Quiet here, is that a good sign?

[Susan_H]

I'm thinking of joining Virgin's (non-cable) 8MB ADSL package (either £18pm broadband, or £15pm broadband+phone), as a first-time (not migrating) broadband user.

Is the broadband connection fast and reliable (assuming my exchange/line is, which I don't yet know)?

Someone mentioned DNS issues - is that common?

Is their Fair Use policy applied in practice as described? :-

What traffic management are you applying to the heaviest users?

Monitoring traffic:
Well each week we’ll monitor how much data our broadband customers download during peak times only. We measure this in kilobytes (KB). Peak times run from 4pm till midnight. We then add up the total amount of data downloaded over the week per customer. We then rank the list of customers, heaviest users first. From this list, we pick out the top 5% of heaviest users over the week. We reserve the right to traffic manage these customers during peak times. Traffic management lasts for just 1 week and is only applied during peak times (4pm till midnight).

Traffic Management:
For the small number of customers who are in the top 5% of heaviest users, our traffic management solution will temporarily set download speeds to no lower than 512Kbit/s. This limit is applied daily, 4pm until midnight, for 1 week.

During off-peak periods our traffic management solution will automatically reset download speeds back to their full speed.

Each week we review our top 5% heaviest peak-time users over the previous 7 days. We then update the refreshed customer list to our servers for traffic shaping.

Is the free SpeedTouch modem crap/adequate/good?

Are IP addresses assigned dynamically? Can they be changed by turning the modem off for a while (with/without doing nasty things to syncing/training/interleaving)?

They "reserve the right" to charge a £50 fee if the (broadband-only) package is cancelled within 12 months (I suppose to cover the activation fee and modem): do they actually do this?

Any recomendations, criticisms, gotchas?

And, what have I overlooked, please?

Thanks for any interest and suggestions.

 

[curtis]

There other ISP's to choose from but virgin /tiscali / talk talk/ aol I would advise you too check out the ISP complaints section of this forum before you make any decision as there are lots of comments regarding these ISP's:smilet: check out the following link: www.idnet.net the BBC use them? they offer a good service package from £14.99 upwards and no India call centres there in UK.

 

[Susan_H]

There other ISP's to choose from but virgin /tiscali / talk talk/ aol I would advise you too check out the ISP complaints section of this forum before you make any decision as there are lots of comments regarding these ISP's:smilet:

I thought this was the ISP complaints section of this forum for Virgin!? If not, where?

Oh, I found this section: http://www.ispreview.co.uk/new/complain/clist.shtml

[EDIT]Nothing for Virgin in 2007 though.

 

[Mark.J]

That just tracks people that complain via e-mail to us while the ISP Complaints forum itself is here:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/forumdisplay.php?f=96

 

[Susan_H]

That just tracks people that complain via e-mail to us while the ISP Complaints forum itself is here:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/talk/forumdisplay.php?f=96

Oh yes, I see, thanks (and I now see it's linked from my first destination too: oops).

Still not too bad for Virgin (ADSL), though it sure put me off Fast4!

 

[MacGee]

Check out the Virgin forum on thinkbroadband. You can also find ratings and speed comparisons for August on DSL Zone UK.

Michael