Virgin's 50mb broadband will be £28 from September 1st. At the moment it is £35 so I think £28 is a great price for 50mb broadband.

Am deffo gettin this .. anyone else . ?

Col ..

If it was available in our area, yeah.

Thats good news. Already have it and it will save me £7 :D

@ Ghozer, is there gonna be a Sychosis3? SYchosis.com has been down for yonks

Thats good news. Already have it and it will save me £7 :D

@ Ghozer, is there gonna be a Sychosis3? SYchosis.com has been down for yonks

Something will happen, under a new name, i'll keep you posted m8 :)

And if you can download at 50Mbps for more than 30 mins I'll be very surprised. Virgins capping was appalling when I was using them 6 months ago.

There's no limits on the 50Mb

And if you can download at 50Mbps for more than 30 mins I'll be very surprised. Virgins capping was appalling when I was using them 6 months ago.

Confirmed no profiling after xGB like the 10MB & 20MB services. This is as clean as it gets. Thought there tech support is not great

I wasn't aware Virgin did the traffic shaping thing, can anyone fill in the details for me?

It would explain why my last Fedora DVD ISO took much longer than expected to download!

Unfortunately.

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

Confirmed no profiling after xGB like the 10MB & 20MB services.

For now. They have already confirmed that 50Mb will be subject to the STM if enough people take it up.

I wasn't aware Virgin did the traffic shaping thing, can anyone fill in the details for me?

It would explain why my last Fedora DVD ISO took much longer than expected to download!

Yep, they also had about 3 different ones in place so you couldn't work out when you could download what. It was very annoying.

O2 are download as much as you want outside core hours (i.e. about 5pm-12am weekdays) :)

I used to have the 50mb service before I moved out of a cabled area :-(
It was absolutely fantastic, getting downloads at 6.5MB/s at whatever time of day you like was great.

I saw an interview with Branson a while back. He says that VM are progressively going around the country upgrading the infrastructure of the entire network. The upgrades will allow for services of around 100Mb in the future, and he hopes that they'll be able to get rid of all the caps once everything is finished.

It's nice to have a company that gives a hoot about improving things.

I used to have the 50mb service before I moved out of a cabled area :-(
It was absolutely fantastic, getting downloads at 6.5MB/s at whatever time of day you like was great.

I saw an interview with Branson a while back. He says that VM are progressively going around the country upgrading the infrastructure of the entire network.

And rolling out new product around a year BEFORE the network is able to cope, robbing bandwidth off the lower tier subscribers.

The upgrades will allow for services of around 100Mb in the future

For about 5 times the going rate of nations that already supply 100Mb.

and he hopes that they'll be able to get rid of all the caps once everything is finished.

Will never happen without regulator intervention, they have already stated that STM will be coming to 50Mb.

It's nice to have a company that gives a hoot about improving things.

Which company is that, it certainly isn't Virgin Media.

And rolling out new product around a year BEFORE the network is able to cope, robbing bandwidth off the lower tier subscribers.

The product was rolled out in accordance with the network upgrade, the places that were on the new DOCSIS 3 platform first got it first etc. By putting 50Mb on the new platform this had no effect on the previous customer base as the platforms run independently, they've actually tripled network capacity with the new platform.



For about 5 times the going rate of nations that already supply 100Mb.

250Mb is being tested in Kent, to see how users would use the bandwidth in the future, 100Mb might be the next step although it depends on demand. They have a business to run and if there's no demand for more than 50Mb they wont roll 100Mb out either. Regarding costs it's all relative, in other countries there has been massive public spending on building fibre to the cabinet networks. In this country we have BT who have ignored the issue of their declining network for years hoping the government would bail them out whereas the cable companies have had to get private investments and loans to fund digging up the country laying fibre, this means that Virgin will now have some big loans to pay off. Now would it make business sense for Virgin to spend £15bn on a network just to then offer it at a cut price due to fall into line with pricing in other countries even though there isnt domestically any competition for the higher speed services?



Will never happen without regulator intervention, they have already stated that STM will be coming to 50Mb.

Get into the real world, data and bandwidth cost money and just like anything else, if you want an unlimited supply you'll have to pay for it. If you really need to average over 6 Mb/s all day a) dont you have a job? and b) is it that time-critical that you cant download it outside of peak hours like overnight? If you do need that much data constantly then maybe you should get a business service?

wouldn't you like to live in Seoul, 1Gb/s internet for under £10

http://fwd.five.tv/gadget-show/videos/other/feature-east-v-west

makes the carter report look a bit sick

The product was rolled out in accordance with the network upgrade, the places that were on the new DOCSIS 3 platform first got it first etc. By putting 50Mb on the new platform this had no effect on the previous customer base as the platforms run independently, they've actually tripled network capacity with the new platform.

Should have been clearer, I refer to the upgrade from 10->20 and 4->10. Leaving massive swathes of the country oversubscribed for months on end.

250Mb is being tested in Kent, to see how users would use the bandwidth in the future, 100Mb might be the next step although it depends on demand.

Demand will magically appear when a service is available.

They have a business to run and if there's no demand for more than 50Mb they wont roll 100Mb out either. Regarding costs it's all relative, in other countries there has been massive public spending on building fibre to the cabinet networks. In this country we have BT who have ignored the issue of their declining network for years hoping the government would bail them out whereas the cable companies have had to get private investments and loans to fund digging up the country laying fibre, this means that Virgin will now have some big loans to pay off.

Indeed, hence Branson selling a third of his shares, trouble ahead methinks. Virtually every analyst report I've seen into VM has decried their abysmal underinvestment in their network. Haven't read one recently tho.. so I take your word for it.

Agree on the BT thing tho, a disgrace.

Now would it make business sense for Virgin to spend £15bn on a network just to then offer it at a cut price due to fall into line with pricing in other countries even though there isnt domestically any competition for the higher speed services?

Hence they're charging considerably over the odds for their service in comparison to other nations.

Get into the real world, data and bandwidth cost money and just like anything else, if you want an unlimited supply you'll have to pay for it.

And indeed I do.

If you really need to average over 6 Mb/s all day a) dont you have a job? and b) is it that time-critical that you cant download it outside of peak hours like overnight?

Complete nonsense.

As for overnight downloading, sorta makes a mockery of Virgin/NTL's green credentials if they expect their customers to leave power hungry PCs (mine consumes around 150watts at idle) on. What a joke!

If you do need that much data constantly then maybe you should get a business service?

;) Though not with Virgin

Regardless, you are subject to STM even if you DON'T need anywhere near that much data, consistantly or otherwise! It penalises all customers regardless of whether they're heavy downloaders. Use your connection a lot for one day of the year only (enough to breach the draconian limit), and you will still have your bandwidth cut.

Still, pales into insignificance compared to the standard of customer service or billing...

50Mb might not be STM'd now, but it sure will be if people pile in to it.

Will have to start thinking about Gigabit Ethernet soon, 50Mb is already half the capacity of Fast Ethernet (100Mbps). :gag: Need to upgrade internal cabling as well to Cat6...

It is very cheap for telcos to install networks in asian countries such as Korea as the density of housing is so great. Just bring a cable along to a block of flats and you can service 100's of people in one go. In Europe things are a bit more spread out and your costs increase - (plus we don't all play MMO's 24/7 :cool:).

Should have been clearer, I refer to the upgrade from 10->20 and 4->10. Leaving massive swathes of the country oversubscribed for months on end.

Well, that's a different thing altogether and tbh not one I know so much about as I've never had any problems with my 20Mb.


Demand will magically appear when a service is available.

If you want a Gigabit connection you can certainly get one, if you wanted a business service at least which if you were that desperate for the bandwidth you could do and pay for. More importantly though, no other domestic providers are providing anything like 50Mb and until Virgin either get a shedload of people onto 50Mb using that bandwidth and wanting more or a competitor catches up there's no real need for them to splash out just yet. As I said previously they are testing higher bandwidth users and they'll use what they learn there when designing their next rollout which would probably be 150Mb - which is how many times quicker than the current competition?


Indeed, hence Branson selling a third of his shares, trouble ahead methinks. Virtually every analyst report I've seen into VM has decried their abysmal underinvestment in their network. Haven't read one recently tho.. so I take your word for it.

I'm not really the market analyst either although from gathered knowledge their network is the best thing they've got going for them and for good reason really. The biggest issue for them has been that they began as 50-odd separate cable companies doing things 50-odd different ways and now theyre all under 1 roof it's been a long slog refining processes and billing systems etc. If you ask a network engineer their network's fine, theyre the first national cable company to get onto the new DOCSIS 3 platform worldwide and they've plenty of fibre down already.

The below link from the telegraph has them doing slightly better than predicted by analysts recently.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/mediatechnologyandtelecoms/5983263/Virgin-Media-buoyed-by-insatiable-demand-for-faster-broadband.html


Hence they're charging considerably over the odds for their service in comparison to other nations.

The question here is 'is it VM's fault that Korea's and Japan's population tend to live in big tower blocks in high population density areas where the telecoms infrastructure was built in the last 40 years and paid for by their respective governments?' It's not and you cant really compare services to other nations as the constraints involved are totally different. I'm all for moving to a country where I can get a rapide connection though!


[QUOTE=Magilla;5324913]As for overnight downloading, sorta makes a mockery of Virgin/NTL's green credentials if they expect their customers to leave power hungry PCs (mine consumes around 150watts at idle) on. What a joke![\QUOTE]

I dont think Virgin expect their users to do that, it's just my initial thought on the matter. I leave my machine on overnight although not really for downloads, most things I download dont take very long at 2Mb/s+ and I've never noticed any reduction to my bandwidth even when I've been downloading loads.