Poxy Virgin Broadband!

[coupekid]

OK, a quick rant before I lose broadband AGAIN!

I have been with NTL Broadband for many years, and not once had a problem.

When I changed computers, I rang them up to give me assistance, even when trying to get a new mail account set up on Outlook, they helped and got me running.

Well, now NTL have become Virgin Media. Yesterday the bb connection was rather intermittent, so I rang 150, followed all the prompts only to be told that I had to ring an 090 premium number, and pay 10p to connect, and a further 25pence a minute for the priviledge of talking to a technician to resolve their problem! Brilliant!

I have now just argued the toss with some bloke in India about reimbursing me for the phone call as the problem lies purely with them.

My advice a couple of months ago would be to go with NTL Broadband as they have been fautless, now, I would advise to steer well clear!

OK, rant over, lets see if I can post this, or is it down again!

[coupekid]

UPDATE: Poxy Virgin Broadband!

Well, apparently they are carrying out work in my area, however, this was only until 4:15pm yesterday afternoon.

Got up this morning, and no broadband, so called virgin again.

Apparently I have a faulty router, deduced after pulling wires out etc. So have booked them to come out on Thursday.

Anyway, popped down the tip, came back, and it is now working again....amazing, my router has managed to self heal (note the sarcasm) so lets see how long it stays working.

OK, a quick rant before I lose broadband AGAIN!

I have been with NTL Broadband for many years, and not once had a problem.

When I changed computers, I rang them up to give me assistance, even when trying to get a new mail account set up on Outlook, they helped and got me running.

Well, now NTL have become Virgin Media. Yesterday the bb connection was rather intermittent, so I rang 150, followed all the prompts only to be told that I had to ring an 090 premium number, and pay 10p to connect, and a further 25pence a minute for the priviledge of talking to a technician to resolve their problem! Brilliant!

I have now just argued the toss with some bloke in India about reimbursing me for the phone call as the problem lies purely with them.

My advice a couple of months ago would be to go with NTL Broadband as they have been fautless, now, I would advise to steer well clear!

OK, rant over, lets see if I can post this, or is it down again!

[Ian]

Re: UPDATE: Poxy Virgin Broadband!

Well, apparently they are carrying out work in my area, however, this was only until 4:15pm yesterday afternoon.

Got up this morning, and no broadband, so called virgin again.

Apparently I have a faulty router, deduced after pulling wires out etc. So have booked them to come out on Thursday.

Anyway, popped down the tip, came back, and it is now working again....amazing, my router has managed to self heal (note the sarcasm) so lets see how long it stays working.

Hi Ben, clearly you are having a localised problem, but alas the story is, if anything, worse with ADSL. I have both ADSL (at the office) and cable (here at home) and I find the cable connection much much faster and its speed is more consistent. Patrick found the same when he switched from cable to ADSL and has now switched back.

The Cable technology is designed for high bandwidth connections while ADSL is a work-around for delivering broadband over old-fashioned telephone lines - ADSL is always going to be the more limited technology.

Ian

[Bearface]

Re: Poxy Virgin Broadband!

Ben,

While I'm not with Virgin Broadband, I can certainly relate to the problems you've had. I have an ADSL set up through BT Business and I have to say that the service and reliability from them have been diabolocal.

Prior to moving here, I lived approximately half a mile away in the same village, but I had a regular connection speed of 4Mbps or more. Now I'm nearer to the exchange, but the best connection speed we get is around 750Kbps........quite a difference. Given that we use the line mainly for our business, you can imagine the frustration this causes, especially when uploading batches of hi-res images to clients' servers, etc. BT Broadband are apparently upgrading the systems and software at the exchanges, but we have no idea when we will benefit from these upgrades, and there's nothing else we can do.

Recently we got a PowerMac G5 desktop system and and Core 2 Duo PC and while we were setting up the wireless connections, we lost the broadband for almost an entire week! The problem (according to BT Broadband) was the line itself, so we went to BT themselves (a completely separate company...) to report the fault. They confirmed that a fault existed and sent engineers to a location in the village where an issue was found and repaired, however the line remained faulty and we couldn't use the broadband service.

After hours of waiting on the phone and being transferred from pillar to post, we lost patience and began to demand some immediate action. Finally we were told that our broadband setting had fallen to something like 180Kbps and that it was too weak for our router to work properly, and it needed to be turned up. So it was er.........turned up and then everything suddenly worked normally.

So after all our stress and almost a week of wasted time, the fault lay with whoever decided to lower our broadband speed (as if it wasn't slow enough...) to such a level that our router stopped working. Apparently engineers often do this when a line is perceived to be unstable, so clearly our particular line is either archaic or there's a major problem with it. Either way, BT have seemingly painted over the cracks and we are now back to full speed (all 750 mind-bending Kbps of it...) until such time as we can get cable or move house.

Never, ever go with BT Broadband. They have consistently proven themselves to be worthless in almost every way possible

[Stephen]

[lumix]

6568 kbps (821 KB/s)378 kbps (47.3 KB/s)Tuesday 15:226965 kbps (870.6 KB/s)378 kbps (47.3 KB/s)Aug 6, 08:166959 kbps (869.9 KB/s)378 kbps (47.3 KB/s)Aug 5, 15:556904 kbps (863 KB/s)378 kbps (47.3 KB/s)Aug 5, 15:466917 kbps (864.6 KB/s)378 kbps (47.3 KB/s)Aug 4, 22:216521 kbps (815.1 KB/s)379 kbps (47.4 KB/s)Aug 4, 14:256953 kbps (869.1 KB/s)379 kbps (47.4 KB/s)Aug 2, 07:576681 kbps (835.1 KB/s)378 kbps (47.3 KB/s)Aug 2, 07:436965 kbps (870.6 KB/s)378 kbps (47.3 KB/s)Aug 2, 06:206995 kbps (874.4 KB/s)378 kbps (47.3 KB/s)Aug 2, 06:176896 kbps (862 KB/s)378 kbps (47.3 KB/s)Aug 1, 15:335807 kbps (725.9 KB/s)378 kbps (47.3 KB/s)Aug 1, 15:326954 kbps (869.3 KB/s)378 kbps (47.3 KB/s)Jul 31, 15:225278 kbps (659.8 KB/s)379 kbps (47.4 KB/s)Jul 31, 15:216199 kbps (774.9 KB/s)378 kbps (47.3 KB/s)Jul 31, 15:205423 kbps (677.9 KB/s)378 kbps (47.3 KB/s)

Not bad me thinks.

[Autumn]

Nadia
Bilal Ahmed,
Jared
Bevan
Silky
Evert
Annushka
Selvip
Annushka again
Philani
Phumza
Tumie
Reginald!
Vandana
Haley
Alex
Patel
Meraj
Pawan
(19) Calls

We eventually got connected through our old Tiscali Sagem modem. I was on the phone 1 hour and 20 minutes trying different connections - I am too old for all this!

Anyway a young technician we know came to connect the router once he found that we were syncing with the exchange.

Everyting seemed to be OK, but now we were getting connected and losing the connection. It was on and off. I think I could always connect initially, but it kept vanishing.

Once again I reported it and Pawan could see that it was not stable, so, he reduced the speed from 8 to 2 mbps.

He said although in theory we were getting it (and I must say my connection speed showed 8 Mbps) the equipment couldn't cope with the speed and so now I am back to the same speed I had with Tiscali, but the overall package is cheaper.

Today my speed is:

Date 12/08/07 18:30:11
Speed Down 1467.88 Kbps ( 1.4 Mbps )
Speed Up 182.00 Kbps ( 0.2 Mbps )
Port 8095 Server speedtest1.adslguide.org.uk

It doesn't seem slow to me and at least it has held the connection since the 6th August. Pavan did say that once it was stable, they could try to increase the speed. For the time being, I am sticking with what I have.

In all this experience leaving Tiscali where they issued me with a MAC number (Migration Code) and all the 19 different people I have spoken to within Talktalk, they have all been extremely polite and knowledgable and helped as far as they could at that time. Most of them spoke good English and patiently explained what was happening.

Moving ISP's is not "A Piece of Cake." Over the years I have picked up quite a lot of knowledge through forums and just trying things out but at one point one of the technician's asked me if I had a screwdriver and would I go to the nearest BT jacking point to the front door and take off the plate and do a test. Now I had a knee replacement last year and this was not an easy task!

When I was asked to do it again, I just refused saying that I had already tested it!

I don't want to move again; moving ISP's is not for the feint-hearted.

[paul.r.w]

Re: Poxy Virgin Broadband!

Most issues regarding ADSL is one of numbers. How many people are on your loop and when do they use it. I get 6meg in the morning and down to 1/2meg at night and weekends. The problem is they stick too many people on the same loop for maximum revenue. BT are in the process of updating their network to 21CN which should sort it all out but that is going to take years.

http://www.btplc.com/21cn/

[Ian]

Re: Poxy Virgin Broadband!

Most issues regarding ADSL is one of numbers. How many people are on your loop and when do they use it. I get 6meg in the morning and down to 1/2meg at night and weekends. The problem is they stick too many people on the same loop for maximum revenue. BT are in the process of updating their network to 21CN which should sort it all out but that is going to take years.
http://www.btplc.com/21cn/

The ADSL at our office (office hours) is all over the place. We were promised 4Mb/sec (this is an up-to 8Mb connection) and we typically get 2Mb/sec, but it has dropped to 100Kb on some days. Re-booting the modem/router is required quite frequently (we use a Belkin N1).

At home, where I used to work until a couple of months ago I enjoyed the relative stability of our NTL/Virgin cable connection. I speed-tested that the other day (Think BroadBand), peak time in the evening and got 12Mb/sec. The modem stays on for months without any need for attention.

Ian

[himmelblau]

[Autumn]

Re: Poxy Virgin Broadband!

I understand the LLU (Local Loop Unbundling) has already taken place for Talktalk. They say it was happening during the first four weeks when I couldn't get connected.

I don't understand why I had the connection problem when I had been using Tiscali, I assume from the same local BT exchange into our home for so many years without any problem.

Am I to understand Taltalk and Tiscali will be using different wires into our home? (I couldn't find a dunce's hat)

[lumix]

Re: Poxy Virgin Broadband!

I understand the LLU (Local Loop Unbundling) has already taken place for Talktalk. They say it was happening during the first four weeks when I couldn't get connected.

I don't understand why I had the connection problem when I had been using Tiscali, I assume from the same local BT exchange into our home for so many years without any problem.

Am I to understand Taltalk and Tiscali will be using different wires into our home? (I couldn't find a dunce's hat)

Not quite but it's from the exchange to their server that makes all the difference. Some ISP's even install their own equipment in the local exchanges so don't have to rely on BT. It goes something like this. BT rent out bandwidth to the ISPs. Each pipe as it's know can handle a certain amount of traffic. If an ISP overloads their rented bandwidth/pipe then the traffic slows down. Bit like rush hour on the motorway. As each ISP is in control of how much traffic it sends down the pipe it's they who are responsible for the overload. Tiscali got caught out after an advertising campaign, and had too many customers and had not rented enough bandwidth from BT. Their system almost come to a halt. It's all very well putting 50 odd customers on the same line as lone as they don't all want to use it at the same time. Sods Law says it will happen at some time

[paul.r.w]

Re: Poxy Virgin Broadband!

Yes, every evening and weekend when all the brats are at home d/l the lastest nasty from youtube.

[Ian]

Re: Poxy Virgin Broadband!

Not quite but it's from the exchange to their server that makes all the difference. Some ISP's even install their own equipment in the local exchanges so don't have to rely on BT. It goes something like this. BT rent out bandwidth to the ISPs. Each pipe as it's know can handle a certain amount of traffic. If an ISP overloads their rented bandwidth/pipe then the traffic slows down. Bit like rush hour on the motorway. As each ISP is in control of how much traffic it sends down the pipe it's they who are responsible for the overload. Tiscali got caught out after an advertising campaign, and had too many customers and had not rented enough bandwidth from BT. Their system almost come to a halt. It's all very well putting 50 odd customers on the same line as lone as they don't all want to use it at the same time. Sods Law says it will happen at some time

If the service provider 'unbundles' they aren't acting as BT resellers any more; they install their own equiupment in the exchange and connect to their own backbone network (though that could be provided by another part of BT). But the local loop connection (exchange to your premises) usually remains via BT lines, especially if you already have a BT line installed.

Ian

[Autumn]

Re: Poxy Virgin Broadband!

Thanks Ron and Ian.

Talktalk definitely said they were unbundling.

Now I am keeping my connection, I might give them a ring to see if they would increase the speed a little and of course if they do, see if I can maintain the connection.