Thinking of ditching BT landline/BB and going Virgin Media, am I mad?

Will I Aint

also if you are running speedtest from windows also run it again in safe mode with networking.  Windows can knock 10mbs off your download speed.

Greg Hook

I've been with BT for years and very happy with the service. No issues with disconnections and have not had any downtimes that I can remember at all.

Speed wasn't as fast as it could be, but disconnected a cordless phone attached to a second connection at the weekend and suddenly had 10meg more speed!

It also recently improved by about 5meg without me doing anything, so they must have upgraded something at the local box.

Foster

I've had VM for about 6 months now and it's never dropped below 220, and I've had 0 disconnections or issues so I would recommend it!

drinkturps

The latest from BT is that the speed coming out of my Exchange is poor and the speed I'm getting at home is pretty much what is coming out at the Exchange end.

Local cabinet and wire into the house is all ticketyboo from previous engineer visits. I've had 4 engineers now and also been totally re-wired into the home. Good thing is they refund me £8 a day for each day I have the problem which is a nice touch but I'd rather receive an advertised service.

Got another engineer coming today and I've been told that they can increase the bandwidth limit on my line to improve things. Not sure I believe that so I'll see what the engineer says if he comes out during the agreed time this afternoon.

I think coupled with the fact I am also paying for a landline I never use I may bin BT off. In their defence their customer service has been top notch and they have really been helpful. I'll see what happens this afternoon.....

EDIT: I've been told that there is a cap on my line (for reasons unkown) and the relevant team in BT will get in contact.

moonbeam120

Not sure what your point is.

VM cable broadband uses co-axial cable to deliver broadband from the nearest fibre node to the home.

99% of the time most providers (except VM) use local loop unbundling which put simply, it's a form of technology that allows multiple providers to use a single telecom network. Which in this case is the BT network. - some of which is over 50 years old.

BT uses a single twisted pair line from the exchange (or in the case of so called "fibre broadband" the nearest fibre node - street cabinet) to the home, which has much poorer transmission capabilities than co-axial does.

VMs network usually has a fibre node within 1.5km - 2km from the home. BTs exchanges can be as much as 8km from the home. Hence much slower BB speeds available to the consumer. Fibre node street cabinets help mitigate the distance issues from the exchange but still rarely deliver more than 150Mbit/sec bandwidth.

So you're comparing apples and oranges here.

Downinja

Mad not to IMO

I get 350Mbs, never drops below 35MB using reliable download sources.

Think I have had maybe 1 day downtime in 3 years

Don't own a landline, they actually offered me free calls forever for £1, turned it down as we don't own a landlane device (do people still used them??)

Equipments pants, but so are all ISP free routers.

sykotik

That i didn't know ,
up north ere , so we don't get VM ( well at least where i live)  ,
so yea, bit pointless  what i wrote then haha

NightHawk

Tempted by this deal Ultimate Oomph bundle £79pm   £35 Upfront 12 months (£200 topcashback available = £65 a month net) @ Virgin Media - hotukdeals

I'm in the same boat as OP where my speeds with BT are inadequate (used to get 70Mb now dropped to 50Mb) with outages every month or so and also had BT engineer out a couple of times to no avail.

Tate53

I would say go for it.  I have had fibre for nearly 18 years at different properties through Blueyonder which changed to NTL which then changed to Virgin.  Always got the full advertised speeds and can count on 1 hand the amount of times I have turned the computer on and its not been working.  Fibre to modem really is a godsend.

There really is no comparison, my parents have Sky fibre now, where I used to have Virgin before I moved out, and it never fails to wind me up how terrible it is in comparison.  

Like others have said, the superhub aint the best, but it does a job and you can always throw your own on if required.

Our Year

do it  
i grabbed it at 99 and thought it was a good price