still is the best ISP in the world, until NTL bosses took over.
 
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Impressive figures!

I am an ex cusomer of Virgin. Was 4 or 5 years on dial-up with them, rarely ever had any problems. For some reason I changed when I first went to broadband, so I do have an unhealthy interest in them. (As far as my present supplier is concerned).
 
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