| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! 11:41 - Mar 2 with 1898 views | Zx1988 |
Any good?
I'm currently trying to sort out broadband for my new place, and I'm getting offered their 108Mb package for £24 a month, which seems a pretty good deal.
I've heard that the bundled router/hub isn't much cop at all, with the WiFi being pretty naff. A friend has it and has often struggled with video calling in particular. On the other hand, I've also read that if you use the hub as a modem and then wire it into a different router, these problems often seem to disappear.
Does anyone else have any experience of this? Failing Virgin, are there any fibre deals (VM are the only FTTP provider in the new area) that would be a good alternative? |  |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 11:45 - Mar 2 with 1610 views | The_Flashing_Smile |
I've had good and bad experiences with Virgin, the last being bad. Despite being past the end of our contract we were still 'technically' in contract, so were meant to give 3 months notice (or whatever it is) to leave. It meant they stung us for more money.
Scumbags. I'm with TalkTalk now who, so far, have been superb. |  |
| Trust the process. Trust Phil. |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 11:49 - Mar 2 with 1584 views | dickie |
I've been with virgin for years and had no problems signal wise apart from for about a month in the first lockdown it was abysmal.
The only the real problem I've experienced are them increasing prices fairly dramatically whenever my contract comes to an end. Every time I threaten to leave (once actually left) and they always back down on the price eventually (just a pain having to deal with them) | | | |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 11:52 - Mar 2 with 1582 views | SouperJim |
I've been with Sky for most of the last 20 years or so, have dabbled occasionally with virgin and talk talk but have found Sky to be far more reliable and hassle free. Ymmv.
Their basic router has similarly poor wifi range however and they want an extra £5/month for one more fit for purpose. I'd recommend just investing in some decent extenders. |  |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 11:56 - Mar 2 with 1550 views | muhrensleftfoot |
No doubt in my mind they are technically the best broadband around. Don’t even need a landline phone. They are quite expensive though, once your introductory offer is over. Also poor customer service, you can’t get to speak to a human being, but that’s probably true of most ISPs. Fortunately I’ve rarely needed to speak to them. You can always improve Wi-Fi around your house as you suggested with a 3rd party router, or as I do, with power line adaptors and a Wi-Fi access point in the furthest part of the house. [Post edited 2 Mar 2022 11:58]
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 12:06 - Mar 2 with 1517 views | Zx1988 |
Cheers for the responses, folks.
Doing a quick comparison online shows that if I go with the alternative FTTC providers, I'll likely get an average speed of between 29 and 41 Mb/s based on my precise location.
There'll be two of us working from home with all that WFH entails, as well as online gaming and HD streaming. Would the FTTC connection get a little bit wheezy with that sort of high-intensity usage? | |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 12:09 - Mar 2 with 1514 views | mutters |
Have you got fibre to the property or just to the cabinet?
I've gone with EE (which is actually BT) and as i am an existing EE customer i get 150 MB/s for £21 a month (took a bit of haggling) plus 10% off my mobile and other benefits. |  |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 12:10 - Mar 2 with 1508 views | Zx1988 |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 12:09 - Mar 2 by mutters |
Have you got fibre to the property or just to the cabinet?
I've gone with EE (which is actually BT) and as i am an existing EE customer i get 150 MB/s for £21 a month (took a bit of haggling) plus 10% off my mobile and other benefits. |
The property already has a wired VM connection, but anything else will just be the usual FTTC connection, with the final leg being done over Openreach's copper(?) infrastructure.
According to the Openreach website, there are currently no plans to upgrade the area either. [Post edited 2 Mar 2022 12:14]
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 12:11 - Mar 2 with 1504 views | hoppy |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 12:06 - Mar 2 by Zx1988 |
Cheers for the responses, folks.
Doing a quick comparison online shows that if I go with the alternative FTTC providers, I'll likely get an average speed of between 29 and 41 Mb/s based on my precise location.
There'll be two of us working from home with all that WFH entails, as well as online gaming and HD streaming. Would the FTTC connection get a little bit wheezy with that sort of high-intensity usage? |
There's also benefits between the merger of Virgin with O2, that may be beneficial for you, if you've looked into that side of things? |  |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 12:13 - Mar 2 with 1492 views | Zx1988 |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 12:11 - Mar 2 by hoppy |
There's also benefits between the merger of Virgin with O2, that may be beneficial for you, if you've looked into that side of things? |
They certainly look interesting, but given that I already have a good mobile package and on the basis that anything over 100Mb/s would probably just be excessive, I think the add-ons would fall into the nice-to-have bucket, rather than being anything upon which we would base a decision. | |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 12:22 - Mar 2 with 1483 views | MillsTash |
No problems with them for me. Been with them for 8 years and can't get a better deal or equipment elsewhere.
Recently negotiated a new 18mth deal for their Maxit TV package (BT sports inc), 200mb broadband and evening/weekend phone for £51 a month. |  | | |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 12:30 - Mar 2 with 1441 views | WD19 |
Worst customer experience ever. Bar none. |  | | |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 12:37 - Mar 2 with 1421 views | Ely_Blue |
I upgraded to VM from sky last October as sky router was awful as well as the service being pretty awful.
We got a deal for £69 a month for M350 fibre, Maxit TV pack (gives my sky movies, sports & bt sport)
The router is pretty good and the Wi-Fi signal is no worse than any other routers, we always get a good d/l speed and for example for playing Xbox live there are no server lags that had been experienced with both sky & but standard FTTC broadband.
https://www.speedtest.net/my-result/i/5016549281
That’s what I am getting right now in the room furthest from the router |  |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 12:47 - Mar 2 with 1392 views | BlueandTruesince82 |
Never had any issues myself but think it depends how many of your neighbours also use their fibre |  |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 13:20 - Mar 2 with 1362 views | ghostofescobar |
We've been with them for about 6 years. Internet speed is fantastic. The only issue we have had is that their bog standard router isn't great, but then i doubt many "standard" routers handed out by any of the other major providers are much better? We invested in mesh extenders around the house (Linksys Velop - excellent), which was a game changer. Service used to be excellent, but it's not so good now, although rarely have to contact them. |  |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 13:24 - Mar 2 with 1355 views | Durovigutum |
I live in a house connected to Virgin media cable broadband, as in also cable TV (not openreach or BT infinity). The only place in the country you will get better than Virgin media cable is Hull. I've been here 16 years and have a 600 Mbps service down, 40 up. I'm also on SamKnows, the Ofcom broadband monitoring service, so get monthly service reliablility schedules, including jitter and latency reports (eg the old Friday evening slowdown).
The product is exceptional, and I would pay £100 a month for it over getting BT infinity for nothing.
I've had one outage of about three hours in the last five years.
I'll sit here on Zoom, with TV being streamed at 4K, the Xbox being played, the Mrs on a video call, and won't get a dropped frame. I'll download ISO filed in the time it takes the kettle to boil (things are faster than 600 Mbps if hosted inside the Virgin network, and it seems MS do).
You will want a couple of decent meshed wireless network devices to get best use - depending on the size and layout of your house (and if you ever work in the garden). The supplied hub is "ok", but I just use as a cable modem. |  | | |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 13:28 - Mar 2 with 1343 views | SaleAway |
the broadband is good - the router is bad. I use it as a modem, and bought a third party one, and everything is better.
Customer service is shocking, but I've not had any issues for the past 10 years, so not really a problem. | |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 13:33 - Mar 2 with 1328 views | Guthrum |
I've been with Virgin and its predecessors for over 20 years. I won't say it's been problem free, occasionally there are outages for a few hours, but generally speaking it does the job of providing functional broadband and TV. When modems and boxes have broken, they're replaced pretty quickly.
It's not bargain price, but neither is it over the odds, as far as I can tell (tho comparison is difficult when all companies only publish their marvellous new customer offers). |  |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 14:12 - Mar 2 with 1293 views | The_Flashing_Smile |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 11:45 - Mar 2 by The_Flashing_Smile |
I've had good and bad experiences with Virgin, the last being bad. Despite being past the end of our contract we were still 'technically' in contract, so were meant to give 3 months notice (or whatever it is) to leave. It meant they stung us for more money.
Scumbags. I'm with TalkTalk now who, so far, have been superb. |
A downarrow for sharing my experience? Do you work for Virgin Blueas? | |
| Trust the process. Trust Phil. |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 15:17 - Mar 2 with 1248 views | blueasfook |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 14:12 - Mar 2 by The_Flashing_Smile |
A downarrow for sharing my experience? Do you work for Virgin Blueas? |
No, I just like giving you down arrows |  |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 15:26 - Mar 2 with 1239 views | BlueBadger |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 11:45 - Mar 2 by The_Flashing_Smile |
I've had good and bad experiences with Virgin, the last being bad. Despite being past the end of our contract we were still 'technically' in contract, so were meant to give 3 months notice (or whatever it is) to leave. It meant they stung us for more money.
Scumbags. I'm with TalkTalk now who, so far, have been superb. |
Too many mentions of the word 'virgin' hits too close to the bone for him? |  |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 15:32 - Mar 2 with 1221 views | DanTheMan |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 13:28 - Mar 2 by SaleAway |
the broadband is good - the router is bad. I use it as a modem, and bought a third party one, and everything is better.
Customer service is shocking, but I've not had any issues for the past 10 years, so not really a problem. |
In my experience the routers that comes with broadband packages are always god awful. I reckon it would amaze people how much better their connection is with a proper router.
I do the same as you, the "media hub" is purely a modem and I've got an ASUS RTAC86-U for about 5-6 years now and it's still going strong. Probably due an upgrade soon but it's done good for how much it cost, second hand too. |  |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 15:44 - Mar 2 with 1212 views | blueasfook |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 15:26 - Mar 2 by BlueBadger |
Too many mentions of the word 'virgin' hits too close to the bone for him? |
Maybe about 30 yrs ago! I have a son who is 20! | |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 15:53 - Mar 2 with 1202 views | hype313 |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 15:32 - Mar 2 by DanTheMan |
In my experience the routers that comes with broadband packages are always god awful. I reckon it would amaze people how much better their connection is with a proper router.
I do the same as you, the "media hub" is purely a modem and I've got an ASUS RTAC86-U for about 5-6 years now and it's still going strong. Probably due an upgrade soon but it's done good for how much it cost, second hand too. |
I've used Draytek's and they have been spot on.
As you say, the routers that come as standard are woeful, and we are the only nation that gives them away with broadband, certainly in mainland Europe you have to buy a router to go with your connectivity. |  |
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| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 15:57 - Mar 2 with 1198 views | Tractor_Buck |
I can only add to the 'upvoters' for Virgin. Been with them/Telewest/Cable Midlands for 25 years plus. One major outage in that time which was the fault of a contractor cutting through a cable, but otherwise it works fine. The Hub4 delivers plenty for us - enough for me to run Spotify and browse the socials whilst Mrs TB watches something on Netflix and TBJnr (when he's here) on YouTube, Rocket League, Football manager etc etc etc.
They tend to play hard but fair when the 18 month contract comes up for renewal, and the last couple of times we've agreed to the same price or a few quid cheaper whilst getting a speed upgrade or new telly box. |  | | |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 16:05 - Mar 2 with 1184 views | BlueBadger |
| Virgin Media broadband - opinions please! on 15:44 - Mar 2 by blueasfook |
Maybe about 30 yrs ago! I have a son who is 20! |
Well, your wife has a son of 20... | |
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