Virgin ADSL - Anyone else having a dreadful time?

PaulR

PaulR

Dazed and Confused Admin
Staff member
My Satellite Setup
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My Location
Wirral, NW UK
I came back to the UK last Monday afte a week away and found that connection speeds were awful. I wasn't on a particularly fast connection, only up to 2 mbps, but during the evenings I was struggling at around 500 kbps. It made the BBC's iplayer on my Humax HDR unwatchable, even in low quality mode.

I rang up tech support who sent me an email of list of things I had to do before they could escalate it to the next level. Even though I knew it wasn't anything to do with my laptop - iwas using the HDR - I started working through it. One of the tings I had to do was use BT's speedtester website, which I'd never heard of before. It agreed that my download was about 540 kbps. I got half way down the list and then jumped to read the end.

I wish I'd read it earlier as it said that BT don't consider there to be a problem unless it's below 400 kbps! I then phoned the tech support up and they admitted that there was a problem with the service at present. I then spoke with their retention department - basically their last-chance department for people who are just about to leave. They offered to up the maximum rate of my line to 8 Mbps in the hope that the achieved rate would be a bit better and also to halve my chage for this month to £7.50.

Well, it won't surprise you that it hasn't improved things. It's so bad that even my wife has noticed the speed issue. I'm not going to wait any longer. I'll be signing up to O2 ASAP. They're offering an 8 Mbps service for £12.50 pm and a 20 Mbps service for £15 pm. The best part is that as an O2 mobile customer already they give a £5 discount making it £7.50 and £10 respectively.

There's no connection charge and they even throw in a wireless router for free. I've been down down to the O2 shop this aftenoon and picked up wireless modem package as I want an 802.11n wireless modem - more for the range extension than the speed increase. It cost £50 but they will refund £30 when I sign up. £20 for an 802.11n modem? Not bad.

The final icing on the cake. They're offering two months free!

I've been with with Virgin since 1998, initially with dial-up, so it's taken a lot to make me angry enough to move. I can't believe I've put up with a substandard over-priced service for so long.
 
You obviously have the patience of a saint or could that be the Virgin Mary ?
 
Your recent slow speed is faster than my fastest ever speed, so I fully sympathise over the restrictions it places on some activities.
 
Tivù said:
Your recent slow speed is faster than my fastest ever speed, so I fully sympathise over the restrictions it places on some activities.
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As I was typing the first post I thought of your problems and nearly put a note to you apologising for my moaning!

Topper said:
You obviously have the patience of a saint or could that be the Virgin Mary ?
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Me patient? Not an impression you'd get if you were to talk to my wife!
 
So it's goodbye to Virgin and welcome to O2.

The connection was made today and I connected the new router when I got home from work. I tested the line at Speedtest.net. WOW!

09.03.2010 7:53 PM GMT

Downstream 18403 kb/s
Upstream 913 kb/s
Ping 26 ms

(Sorry Tivu!)
 
o2 have connected you to there llu service using there own equipment in the exchange from the speed your getting. I'm the same on be which is apart of o2 and its great you wont have any problems with slow web in the evenings.

tivu, guess you wont get decent net connection unless your community get cash together for upgrading the equipment in your local exchange, its annoying that when bt make so much money they should just upgrade everywhere or let others do it
 
I know it'll be of no help whatsoever, but, every time I see a broadband issue thread, it's always ADSL, doesn't matter who the provider is, it's always a speed issue, a connection issue, or just a lack of any service issue... :p

Being on Virgin cable, we have no such issues, just a drop-off during the day (especially about the time when schools finish for the day when it takes a nose-dive cos of the greedy kids stealing bandwidth), if there's any problem, it's usually a maintenance issue and is sorted in a couple of hours... :)

I think ADSL has either got a lot of catching up to do, or has to bite the bullet and be replaced by something more reliable... :)
 
wod said:
o2 have connected you to there llu service using there own equipment in the exchange
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Correct. And, of course, it's ADSL 2+ to give that extra boost.

wod said:
I'm the same on be which is apart of o2 and its great you wont have any problems with slow web in the evenings.
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On the Speedtest.net report it identifies my ISP as Be.

wod said:
tivu, guess you wont get decent net connection unless your community get cash together for upgrading the equipment in your local exchange, its annoying that when bt make so much money they should just upgrade everywhere or let others do it
Click to expand...
Have you ever done a check to see how far you are from the exchange? In France I'm 4Km from the exchange and manage just over1Mbps at the best and the upload speed is only about 180Kbps. This is not quite as good as it sounds as this is shared between the Internet and the Voip telephone service. When someone uses the phone this drops to about 380Kbps and a paltry 50Kbps up. This can sometimes be so bad that it affects the telephone quality and outgoing speach becomes metallic and disjointed.

My French ISP (SFR) tell me that there's nothing they can do until degroupage (the French equivalent of LLU) happens in the area and then they will be able to move from ADSL2 to ADSL2+ and this will sort everything out. I'm dubious that it'll be a cure-all but hopeful that it'll help.
 
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