Moving to the dark side...

Danni · Mar 05, 2008, 16:19:20

On Tuesday Virgin Media is coming to install 20mb broadband and a phoneline into my flat. The arguments are over, and they have acknowledged that 1) my flat exists, 2) the street is cabled and 3) the office already has cable.

I shall let you know how I get on

The main reason I've gone with cable rather than BT + IDNet is I cannot afford the £150 installation cost of a BT line. To compare, my Virgin Media installation cost is £10 (they gave me the web price because I started my order there

). The guy on the phone today was nice and helpful, and those in the local area have had no problems with cable internet, so hopefully things will go well.

I'll still be recommending IDNet to those in other areas, though :p

Rik · Mar 05, 2008, 16:20:45

Good luck, Danni. From what I have seen Virgin cable is OK, but definitely not Virgin ADSL. Now just don't go posting speed tests that make the rest of us jealous.

uxbod · Mar 05, 2008, 16:22:01

A few people I know have had issues with VM, but have been resolved. In fact I am moving to them for TV as Sky is to darn expensive. Will not take the Internet though as I require multiple IPs.

Danni · Mar 05, 2008, 16:23:14

Quote from: Rik on Mar 05, 2008, 16:20:45
Good luck, Danni. From what I have seen Virgin cable is OK, but definitely not Virgin ADSL. Now just don't go posting speed tests that make the rest of us jealous.

I gotta have some compensation for not being on IDNet

And I just noticed- my installation date is only 6 days away... BT made me wait 3 weeks last time!

Inactive · Mar 05, 2008, 16:24:22

Good luck Danni, my Daughter has Virgin Cable, hers sucks, very slow speeds and numerous cut offs, but she thinks it is because they have too many connections at her " green box ", I don't fully understand it TBH.

Anyway, it sounds like it is OK in your locality.

Rik · Mar 05, 2008, 16:24:41

Quote from: Danni on Mar 05, 2008, 16:23:14
I gotta have some compensation for not being on IDNet

And I just noticed- my installation date is only 6 days away... BT made me wait 3 weeks last time!

Oh, go on then.

somanyholes · Mar 05, 2008, 16:26:46

Hi Danni

These might be of interest if you are moving.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/
http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/forums/

i to have been stung by BT with that charge a few times, it is painful, just out of interest has anyone on here managed to find a way of not paying it, I'm sure I have seen posts on other forums where people have found a way of dodging it.

Rik · Mar 05, 2008, 16:29:26

It's very rare you can avoid the charge since the establishment of Openreach. If you have a dial tone and the line has been out of use for less than 30 days, the charge may be waived. It's also possible to get connected at slightly lower rates with other call providers, eg the Post Office.

Danni · Mar 05, 2008, 16:31:57

Yup- and this building only finished getting built last year, so they'd need to come and put a new line in. I doubt there would be a way to avoid it

Danni · Mar 05, 2008, 16:33:34

Thanks for the links, somanyholes. I know it's not gonna be as good as IDNet for support and policy and things, but hopefully the speed (and low cost- £21 for the first 3 months, £31 a month thereafter for 20mb and phone) will make up for it somewhat. Colin will be sticking with IDNet though- he lives in an uncabled area :p

Rik · Mar 05, 2008, 16:34:16

Quote from: Danni on Mar 05, 2008, 16:31:57
Yup- and this building only finished getting built last year, so they'd need to come and put a new line in. I doubt there would be a way to avoid it

Almost certainly not, Danni. Don't you just love the way Ofcom's changes always seem to work against us?

uxbod · Mar 05, 2008, 16:38:34

I love it when people say "I've got 20mb cable", the only place you can use it to download is from the ISPs transparent proxy servers. Not many sites on the net that would even have that bandwidth available to them

Rik · Mar 05, 2008, 16:41:23

I've got up to 8Mbps ADSL.

uxbod · Mar 05, 2008, 16:47:06

I remember the early days of NTL when they started cable modem connections. It was a pity they only put in a 10Mb network instead of 100Mb, it soon got a bit choked. Things should improve when the big companies start using 10Gb more and start driving hardware costs down. Perhaps in future we may even get to use some of the spare dark fibre companies have layed

plugwash · Mar 05, 2008, 16:47:47

I have seen speeds of the order of 20 megabit per second from some sites when using university machines so there are certainly websites that can provide data at that speed.

and there are also tools that can download different bits of a file from multiple sources in paralell.

Rik · Mar 05, 2008, 16:50:15

It would be nice to see domestic routers switch to gigabit speeds. More and more people have multiple machines and network them these days, gigabit routers would take that a stage further and increase the takeup of NAS.

uxbod · Mar 05, 2008, 16:58:45

Yeah I second that Rik. Would make streaming around the house so much better

Rik · Mar 05, 2008, 17:02:09

It has to come, most machines now have gigabit cards...

Danni · Mar 05, 2008, 18:03:23

I know it's an up to, but I suppose where the advantage for me will be that I can do several things with the connection at once at high speed- such as streaming music, downloading updates, playing on SL, doing file transfer to and from my server, talking on IM and browsing websites. I can only manage to do a couple of those together at the moment.

Rik · Mar 05, 2008, 18:04:31

The limiting factor with my connection is me, Danni - I'm not a good multi-tasker.

Danni · Mar 05, 2008, 18:13:32

I should point out at the moment I'm limited to 3G speed (460kbps) so even if I don't get near 20mb, it will be an improvement :p

Rik · Mar 05, 2008, 18:15:44

I'd settle for 5-6Mbps myself, that would be twice what I can get.

Niall · Mar 05, 2008, 20:02:02

Quote from: Rik on Mar 05, 2008, 16:20:45
Good luck, Danni. From what I have seen Virgin cable is OK,

That was the case when it was Blue Yonder. Sadly it's one of the worst providers out there now. My mate in St Helens disconnects about 6 times a night, every night. They never EVER reply to his emails. They NEVER sort any problems. Their phone support is a premium number. Their staff have the training and intelligence of a dead squirrel.

Oh I could go on and on for hours about how bad they are now. I've had my mate tell me at length for a long time about how bad they are.

Basically their network was near capacity when they had the old package upgraded to approx 10mb (can't remember the exact speed). Rather than upgrade their infrastructure they piled more and more users onboard and then increased the download speed. This has brought their network to its' knees. How have they solved this? They just announced 50mb lines.

The Amityville line seems appropriate here: Get out!

{edit for typos

}

madasahatter · Mar 05, 2008, 22:27:50

Good luck danni - hope it all goes well for you

Inactive · Mar 06, 2008, 00:55:50

Quote from: Niall on Mar 05, 2008, 20:02:02
Sadly it's one of the worst providers out there now. My mate in St Helens disconnects about 6 times a night, every night. They never EVER reply to his emails. They NEVER sort any problems. Their phone support is a premium number. Their staff have the training and intelligence of a dead squirrel.

That is exactly the experience my Daughter gets with them, I guess it is down to location.