Yeah, 3/4 of their base is on 2Mb, so it would cost them a bomb! I would downgrade straight away too.
Yeah but what if it was only available with XL tv? People may downgrade their bb but will have to upgrade there tv packages.
At the end of the day Sky have done it this way and have seen massive growth since they launch a bb offering and Sky bbs is the fastest growing ISP. If VM do a free lower tier people might downgrade but i imagine this would be offset with the amount of people joining because like with Sky i think it would cause big interest.
I like that the fact that you are so well balanced and on the fence inregards to providers.
There's absolutely no reason to act otherwise unless you have a financial interest in any of the companies. I don't. I have a financial interest in Sirius Ltd and I'm the Chairman.
I don't get the blatant favourtism towards providers, they only provide you with a service and they take your money for the privellage. I would be a different story if they offered it you for free! I just don't get it at all. I have never said i hate Sky but people have just assumed i do because i am happy with VM and post the pros. But i have always said i am on the fence and that both companies offer good service but it's all about personal preference. I don't understand people who won't acknowledge that another person might be happy or unhappy and might have a different opinion of the service from themselves and they discredit other peoples opinions. Fair enough debate if you think some one is posting incorrect information but why start a VS thread?
I'm happy with the services I take and it'd take a massive shift for me to go fully one way or the other. I know many people satisfied with low cost high speed LLU, Sky and BT. Others happy with a Virgin triple play bundle. Each to their own I say but I see no reason to criticise Virgin for not offering the service you want because you aren't allowed a satellite dish. It'd be ludicrous to expect Virgin to act on a basis pandering to a small section of the market who want (but can't get) Sky anyway.
Well, I currently have Sky HD (movies, no sport), and BB/Phone from Virgin which is coming to around £78 a month; we're moving house in a couple of weeks, so I rang Sky the other night to set up the move, and reduce our package to the bare bones as we need to tighten our belts a bit - an hour later, still on hold, I gave up and rang Virgin to sort out moving the BB and phone; got through to a real human immediately, who happily sorted out the move to the new address.
Whilst on, I asked how much their V+ service would cost - the chap came back with a very reasonable deal of £49 per month for all three services, keeping our BB and phone package the same, and giving us XL TV (more channels than we've got now!). Needless to say, the next call was to Sky to cancel all together - another 40 minutes on hold, and still couldn't speak to anyone.
Don't get me wrong, we've had problems with Telewest/Virgin over the years - but we have also had as much (if not more) grief with Sky, and at the moment VM gave us a deal we could afford without reducing our service to the bare minimum.
Quite. Ridiculous. However, there's always ways around it; like 18185 as you say.
No, that's my point. You can't use 18185 on a Virgin phone line. (Well, you can, but it costs 1p/minute more than BT. So you're still comparing a 65p phone call to a 5p one.)
The phone service really is a key weakness for Virgin, in my view. It's a shame because I still remember the days when a cable phone was THE thing to have, you were really lucky if you had one, the line rental was significantly cheaper than BT, second lines were almost free, the call charges themselves were always about 20% cheaper than BT, and it had FREE LOCAL CALLS, which was a huge, huge thing.
I could actually excuse Virgin's extortionate call charges if not for the fact that there's just nothing else in its favour. I mean, if Virgin did something really bold, like scrapping line rental entirely, then paying a bit extra for the cost of the calls wouldn't be so inexcusable. It'd be great publicity, and would really shake up the market. Sadly it doesn't look like that's going to happen any time soon. In fact the reality seems to be that Virgin is constantly trying to leapfrog BT's prices, and BT just keep raising theirs to match! That benefits absolutely nobody at all.
There's absolutely no reason to act otherwise unless you have a financial interest in any of the companies. I don't. I have a financial interest in Sirius Ltd and I'm the Chairman.
I'm happy with the services I take and it'd take a massive shift for me to go fully one way or the other. I know many people satisfied with low cost high speed LLU, Sky and BT. Others happy with a Virgin triple play bundle. Each to their own I say but I see no reason to criticise Virgin for not offering the service you want because you aren't allowed a satellite dish. It'd be ludicrous to expect Virgin to act on a basis pandering to a small section of the market who want (but can't get) Sky anyway.
No, that's my point. You can't use 18185 on a Virgin phone line. (Well, you can, but it costs 1p/minute more than BT. So you're still comparing a 65p phone call to a 5p one.)
The phone service really is a key weakness for Virgin, in my view. It's a shame because I still remember the days when a cable phone was THE thing to have, you were really lucky if you had one, the line rental was significantly cheaper than BT, second lines were almost free, the call charges themselves were always about 20% cheaper than BT, and it had FREE LOCAL CALLS, which was a huge, huge thing.
I could actually excuse Virgin's extortionate call charges if not for the fact that there's just nothing else in its favour. I mean, if Virgin did something really bold, like scrapping line rental entirely, then paying a bit extra for the cost of the calls wouldn't be so inexcusable. It'd be great publicity, and would really shake up the market. Sadly it doesn't look like that's going to happen any time soon. In fact the reality seems to be that Virgin is constantly trying to leapfrog BT's prices, and BT just keep raising theirs to match! That benefits absolutely nobody at all.
When I grew up we just couldn't afford a phone line until the then Birmingham Cable came along and offered us free installation, cheap line rental and free calls to other cable phones. Within the last few years Telewest phone costs were simply structured as 3-2-1p per minute charges.
If I didn't have free daytime calls within my package I would have ditched the Virgin phone line and gone to BT where I would have more options.
Perhaps it the modern way to be carefree about the cost of calls, after all I know people who use their mobile phone to dial 0800 number when they are a few feet away from a landline where it would be free.
It seems odd that despite the growth in competition in landline off net providers and mobile phones the price of telephone calls seems to inexplicably go up.
Lol no wonder cable got in so much debt. They offered their phones lines next to nothing how were they supposed to make any money with that sort of business tactics? They were never going to start paying their debts back that way!
I think you'll find that Sky's basic package is £17 p/m.
This includes 1 TV mix of your choice, the use of the Sky+ recording facilities, 2MB broadband and phone with unlimited free evening and weekend calls to UK landlines. Fantastic value for money if you ask me.
I think you'll find that Sky's basic package is £17 p/m.
This includes 1 TV mix of your choice, the use of the Sky+ recording facilities, 2MB broadband and phone with unlimited free evening and weekend calls to UK landlines. Fantastic value for money if you ask me.
You are forgetting you actually need a phone line @ £11 for that to get your calls and broadband.
Ah yes, but remember it's BT you pay that to - for the line rental, not Sky. If you already have a BT phone line like the vast majority of the country, I suppose you can discount that, and anyway, does Virgin's base package give you unlimited free evening and weekend calls and free broadband? No. You also have to pay £5 extra for V+ with TV M, whereas the use of Sky+ is free on any package.
Ah yes, but remember it's BT you pay that to - for the line rental, not Sky. If you already have a BT phone line like the vast majority of the country, I suppose you can discount that, and anyway, does Virgin's base package give you unlimited free evening and weekend calls and free broadband? No.
Its neither here nor there who you pay it to - you still need to pay it, as you do with VM. Carl left out the broadband in his comparison which was also unfair. The package that Carl mentioned with VM gives included weekend calls. The fairer comparison is 3 for £30 vs £29 for Sky and BT. So about equal with small variations in what each package contains.
Its neither here nor there who you pay it to - you still need to pay it, as you do with VM. Carl left out the broadband in his comparison which was also unfair. The package that Carl mentioned with VM gives included weekend calls. The fairer comparison is 3 for £30 vs £29 for Sky and BT. So about equal with small variations in what each package contains.
Never a truer sentence spoken! It's all down to personal preference.
Carl left out the broadband in his comparison which was also unfair.
While I do admit I forgot about the "free BB" (well, included in the price ), the fact is that not everyone is (currently) able to get it as not all BT exchanges have been LLU'd for Sky. (Knaresborough being one of them.)
While I do admit I forgot about the "free BB" (well, included in the price )
You also forgot about the use of the Sky+ recording facilities, which is also included. With Virgin's TV M package you have to pay an additional £5 p/m to use V+.
You also forgot about the use of the Sky+ recording facilities, which is also included. With Virgin's TV M package you have to pay an additional £5 p/m to use V+.
Sky+ boxes have only been free for a small amount of time. Before hand you had to pay for the box upfront so you would have had to include that too.
While I do admit I forgot about the "free BB" (well, included in the price ), the fact is that not everyone is (currently) able to get it as not all BT exchanges have been LLU'd for Sky. (Knaresborough being one of them.)
I didn't "forget" about it at all. It never even entered my head as it's a completely seperate product not included in the price of either companies basic products.
You simply wanted to include to to make Virgin look even more expensive. Well, okay.
Firstly, you mention Sky+, but that's not HD so is not comparable to the V+.
Secondly, the current price of SkyHD+ is £150; the current price of V+ £75
Firstly, you mention Sky+, but that's not HD so is not comparable to the V+.
Secondly, the current price of SkyHD+ is £150; the current price of V+ £75
Sky+ is directly comparable, as the number of HD channels it receives - none - is almost exactly the same as V+.
Comments
Could you imagine if that did happen they would be coming over in the dozens from ADSL as everyone wants cable broadband
Cost of a 60 minute national call via BT and 18185 - 5p
Cost of a 60 minute national call via Virgin - £2.47.
Yeah, 3/4 of their base is on 2Mb, so it would cost them a bomb! I would downgrade straight away too.
Yeah but what if it was only available with XL tv? People may downgrade their bb but will have to upgrade there tv packages.
At the end of the day Sky have done it this way and have seen massive growth since they launch a bb offering and Sky bbs is the fastest growing ISP. If VM do a free lower tier people might downgrade but i imagine this would be offset with the amount of people joining because like with Sky i think it would cause big interest.
There's absolutely no reason to act otherwise unless you have a financial interest in any of the companies. I don't. I have a financial interest in Sirius Ltd and I'm the Chairman.
I'm happy with the services I take and it'd take a massive shift for me to go fully one way or the other. I know many people satisfied with low cost high speed LLU, Sky and BT. Others happy with a Virgin triple play bundle. Each to their own I say but I see no reason to criticise Virgin for not offering the service you want because you aren't allowed a satellite dish. It'd be ludicrous to expect Virgin to act on a basis pandering to a small section of the market who want (but can't get) Sky anyway.
Whilst on, I asked how much their V+ service would cost - the chap came back with a very reasonable deal of £49 per month for all three services, keeping our BB and phone package the same, and giving us XL TV (more channels than we've got now!). Needless to say, the next call was to Sky to cancel all together - another 40 minutes on hold, and still couldn't speak to anyone.
Don't get me wrong, we've had problems with Telewest/Virgin over the years - but we have also had as much (if not more) grief with Sky, and at the moment VM gave us a deal we could afford without reducing our service to the bare minimum.
Six of one.... etc.
The phone service really is a key weakness for Virgin, in my view. It's a shame because I still remember the days when a cable phone was THE thing to have, you were really lucky if you had one, the line rental was significantly cheaper than BT, second lines were almost free, the call charges themselves were always about 20% cheaper than BT, and it had FREE LOCAL CALLS, which was a huge, huge thing.
I could actually excuse Virgin's extortionate call charges if not for the fact that there's just nothing else in its favour. I mean, if Virgin did something really bold, like scrapping line rental entirely, then paying a bit extra for the cost of the calls wouldn't be so inexcusable. It'd be great publicity, and would really shake up the market. Sadly it doesn't look like that's going to happen any time soon. In fact the reality seems to be that Virgin is constantly trying to leapfrog BT's prices, and BT just keep raising theirs to match! That benefits absolutely nobody at all.
Six of one, 10x six on the other - for the same call!
I agree entirely.
When I grew up we just couldn't afford a phone line until the then Birmingham Cable came along and offered us free installation, cheap line rental and free calls to other cable phones. Within the last few years Telewest phone costs were simply structured as 3-2-1p per minute charges.
If I didn't have free daytime calls within my package I would have ditched the Virgin phone line and gone to BT where I would have more options.
Perhaps it the modern way to be carefree about the cost of calls, after all I know people who use their mobile phone to dial 0800 number when they are a few feet away from a landline where it would be free.
It seems odd that despite the growth in competition in landline off net providers and mobile phones the price of telephone calls seems to inexplicably go up.
I think you'll find that Sky's basic package is £17 p/m.
This includes 1 TV mix of your choice, the use of the Sky+ recording facilities, 2MB broadband and phone with unlimited free evening and weekend calls to UK landlines. Fantastic value for money if you ask me.
http://www.sky.com/portal/site/skycom/skyproducts/getall3/combi1
You are forgetting you actually need a phone line @ £11 for that to get your calls and broadband.
Ah yes, but remember it's BT you pay that to - for the line rental, not Sky. If you already have a BT phone line like the vast majority of the country, I suppose you can discount that, and anyway, does Virgin's base package give you unlimited free evening and weekend calls and free broadband? No. You also have to pay £5 extra for V+ with TV M, whereas the use of Sky+ is free on any package.
Its neither here nor there who you pay it to - you still need to pay it, as you do with VM. Carl left out the broadband in his comparison which was also unfair. The package that Carl mentioned with VM gives included weekend calls. The fairer comparison is 3 for £30 vs £29 for Sky and BT. So about equal with small variations in what each package contains.
While I do admit I forgot about the "free BB" (well, included in the price
You also forgot about the use of the Sky+ recording facilities, which is also included. With Virgin's TV M package you have to pay an additional £5 p/m to use V+.
Sky+ boxes have only been free for a small amount of time. Before hand you had to pay for the box upfront so you would have had to include that too.
You simply wanted to include to to make Virgin look even more expensive. Well, okay.
Firstly, you mention Sky+, but that's not HD so is not comparable to the V+.
Secondly, the current price of SkyHD+ is £150; the current price of V+ £75
Current prices:
Sky+ £99
V+ £75
Next?
Number of channels received by Sky+: 684
Number of channels received by V+: 265