MJW

I've been with NTL for years with no problems at all (although I realise I must've been in a minority !) but since Virgin took over the service has been terrible. I didn't mind so much losing Sky One from my TV package but now their crapness has extended into my internet connection I'm starting to lose patience. Recently there has been numerous interruptions in the connection and all this week it seems to be on a go slow.
My supposed 4mbps connection is averaging 300kbps which in turn is getting me f**king murdered on BF2142 as my ping is up in the 80s/100s instead of the usual 20-30. I checked Virgin's service page but it doesn't mention anything specific to my location. Is anyone else having similar problems ?

bob269

I agree mate, i've been with ntl since c&w and their internet has always been great, last few weeks has been rediculous and supposedly since 1st July i've been upgraded to 20meg where as infact its now slower than its ever been.

Iain Young

Same here. No problems at all when it was NTL. I've just been "upgraded" to 20Mb via Virgin, and now have a terrible connection. Once or twice I've seen 17Mb, but most of the time I'm only getting around 0.3 to 0.5Mb. Some nights I reckon a standard 56k dialup modem would be quicker. It's made it unusable for xbox live games (so no multiplayer Forza2 for me at the moment )

I notice that there is a support ticket open for slow download speeds on 20Mb connections, but it's been open for quite some time, and no progress seems to be evident.

myblackwrx

iTrader: (1)

Glad it's not just me did a speed test last night (Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test) and came up with 435k (approx)d/l and about 100k u/l on a (alleged) 2 meg line.

I'm in Poole ,Dorset.

NWMark

Ive been with NTL at two properties for the last 6 years and no issues what so ever, but since they have introduced the bandwidth throttling my 10Mb line which usually downloads at 1.1 to 1.2 MB/sec last night was sat at 220kB/sec.

Now thats much lower than the usual throttled rate of about 500-550 kB/sec

Hope its just a passing glitch, as to me NTL is expensive in broadband terms but the quality has been so good ive been prepared to pay for it, that might have just changed!

Warrington Area here

shawn r

iTrader: (3)

same here, rang them other day and went through all the rubbish of starting in safe mode and all that, then says an engineer will be out on saturday, what can he possibly do?

did a speed test myself and came back at around 440kbs and i'm supposed to be on 4mb.

the problem is not at my end by the comments above so what good is the engineer!

in huddersfield area.

MJW

I don't live too far away from you Shawn and agree what on earth can an engineer do ? I know for definite its not my equipment as I've checked and re-set everything : also I'm loathe to call the 'technical support' line (which they've recently started charging a premium rate for - hmmmm) as the vast majority of the time I end up telling them how to do their job !! It's like going back to the f**king dark ages with this connection speed though. If it isn't sorted out I'm going to have no choice but to cancel everything and move to ADSL instead.

shawn r

iTrader: (3)

well apparently they are going to refund us the cost of the call and the loss of service from last sunday till they get it sorted. (which i doubt very much ).
i spent a lot of time trying to tell him that i had already done the things he was asking and it changed nothing. if not sorted soon i will be telling them where to go as well.

IanK Spec C

I've noticed the same too. I'm on 4MB and struggling to hit 1MB's for the last few weeks. Is it a conincidence that you now have to pay 25 p per minute to talk to Virgin's support people!

Not impressed!

Ian

Iain Young

Looking at the cable forums, it seems to be a nationwide issue. I'm only getting 220kbs on my super fast 20Mb connection

Simon C

same here on a 2 mg pipe



NTL do seem to be gettign very very pants recently.

Yes tot he Dublin server

MJW

Weird, I did the speedtest and got the same results - crap speeds to UK servers, yet the Dublin server was showing more or less full speed

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

thats a good speed there mate, a 4mb connection should be about 440kb a second.. if your expecting 4mb per second you need a 40mb line... its Bits bytes and something else

Anyway.. apparently the service is being upgrade and thus everyone is going to have to put up with the poo for a while.

Also and I have to say this so many times, NTL -Telewest became Virgin in name only.. NOT a thing changed network side, same people say equipment same everything ! Just in Red uniforms now ! well I dont wear one but still.

Seriously its not the name change its the terrible 20mb upgrade idea.

MJW

Any idea how long we're gonna have to suffer from this crap service while still paying full whack ?

Iain Young

Not quite. 4mb (megabits) is equal to 4096kb (kilobits). He's only getting 440kb which works out at around 0.4mb

auto scooby

I have been testing using multiple torrent client and I am still getting over 1.2mbps whilst sending 90k the other way.

Do not trust download speed tests, they are not a true reflection of your capacity. For instance I have been told that I can only achieve about 400kbps on average using half a dozen different online speed tests. Yet seconds later using torrent downloads I can achieve 4 times that.

I have broadband xl with Virgin. Not sure whether I have been upgraded to 20mb or not. Don't really care. I would not need 20mb. In fact would find it very difficult to use it all, even with 6 computers hanging of the connection which I have at the minute.

Iain Young

I don't believe all the download speed tests either, but when it's taking 30-40 seconds to display each web page (from anywhere on the web) and 5 minutes to download my email, there's got to be something wrong somewhere...

IanK Spec C

Hi Pimmo2000,

Thanks for being brave enough to enter the lion's den!

Can you make please make Virgin aware of this thread and how disastisfied it's customers feel having to pay to report problems at their end!

I've been with NTL/Virgin for over 5 years and every time I've needed to call it's taken days to resolve and has aways magically been fixed without any changes to my system dispite being told to uninstall firewalls, antivirus etc.

If only Carlsberg did broadband!

Best wishes,

Ian

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

Its who to tell mate... the service has been very poor for a lot of customers recently and no one up top seems to care ???

I dont know who to speak to or what to do.. I just battle against wave after wave of stupid idea util I can get out.

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

big ks little ks

I read it s 440Kb

Hepy

My speeds are fine with virgin. What isn't fine is their fair use policy. What a bloody joke.

Iain Young

Hmm, I was getting about 14Mb all day, until about 5pm where it's now dropped to 0.5Mb. No way have I come anywhere near the usage limit either...

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

I agree in theory with the limit, but 3gb on a 2omb line is stupid.. set it to 10 or 20gb and then your looking at the abusive people.

bob269

I can understand why they are limiting excesive downloaders, but as my previous reply in a thread, and as stated above, this bandwidth limit is coming in to effect regardless of reaching that limit or not. I come home from work having d/l nothing, switch on the xbox, download a video or demo, go to the pc and i'm maxing 500kb, i dont think they can monitor it and are basically shafting everybody during the peak hours.

NTL has always been the most expensive internet, but with good service, now, they can no longer justify the high price.

pimmo2000

iTrader: (6)

Thats the network being ****, not the traffic management mate, its done server side so it doesnt make mistakes. I very, very rarely see anyone thats been managed