I have serious issues with my phone line which have been ongoing for nearly 2years, about 4 months ago BT replaced all my equipment at the exchange, which seemed to do the trick and everything was fine for a couple of months (I got around 3.5Mbps as I’m quite far from the exchange).

Since then it has got really bad, for the last month or so I have been stuck on a IP profile of just 135 kbps (apart from a few days) and BT seem unwilling or unable to sort it out. I have had 3 or 4 engineers out during the last 2 year’s and each time they cannot find a fault, so I have been told to get them out again and if they don’t find a fault they will charge me £188.

My current ISP (ADSL24) has really done there best to try to get BT to sort it out but at the end of the day they can’t force them.  

So I asked my ISP if moving off ADSL max to a 2Mbps fixed rate line would help, which they suggested it might and I was willing to take the speed drop for a useable connection and it has help the speed but not by a great amount tbh http://www.thinkbroadband.com/speedtest/results/id/121157283497634426166.html and my line is now more unstable than on ADSL max, I get kicked off often so I online gaming isn’t possible.

Now I live in Virgin cable area so I’m thinking I might be better going for that instead of trying to get BT to sort it and risking getting charge and still being stuck with the problem if they don’t find a fault again.

I heard bad things about NTL in the past, but not really much since they became Virgin anybody got any experience of them???
 
I download around 30-40gig a month, but mostly at night how are they for traffic management???  

 I also game online how is Virgin for stability and ping in the evenings???

Cheers

I think virgin are great, its the only broadband Ive had but would never dream of going to the bt phone line.
I even found the customer services good on the few times ive needed them.
I dont download much but when I do I often get over 2mb/s, I play mohaa online and have no problems.

I have Virgin 20Mbit.

Downloads at 2MB/s pretty much all the time except during traffic shaping hours, where it drops to around 1MB - 500KB a second for about 4 hours. Then it shoots back up to 2MB again.

I have been with Telewest/Virgin for years, and have always had a good experience.

Running regular speed checks I always get the rate that I expect, and when its throttled I get the rate that they say it will be throttled to.

I have consistently had about 100% up time except when my modem itself went a little funny, but a couple of resets on that seemed to resolve the issue.

Very happy with the service, currently on a 4MB line, which will be upgraded to 10MB for free... although this is listed as TBC in my area at the moment (Bristol).

Cable seems to certainly be more stable, and I havent ever paid for an amount of bandwidth and got less than that really. Just be aware that the upload is lower than ADSL, but hasnt really been an issue for me.

I have had a few calls to the call center as well (about cable TV), and depends who you speak to, if you get a good person then they can query your devices over the phone and do any updates or resets then and there.

The TV on demand is also good i.e. if you missed Top Gear or something, you can just browse for it and watch it at your leisure.

Another note to make though, if you get them to put cable in your house, get them to pipe it in at the front and put the box there, and run any extra cable yourself, as they can be a bit crude at  running the cable sometimes, just make sure you let them know exactly where you want them to go, as coax stapled around you house can look quite unsightly.

I should be getting 4Mb down and 384Kb up, and currently Im getting:

Which is about on the dot.

See here for throttling info:

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

Its a shame really, I guess it depends on your area, I know NTL had dire reviews at one point, but Telewest had better, I dont know if this affects current day Virgin, if the NTL areas are slower?

Ive just had a calc and assuming you are on 4Meg, downloading at the theroetical Max 24/7 (10 Hours would be throttled)

You could download 38700MBytes of data, I have done some nerding and put together an excel sheet to work this out, if anyone wants it then PM me to check my math and Ill email it.

Obviously you wouldnt be able to sustain full speed, but I think my calcs are right?

Nothing wrong with ADSL24 at all tbh, I would recommend them to anyone looking for a new ADSL ISP,
The reason I left them was down to BT and there inability to sort my sh*tty line out without threatening to charge me 188 quid if they failed to fine the fault again!!!

Been with Virgin about 7 weeks now loving the speed!!!





No issues at all so far with them

 btw the cap is fine by me its still nearly twice what I got on ADSL with being so far from the exchange lol

Nothing wrong with ADSL24 at all tbh, I would recommend them to anyone looking for a new ADSL ISP,
The reason I left them was down to BT and there inability to sort my sh*tty line out without threatening to charge me 188 quid if they failed to fine the fault again!!!

Been with Virgin about 7 weeks now loving the speed!!!





No issues at all so far with them

 btw the cap is fine by me its still nearly twice what I got on ADSL with being so far from the exchange lol

OMG Im jelous!

Seeing that makes me want to move to a city where I can get cable.