Is there really an alternative to Virgin Media?

[bothcholma]

Got the, "Nobody likes a price increase BUT" letter. Really expensive given the comparative lack of expense of other providers BUT my understanding is that Virgin Media ALWAYS wins the battle on download speeds. Can anybody put in a positive shout for a less expensive provider who can provide enough of a service to support a family of 5 all attempting to be online at the same time? That's it really.

Not round here. We now have the option of BT fibre, but the speeds are still half that of Virgin and cost just as much once you take into account line rental.

This is the first time ives not felt too cross about the increase - we’ve been hammering ours for a year now so think I’ve got my money’s worth!

Depends where you live. We’ve got a family of four adults/teens hammering the internet including gaming and video conferencing and BT fibre is absolutely fine. But that won’t be good enough everywhere. Ask your neighbours?

I cant imagine any situation where a domestic setup needs 200mb internet or whatever it is virgin provides.

We have 7 children and a 62mb BT non fibre connection.

We frequently have 3 or 4 simultaneously watching netflix in HD, another on his gaming laptop, and if football is on, I'll be watching that in 4k, on top of that we have all of the smart stuff in the house that uses internet like spotify on the smart speakers, plus the school work, browsing etc.

I've never felt the need for faster internet, and I'm generally a bit of a nightmare for being at the bleeding edge of technology, so i reckon unless you're unfortunate and cant get a reasonable landline connection, virgin doesnt really offer much.

No, unfortunately

We are on VM 350MB and even that isn't perfect tbh!

We regularly have 2 adults on zooms, via vpn, I am running demos out of the US, then 1 child on zoom and 2 on Teams doing home learning with video, people online gaming, watching netflix, uploading/downloading from onedrive, G drive etc.

I'd up it if I could.

The price rises are a joke though - I am trying to decide whether I can face playing the pretending to leave game again.

Just tagging along for the ride.

We have plusnet, four adults often streaming four different things. When it works it's fine, but we quite often have periods when it's not working at all. Have been meaning to get round to upgrading for ages.

I've heard some horror stories about Virgin customer service though?

They are fairly shit yes but in all honesty bthey only time I've ever had to talk to them is when I've threatened to leave

I called them when I got this letter and pressed the options to request a cancellation. There was an automated message offering to discount the price of the rate increase and you could just use your keypad to accept it or not. So I don't have to pay it now and didn't have to speak to anyone. Tbh I've done it every time I get a letter as I've signed up to a certain term with them for an agreed price and won't accept a price increase. Once my term is up then I call to sort another fixed term deal rather that going on to the tariff they set. Hope that helps.

@minchinfin

No, unfortunately

We are on VM 350MB and even that isn't perfect tbh!

We regularly have 2 adults on zooms, via vpn, I am running demos out of the US, then 1 child on zoom and 2 on Teams doing home learning with video, people online gaming, watching netflix, uploading/downloading from onedrive, G drive etc.

I'd up it if I could.

The price rises are a joke though - I am trying to decide whether I can face playing the pretending to leave game again.

I think you need to have a close look at your network traffic and where the bottlenecks are.

Impossible to know, but I used to be a network engineer (before WiFi existed tbf) but I'd be surprised if the use you detailed would max out a 300Mbit fibre connection, I suspect there's a bottle neck either with WiFi or the way the router is handling network traffic, you may get more mileage by upgrading the network infrastructure to a commercial router and proper mesh system with a dedicated wireless or wired backhaul.

For context our network as detailed above has 34 permanently connected smart devices plus 7 phones 5 laptops, 8 tablets and has no slowdown issues whatsoever.

It's all good thanks, I have a wired connection to my office and a mesh WiFi system throughout the house. I meant imperfect as in the odd outage, which I object to since I'm on dedicated bandwidth, but otherwise its fine even when we're all hammering it. BTs top package wouldn't cut it for me though.

4 of us here, 2 home schooling on Google meet and 2 WFH. 80Mbps down on FTTC is more than adequate for us. We've only had issues twice.

The first time we used the Optimise Network function on our TP-Link Mesh. That diagnosed a congested wifi channel and after that it was fine.

The second issue the network was OK, but for some reason my wife's laptop was connected to the most distant node. Powering down that node to force the laptop onto a closer node solved the issue.

Honestly, we were OK on 40Mbps before lockdown, but Sky forced an upgrade to 80Mbps. I reckon we'd be OK if we were still on 40.

We moved houses and had to switch from VM Cable at 200mbs to an Openreach phone line connection which averages 40mbs. We chose BT in the end

There is no real difference in a practical sense between the two offerings as we can still easily watch streamed films in 4K. I'd say the internet connected has been more robust and reliable since we moved and I've not noticed any of the throttling back of speeds at peak times like we had with VM.

Keep threatening to leave VM eventually repatriate you to a UK call centre where you can negotiate an even better discounted deal. Just make sure you have done some research beforehand for other competitive quotes so you ask them to match.

My partner is crap at negotiating reducing rates but they won’t speak to me as he’s the name on the bill. He did call and give me permission to speak about his account twice but they still won’t allow it. Our house never had a BT line and we can’t afford all the extra costs in getting on for a connection that may well be worse.

We did try to get them to give us a better deal (a phone and broadband deal for a new customer costs half what we’re paying) but they wouldn’t match it. They’re a nightmare