Virgin 100 200 300meg
ash45
Posts: 368 Forum Member
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Little news on past rumors don't know how official but TBB usual seam to be in the ball
Seams vm have kinda confirmed new packages
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7119-virgin-media-to-start-next-round-of-speed-upgrades-in-october.html#news_comments
Seams vm have kinda confirmed new packages
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7119-virgin-media-to-start-next-round-of-speed-upgrades-in-october.html#news_comments
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Comments
Upload speed isn't likely to rise dramatically I'd have thought, the way the network is built mostly prevents it
It's said that DOCSIS 3.1 (the next revision of the standard that lets you do internet access over cable TV networks) will give a boost, though - but that's quite some way away and will need new equipment in the headend and in the home.
Considering the last round of speed upgrades (50/100/152) have only recently been completed, it's surprising to see a claim that 90% of customers will have the new speeds by the end of this year,
There are areas (including mine) where speeds drop to 10Mb or less in the evening so it's hard to see how parts of the network which already have serious performance issues will be able to cope with 300Mb speeds without substantial, and rapid, upgrades.
STM mark 2, perhaps? up to 300Mbit unless you download too much, then you'll be cut down to 30Mbit for the evening
At least, that would be the logical and most cost-effective way of doing it.
if the lowest package is 100mb, and they have the usual 10% extra, even that's an incredibly fast connection. in real terms I would have about 50% less speed than now but save a fair bit as I pay full price
I wonder how many other people will consider doing the same if this is true
300Mbit is going to put a strain on any of the Virgin network - all of them are going to need substantial upgrades if they want to sell 300Mbit to more than a handful of users in the same neighbourhood, without congestion or "overutilisation"
You say it's "more likely" that they'll upgrade, but my example is basically what they did back in the day when 50Mbit was massive. Upped the speeds but then introduced STM to stop people actually using said speed for a long period
VM would be likely to be upgrading kit for the speed increases, so whilst they are doing that, why would they not add in the necessary changes/upgrades to cater for any utilisation issues in that area? As I said, it would be the sensible thing to do.
STM is not as prevalent as it was - it's been gradually removed on downstream (first on the top tier, now on all current tiers, legacy tiers of 20meg or lower still have it). I don't see them bringing it back.
I could be wrong but I was under the impression that they were upgrading a lot of old kit prior to the 152Mb rollout which was part of the reason that it took so long. This could explain how they're able to quote such a quick turnaround for the forthcoming upgrades.
Yeah, good point.
My area was upgraded last year to resolve a utilisation problem and provide the capacity for 152Mb. Everyone then got the free upgrade and unfortunately only a few months later it became over utilised again. They haven't been able to do anything to resolve it so far (Here's a 152Mb speedtest last night).
When asked about the delay they say it's down to planning permission, which is also the reason used on their forum in the many threads about long running utilisation problems. If that's the case, how can they be so confident that everyone will be able to access 300Mb by 'Early 2016' at the latest? Most utilisation faults take 12-18 months to fully resolve, due to the alleged 'planning' issues.
I am curious are you in the near the Fallowfield area in Manchester? I only ask given it says Manchester on the speedtest. The vast student area between Rusholme and Didsbury are usually connected to the Withington range of UBRs. which comes with the pitfall of being over utilitised all year round, it never improves, when they add more capacity it just gets sucked up......its been like that for years. When they do the upgrades its usually out of term tim,s o real usage isn't reflective. They could sort the problem out, but it would require substantial investment.
Where I live now in Trafford, usually connected to Baguely range of UBRs, its fine always a kink at some point, but again fine.
I'm in Merseyside (Knowsley/St Helens area) although Manchester is now my nearest VM Speed Test server, since Baguley was withdrawn a couple of weeks back.
I'm not sure if the problems in this area are student related but the what you describe sounds quite similar. New capacity is added every so often and things improve for a short time, but then it's terrible again a couple of months later. They can never seem to get on top of the utilisation.
I feel your pain but I think that VM will announce job done once they've flicked the virtual switch to enable the new speeds despite a proportion of their customer base not getting anywhere near the headline speeds. The upgrades last year, certainly in my area (Edinburgh), were partly to upgrade old kit that simply wasn't capable of supporting the new higher speeds. VM are likely see over-utilisation as a BAU problem to be dealt with through their normal channels, unfortunately.
Incidentally, I'm still a little bit cautious about what these new speeds are actually going to be since, TBB's article notwithstanding, in the email I received, although it says a boost is on it's way, it doesn't actually state anywhere what that new speed will be. If it is going to be speed doubling I'd expect them to be crowing about it a little more (I'm hoping that it is though - my son's got quite a steam habit these days!). Whatever it turns out to be, though, I'd really welcome a corresponding upload increase since all of the cloud storage that's available just now (Windows 10 and OneDrive anyone?) would become far more usable without having to leave your PC on overnight to complete the initial upload.
yes i hope soo too, i mean would be crazy if they dont do uploads too, the upload speed hasnt been increased in ages on either package, and they should be 1/10 ratio and as it stands atm, its about 1/15 ration.
I've had 300Mbps + speeds for a few months now and customer services have been very tightlipped about this when I asked them only stating that it's a temporary trial so I thought I'd enjoy it while it lasted.
This is how much I've been getting for the last few months on my VM connection: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4545399653
Currently on a DUAL WAN connection though so it did take me a long while to realise that I was actually getting 300 instead of 152 from VM.
DUAL WAN: http://www.speedtest.net/my-result/4542077430
EDIT: Yes I can sometimes hit around 20 Meg on the upload through the VM connection which seems to be 1/15 of 300. If they did change this to 1/10 It would be incredible but either way any speed increase is good regardless.
On Thinkbroadband there is a item about upload speeds being 20 Mb for the 300 service and 12 Mb for the 200 but I can see no mention of the 100 service.:(
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7148-more-information-on-new-virgin-media-ultrafast-products.html
Doubtful. I'm getting 300 fine using the Superhub 2AC.
The current hubs can only connect to 8 channels which together provide 400Mbps total bandwidth, shared between all customers connected to them (which may be 100s in some areas).