Virgin Media...any good?

[Mike]

Are they any good if you can only get a BT line?

Been thinking about going to Sky or Virgin, but sky are utter rubbish apparently! :jumpon:

 

[Clio*Nick]

When I lived in Bristol I had Virgin media on the fibre optic cable. The internet was epic on it so fast.

Service was pretty good tbh, never had any problems with anything and the people on the end of the phone knew what they were doing and when I came to cancel it was all very straight forward.

Only anoying thing is they phoned me up once every 2 weeks to try and get me to upgrade to the top packages

 

[GrumpyTwig]

Can you get any other providers? 'Be' who are essentially a pretty face for O2 are supposedly pretty good.

Why are Sky so bad? supposedly they don't throttle connection on-peak where as I can imagine Virgin might do (something to check?)

 

[Mike]

Sky's customer service is diabolical.

We can get any provider that will "piggy back" over a BT line - but because we can only get a BT line and nothing else, there is not much saving on BT Internet

 

[jase]

I'm on vigin for phone,tv(virgin+) and broadband.
Fibre optic is great because in the crap weather I have no loss of signal at all.
Customer service is great too.

 

[Morty197]

Would stay away from Virgin if its not fibre, not a great service tbh. I'm with BE and I have never had a service this fast for as cheap as I have it £18 for 15mb/s actual. It worth looking for a new router tho as it's prone to resetting periodically...

 

[ipodsandguns]

We've been with virgin media since it was yorkshire cable back it 98 or something, fibre optic since 2002 ish, always loved it, never fails. Its rare when I use n ADSL connection but I can often tell that I am.

 

[BenW]

I have virgin fibre optic and its great

My mum has the virgin over a BT line, used to be fantastic but its not quite as good anymore. Download speeds rarely over 300kbps (Used to be 1000kbps).

Do some research on the router they provide though, the one they gave me with the fibre optic is a shocker and needs restarting sometimes half hourly

 

[Bootsock]

Can you get any other providers? 'Be' who are essentially a pretty face for O2 are supposedly pretty good.

Why are Sky so bad? supposedly they don't throttle connection on-peak where as I can imagine Virgin might do (something to check?)

Virgin are okay and have improved from back in the old NTL / Telewest days of tragically bad customer service.

Be / o2 are superb, I've been on Be for a few years now, have never had a problem and also get a much faster connection than what I actually pay for! Bonus!

For the record, o2 bought Be a couple of years ago, so you can get very good broadband even cheaper if you have an o2 mobile phone too.

 

[Mike]

O2 Broadband:

We are sorry but O2 broadband is not available in your area.

Virgin:

£5.20 ish more expensive than BT

PlusNet is £19,49 - 50p cheaper than BT.

Oh well, looks like I'm staying with BT then lol!!!!!

 

[Gouldy]

Virgin media are very good.

We have broadband 10 meg package with them and I regularly get speeds of over 14 meg with them.

Very good IMO

 

[jaxx]

Moving in to my new house soon and im having Virign 50meg (with the future 100meg upgrade), TV+ and Phone installed, so ill report back with my initial thoughts when its plumbed in

 

[Fiona197]

I have Virgin for broadband, phone (x2) cable tv (inc V+ on demand tv etc etc), and they are MUCH better and cheaper than Sky (used to have Sky for 2 years)..Plus you get notice for V Festival tickets (if that's your thing) and other such stuff...

Agree with all the customer service comments on here- again blow Sky out of the water..

Love 'em!

 

[mbk197]

Have had 50mbit in my flat for the last 4 months, rarely goes below 40mbit - only at peak times. 5.2mb per second download is awesome

They are a bit hit and miss though, I've heard plenty of people moan about how they get rubbish speeds, its purely down to the contention ratio or how many people are sharing the bandwidth allocated to your area. Luckily where I live there are plenty of old people, so I'm pretty fortunate.

 

[Webby]

Mike,

Samknows is a cracking site for seeing what broadband services are in you area (especially those that have their own equipment in your exchange - LLU), and crucially how far you are from the exchange. This is the bit that really effects the speeds. This site is also worth checking out if your planning on moving.

I have Sky TV and phone and as I live 3+ miles from the exchange i pay extra for a Virgin 50Mb package. I could never go back to 3Mb speeds now. To see a 7GB game on Steam* download in 20 minutes is still brilliant. VM do have their problems on lower tiers, but in my experience they go out of their way for top package customers. Plus they are the first to start roleout of 100Mb BB this year (September for me).Yes i pay over the odds, but I hate the VM TV menu with a passion!!

*btw if anyone is on steam my name is F9thDigi.