Virgin Cable, can I have it? Some photos inside (of the junction box / grids etc)

If you're in a "notspot", what about satellite broadband?

e.g. http://www.satelliteinternet.co.uk/

Also, check your postcode on BT Infinity. If they are planning to get FTTC in your area it's like bringing the exchange closer to your house, and they are (or were) taking applications from the more remote places. The more people who sign up interest in your area the more chance or it rolling out.

Or you can get the community together to get a fibre, satellite or some similar link to the area and share the costs.
 
onomatopoeia said:
Over by Burwalls / near the main entrance to Ashton court? The should be the Bristol West exchange near Clifton down shopping centre, or Pill if further along the A369 (Abbots Leigh). Both of those are ADSL enabled and not so far away, so wonder what's going on there then.

:thinking: unless the phone lines go into the centre of town to cross the Avon rather go over the suspension bridge.
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Ta da! you got it...phone lines don't use the suspension bridge and go the long way round :thumbsdown: ....and the lines from Pill stops at Abbots Leigh.

On the bright side, the view in their garden ain't bad...


_IGP4894.jpg by FTS Photography, on Flickr

...they are planning to move to a smaller house this year (finally) - and whilst they can't decide minor details like which town or what size, they have said it has to have broadband or they're not buying! :clap:
 
Marcel, took me a while ;)
those triangle thingys in ground mean that you have cable tv (have you?) or you can have
its 90% of sucess

finally Ive managed to get hold of mine mate that works for virgin.
If he doesnt forget ;) he will check system tomorrow
 
Eeeexcellent. Thanks for the PM, it's much appreciated. Let's hope it becomes fruitful.

Although I was planning on opting for the 20mb service.....on the back of my friends recommendation of how happy he is (although he has 50mb).
But.....reading above about the 20(now 30?)mb being treated differently to the 50.......Im worried :p
 
Right, time for a little bumpskies.

I never heard back from Virgin :( So I didn't pursue it.
A few weeks ago I decided to jumpt to BT Infinity. Turns out my line is shockingly bad, and I was left with 12Mbps down / 3.6Mbps Up, which has dropped to 8Mbps down / 1.8Mbps up.
After an engineer visit etc etc, I've been told pretty much that I can come out of the minimum contract with no penalty as Infinity "Should never have been installed" as my line doesn't support the minimum speed of 15Mbps.

So I want to push on with Virgin Media so I can jump ship ASAP while I have the choice.
I've filled in the online submission / spotter thing again, but still not heard anything.
 
If your adsl line is shockingly bad it's always worth trying the 'intermittent noise on voice calls' tactic. Mentioning hissing or crackling etc. BT often ends up replacing lots of the cable this way and checking joints etc. If you say you have broadband issues they couldn't give a flying ferret.
 
have you tried ringing them? (still naive...)

i has 35mb downloads speed now on Sky Fiber...so its win all round..
 
I have fibre right into my modem and BT still can't get the speeds right, I get a consistent 37.** mbs down speed but my up speed is 0.19 to 1.5mbs
 
I'm not 100% but I think Virgin need a lot of enquiries before committing to putting in the infrastructure under the roads etc. I'm sure that's what I was told many years ago when trying to get it put in myself at a previous address.

If you are on good terms with the neighbours perhaps a group effort with them all putting in enquiries for Virgin may get things moving? If not, then enquire on their behalf ;)
 
The line can't support any more speeds. It's mostly aluminium on our estate, and I'm too far away from the Fibre Cabinet for it to be any better. The only thing that will make it better is complete cable replacement (rather than putting me on a different pair).

As for Virgin, the infrastructure is already there, they just need to add me to the database :)
 
Marcel said:
As for Virgin, the infrastructure is already there, they just need to add me to the database :)
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Even better! I have to admit, I find Virgin very good and a lot better than they used to be. The initial teething problems seem to have gone, unless I was just lucky!
 
Marcel said:
The line can't support any more speeds. It's mostly aluminium on our estate, and I'm too far away from the Fibre Cabinet for it to be any better. The only thing that will make it better is complete cable replacement (rather than putting me on a different pair).

As for Virgin, the infrastructure is already there, they just need to add me to the database :)
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If you've got aluminium then you're buggered basically. It's appalling stuff for broadband.

LTE isn't that far away. Mobile broadband might end up being a better solution if VM don't realise you could be a customer.
 
to be honest i wouldnt touch VM with a barge let along the pole. lag, routing issues, latency, poor reliability.. etc.

even their business package is a shocker.

oh and they now throttle/manage all packages.
 
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neil_g said:
to be honest i wouldnt touch VM with a barge let along the pole. lag, routing issues, latency, poor reliability.. etc.

even their business package is a shocker.

oh and they now throttle/manage all packages.
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Agreed. Although most isp's throttle one way or another, vm's throttling is shocking.
 
gman said:
Just as well because when I was with them the speeds were crap.
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like anything coper based itll vary, i only get 2mb but then i was always estimated that speed. my cabling is horrid. but a couple of colleagues are getting the maximum out of theirs. it doesnt drop at peak times unlike some either.

just need to find an extra 13/month for sky fibre (est 36mb).
 
The only problem with Sky is you can't get more than a 2M upload. Which is pants really.

They keep that quiet (see if you can find it advertised anywhere near big on their fibre pages). You're still reliant on BT cabling back from your house to the exchange though so if the cabling is crud between you and the green box, you'll still get crud throughput.

TBH, finding anywhere that has full download during the day is pretty difficult. I have (and pay 2x as much as Infinity) a totally unmanaged business 80/20 BB line. At quiet periods I can get 65Mb/16.5Mb down/up to speedtest sites. If I try running at the middle of the day, I'm often throttled by the fact the other end is busy. I know this as my pings remain low and my upload approaches 16.5Mb, so the network isn't congested and it's only the download that is slower than normal...
 
To be honest every time I speed test Virgin it's always up at 27-29Mbs and it's a 30Mbs package I've got. They don't seem to traffic shape me unless I use P2P (rarely these days). Then it drops by half.

But on the flip side, they are going to double my speed for free in a few months so even during times when they traffic shape I'll still be getting the full speed I originally signed up to. Can't complain really.
 
Like gman I've had VM (and all its predecessors) since it first laid a cable in Bristol as United Artists, at three different houses and never had a minute of trouble. Whenever I test the speed it is pretty much what it should be and I've never noticed any throttling, latency or had a period without service.

BT, on the other hand, is a nightmare! My employer insisted on having an ADSL line installed in the house when I started working for them back in Octover 2011. The best speed I could get was between 1.5 and 2Mb/s down and s0d all up so the company paid for some improved service and the speed rocketted to 2.5Mb down and just a tad more than s0d all up :puke:

Needless to say, my VPN link into the company network is done over the VM line. JUst waiting for that nice man Mr Branson to get around to doubling my speed FOC :)
 
VM supposed to be doubling speeds in our area this month.
 
Forgot to mention, the ping and jitter tests are also excellent with Virgin. I suppose it's obvious when compared to copper and I'm wondering if the Sky fibre optic give the same constant high speeds as quoted?

I prefer Virgin for the TV also as we kept getting reception problems with Sky during bad weather. The menu system was terrible also but the new one that we got just before leaving was good. But Sky Box Office does my moobs in, I prefer the Virgin one where I can decide when I want to watch the film!
 
for the record VM when it works properly is fast. but professionally i wouldnt recommend them, spend a day on their support forums and have a look at all of the issues they have.

ive actually had to tell VM what the issue was with their national systems before (1 routing node was spinning traffic around and around their systems, coincidentally an hour after telling them what their problem was the node went offline and all was good in the world) now that should worry anyone when i get better support on my home adsl..

their update on management may not concern everyone, lets face it throttling on a 50mbps fibre may not be too apparent anyway, but for photographers that might shift a lot of data (backing up to cloud, or office users with heavy VPN traffic etc) it may cause a problem.
 
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Had VM for sometime now and regularly get the speed I am paying for, I have had 2 issues since I have had it and each time I have been completely talked through a resolution.
 
neil_g said:
Vm updated their management in April, it's now any large data movement that gets restricted
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To be fair, I'd have difficulty going over that amount of data in the timeframes they are talking about. For the largest packages, it's 20G/day 10am-3pm, 10G/day 4pm-9pm - so that's 30G/day 10am - 9pm down and 12G/day up 3pm-9pm and you only get throttled for 5 hours at 50% speed. That's 1TB down in peak hours in a month....

To put that in context, in 3 days 19:52 I've moved 7.16G in, 6.6G out (I'm normally ~10G total in a day) and I'm in no way a light user ;)
 
well my shocking upload speed on cable is solved, BT sent a new home hub and cable set, i've gone from 0.19 up to 8.9 now with the same 37.5 down.


so marcy........................... :razz:


:D
 
Git :(

Still no word from them. I phoned and spoke to customer services, asked for a spotter also, he took my details.... Still nothing

I've emailed the cablemystreet email address in a last ditch attempt.

What the hell do I have to do to buy their bloomin service? lol
 
arad85 said:
The only problem with Sky is you can't get more than a 2M upload. Which is pants really.

They keep that quiet (see if you can find it advertised anywhere near big on their fibre pages). You're still reliant on BT cabling back from your house to the exchange though so if the cabling is crud between you and the green box, you'll still get crud throughput.

TBH, finding anywhere that has full download during the day is pretty difficult. I have (and pay 2x as much as Infinity) a totally unmanaged business 80/20 BB line. At quiet periods I can get 65Mb/16.5Mb down/up to speedtest sites. If I try running at the middle of the day, I'm often throttled by the fact the other end is busy. I know this as my pings remain low and my upload approaches 16.5Mb, so the network isn't congested and it's only the download that is slower than normal...
Click to expand...

Sky give you 8mb up now, but they might not have announced out yet.....it's brilliant!
 
Quit winging and moaning! where I live there is no chance ever of having fibre optic cable laid and my download speed is around 1.5 mb and often drops to 0.7mb and will never get faster. So if you get more just stop and think how lucky you are. I still have to pay the same as anyone else when infact due to the extremely poor service we should be only paying pence not pounds.

Realspeed
 
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realspeed said:
Quit winging and moaning! where I live there is no chance ever of having fibre optic cable laid and my download speed is around 1.5 mb and often drops to 0.7mb and will never get faster. So if you get more just stop and think how lucky you are. I still have to pay the same as anyone else when infact due to the extremely poor service we should be only paying pence not pounds.

Realspeed
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Try a 3g dongle. It might be faster! Three offer up to 7mb via HSDPA.
 
realspeed said:
Quit winging and moaning! where I live there is no chance ever of having fibre optic cable laid and my download speed is around 1.5 mb and often drops to 0.7mb and will never get faster. So if you get more just stop and think how lucky you are. I still have to pay the same as anyone else when infact due to the extremely poor service we should be only paying pence not pounds.

Realspeed
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No. I await your reply in 3 weeks on a postcard.
 
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