The firm said it calculates the typical speeds based on the average speed received by 66 percent of its customers over 24 hours.

Why only 66%? Why aren't they telling us which 66% this is?

How do they measure the speed? If I use the connection for 1 hour a day, how do they figure out the speed I get? Does the 66% include any of the “few percent” of people who get bandwidth throttled?

It's easy to see why Virgin wants to promote this - cable gives guaranteed bandwidth at least up until the backhaul, whereas ADSL the bandwidth between you and the DSLAM could be pretty much anything between zero and the stated maximum.

But until ofcom gets off its bum and comes up with a clear, open to scrutiny policy on how speeds should be measured and stated, this just amounts to a marketing ploy.

kalniel
Why only 66%? Why aren't they telling us which 66% this is?

As the other 33% might not be connected as we know what lengths some people go to to save money and unplug EVERYTHING when they are not using them ;)

Speaking of saving money, they've highlighted that cost is first followed by speed second. I'm sorry but anyone who goes on an ISP just because of their “price” is doing it wrong. No wonder we see so many complaints about the cheap mass-market ISPS at night such as talktalk, tiscali etc and it's down to the amount of people on their network grinding everything to a halt and the adslguide forums are a good indication of this as there are always forum posts regarding speed and latency on these ISPS.

This is because ADSL has a contention ratio which is usually between 20:1 and 50:1 per BT guidelines, meaning that 20 to 50 subscribers, each assigned or sold a bandwidth of “up to” 8 Mbit/s for instance, may be sharing 8 Mbit/s of uplink bandwidth.

As such, imagine the speeds you'd get when ALL of the people are online at the same time all trying to download a file from say the BBC iplayer.

Until people understand about contention, ratios and how ADSL works in relation to line length and signal ratio we'll see more and more people complain about how suppliers are advertising incorrectly.

I'll get back under my rock now and be back banging this drum the next time people moan about ‘upto’ speeds ;)

I find the article bias against ADSL

Independent research by ICM commissioned by Virgin Media

Speed varies greatly because of the way ADSL technology works, no point attacking ISPs for using the “up to” label when its about the best they can do, unless they all change and use “Speed will vary depending on how far you live from your nearest telephone exchange and other factors that might make you sleep if we try to explain it to you” label for all their packages.

How about VM, “enjoy 20Mbps… but only if you don't use it too much.”

Then they should publish contention ratios and speed/100m of distance to the exchange.

Cheap can be good - O2/BE have some of the cheapest packages and also the best latencies etc.

kalniel
Why only 66%? Why aren't they telling us which 66% this is?

I suspect a proportion of VM's customers are still suffering oversubscription in their areas. Last time I had the misfortune to be in an oversubscribed area my speed was (on average) ~2kb/s on the 10Mb connection. It stayed like this for nearly 8 months, had to resort to getting the dial up modem out for a speed boost.

I don't believe you can trust these figures, or Ofcom. Most of the problems customers experience with regard to miss selling are as a direct result of their unwillingness to regulate the sector.

You know Bethere my current supplier is the only one have a bit of respect for these days. These connection speed issues aren’t the ‘true issue’ with the likes of Cable and ADSL. 50mb a sec is worth nothing when they throttle the connections back so much so that it’s not worth a 10mb package.
I also agree that Contention ratios are one of those ‘hidden away’ bits of DSL services that providers don’t or want to talk about.
Also it would be interesting to know who’s got what deals going with the prioritisation of data flow over networks.

What I want is the line owner to provide discounts for speeds under the maximum available.

So you pay full price to the ISP, then get a rebate from the line provided (which might be the ISP if its LLU) for every 1Mbps under that speed.

Dont see why people who only get 2Mbps should pay the same per month as those getting the full 8Mbps, for example.

Question is, getting back to customer confusion, how else do you present the information?

“Up to 8Mbps” covers everyone, the only other way I can see is “call for speed estimate”, which is even worse as you have no idea what speed is being offered.

I'd prefer it if they banned the whole

Unlimited*

*Subject to the terms of our fair use policy, which says you're limited to 10GB per month

nonsense, seeing as it's an outright lie.

I don't mind the speed issue as much really. If your line is only capable of 6Mbps, then there's no point complaining about not getting 8. If your line is capable of 6Mbps, but your ISP provides you with 56k, then fair enough (that would be me).

kalniel
Cheap can be good

£7.99 a month for my connection, max speed isn't the best but the latency is unreal :).

i have used VMs 10mb 20mb and 50mb and i have never been throttled once and i download about 20gb to 40gb per month

and i get more than what i pay for i am on the 50mb package and this is what i get no matter what time of the day i do the test it is about that speed


test is done with London as Manchester cant always take the 50mb but when i do the test with Manchester i do get 10ms ping

but one bad thing is the router they did give me dropped the speed from over 50mb to just over 20mb

Cheapest works for me, my trusty talktalk connection works just fine.

keasla
i have used VMs 10mb 20mb and 50mb and i have never been throttled once and i download about 20gb to 40gb per month

and i get more than what i pay for i am on the 50mb package and this is what i get no matter what time of the day i do the test it is about that speed

Lee @ SCAN;1974767
Speaking of saving money, they've highlighted that cost is first followed by speed second. I'm sorry but anyone who goes on an ISP just because of their “price” is doing it wrong.

Couldn't agree more - personally I'd combine price and speed into a “value for money” ratio and then figure on reliability as the second factor in my list. I had a recent argument with a Sky salesdroid who was trying to get me to leave Vermin because he could do an “up to” 20Mb connection for a little over half the price I was paying for my VM 10Mb service. He just wouldn't accept that given that BT claim I can only get 3Mb over my line means that his “superb deal” wasn't that good actually. :whip:
As to the reliability - I've had four days outage in nearly 10 years with VM. Which is something I'm very, very pleased with. :mrgreen: Especially as my speeds seem to go up around the time I traded my old cable box in for one of the new-fangled V+ things. Both are useful now because I'm a home-worker. :woowoo:

Lee @ SCAN;1974767
This is because ADSL has a contention ratio which is usually between 20:1 and 50:1 per BT guidelines, meaning that 20 to 50 subscribers, each assigned or sold a bandwidth of “up to” 8 Mbit/s for instance, may be sharing 8 Mbit/s of uplink bandwidth. snipped Until people understand about contention, ratios and how ADSL works in relation to line length and signal ratio we'll see more and more people complain about how suppliers are advertising incorrectly.

So you insist that the “up to” brigade make it clear that “the speed quoted is theoretical, real world speeds are dependent on various factors and may only be a small fraction of the quoted value”.
Here's the bit that I don't understand - if, as folks on this area are saying, the cable tech is so markedly superior to ADSL, then how come BT get away with saying that they've got the “best” broadband? (And yes, I did remember that they got a slapdown over the speed claims in that house-buying advert). Doesn't this give VM the bragging rights? And if cable IS so superior then why the heck aren't others (like BT) rolling it out?

(I'm a systems and programming guy, not a network analyst - hence the comments)

BT are rolling out cable, just very slowly as it costs them a lot of money. They've been getting in trouble for years for not replacing the copper cabling with fibre optic but it's cheaper to take the fine than actually do the replacing. The only reason they've started doing it now is that they have been assured a monopoly on the new services.

If BT did their infinity service (their name for cable) without a phone then I might consider it but they refuse to do so so I'll stick with o2s cheaper and superior service.

Also virgin shouldn't be complaining about misleading speeds when they send round leaflets advertising cable speeds in non cable areas. They took my details to sign me up, including bank ones, then never got back to me, a few weeks later I get a letter saying no we can't do it but how about our rubbish adsl service.

I use virgin myself. But i've been frustrated for a friend who was paying for the “up to” 8mb service. He was getting a 3mb service in reality. He thought he'd upgarde to the “up to” 20mb service to increase his speed. Unsuprisingly the speed remained the same at “3mb”. Clearly the limiting factory wasn't the bandwidth controls, but his distance from the exchange and line quality. The frustration came that BT were more than happy to accept his upgrade request, and therefore payment knowing full well that no increase in speed would come of the change.

Virgin however have been excellent, i recently downgraged from the 20mb service, to the 10mb service becuase of budget constraints. I am hitting the throttling bechmark more often, but even when throttled im achieving better speeds than him.

miniyazz
There is no throttling on the 50MB package.. yet. And d/ling 20-40GB/month isn't that likely to cause throttling unless you go over the threshold for peak hours (10am-9pm, bar 3pm-4pm). See here.

That makes me annoyed. That throttling is in place on a cable network, I dont get throttled one bit with Bethere and ADSL weather I download 5 or 30 GBs a night.
Connection speed isnt really the big bone now, its this use of the word unlimited and throttling of the services they are trying to promote as being a massive figure that just happens to be a fourth of your nice figure at peak times when you want to use that nice massive figure.

Internet companies are some slimmy lot.

FoxdieUK
The frustration came that BT were more than happy to accept his upgrade request, and therefore payment knowing full well that no increase in speed would come of the change.

That is a clear breach of Ofcoms: Voluntary Code of Practice: Broadband Speeds, which state that you must be given a clear indication of the speed you will most likely recieve at the point of sale. BT are signed up to the code.

I thought so - loads of people complain about virgin throttling people who use lots of bandwidth, but one of my mates has the virgin 50 meg package and uses 600-700GB a month of bandwidth and says he's never been throttled. I wondered if the 50 meg package had different restrictions, it seems I was right :P

BT rang me up to sell me Infinity, since it's active in my area, I asked what their FUP was. 100GB they said. What an absolute joke. If they are guaranteed a monopoly, FTTC is ruined for the vast majority of us. 100GB is so low you literally cannot use it properly. The only way you can use 100GB of bandwidth max every month is by doing things that are comparatively irrespective of bandwidth, i.e. web browsing and video streaming. The guy nearly had a fit when I told him I regularly use 300GB a month, sometimes 400, and that's with 7 meg internet, imagine how it might increase with 40!

sammorris
I thought so - loads of people complain about virgin throttling people who use lots of bandwidth, but one of my mates has the virgin 50 meg package and uses 600-700GB a month of bandwidth and says he's never been throttled. I wondered if the 50 meg package had different restrictions, it seems I was right :P

700GB/month - wtf! :surprised:
Oh, and as others have said, the 50meg service from VM isn't throttled at the moment (think it might be once it stops being the “XL” service)

sammorris
BT rang me up to sell me Infinity, since it's active in my area, I asked what their FUP was. 100GB they said. What an absolute joke. If they are guaranteed a monopoly, FTTC is ruined for the vast majority of us. 100GB is so low you literally cannot use it properly. The only way you can use 100GB of bandwidth max every month is by doing things that are comparatively irrespective of bandwidth, i.e. web browsing and video streaming. The guy nearly had a fit when I told him I regularly use 300GB a month, sometimes 400, and that's with 7 meg internet, imagine how it might increase with 40!

Actually, I think I'd be happy with 100GB/month - okay I'd be happier with 200GB/month cap. I telework and am a Linux bod (so that means ISO downloading) and last time I spoke to VM I was told that I was nowhere near the cap where I'd get zapped for my 10meg service, (which is strange because before I upgraded the TV to the V+ box I was getting b/w throttled).
Okay I don't do online gaming (because I'm just hopeless canon fodder) but I do download XBox demos though. I also don't use streaming video to the PC a lot, (but the kids do), nor do I torrent. I'm guessing that on the other hand you're a gaming, video watching, torrenting d00d … ;)
People keep (rightly?) slagging off BT and VM for poor reach or substandard rollouts, but what's the alternative? Get the government to treat it as a ‘national resource’ and they run it - to my mind that's guaranteed to give a worse service!

Online gaming doesn't use an enormous amount of bandwidth, if you're in a permanently active VOIP conversation (i.e. something like Skype rather than, say teamspeak) and playing a game with several players you might average about 20-25KB/s download and perhaps 10-12KB/s upload. If you did this 6 hours a day every day of the month, that still works out to be 13-16GB a month download and 6-8GB a month upload. This particular month I was helping someone rebuild their FTP server so I actually used 50GB of upload, which isn't common, but due to the various things I download I reckon last month I downloaded somewhere in the region of 250-300GB.

400GB is a lot of ‘linux distros’ ;)

Not sure what I use to be honest, demos are probably the biggest hog but even then it's only a few per month for the PC/PS3, doubt I use over 25GB

100GB is so low you literally cannot use it properly. The only way you can use 100GB of bandwidth max every month is by doing things that are comparatively irrespective of bandwidth, i.e. web browsing and video streaming.

I'd imagine the vast majority of people use nowhere near 100GB/month, unless Infinity is aimed at big downloaders?

Because I hate streams so much, I take to downloading stuff I'd otherwise get from youtube, that takes up quite a lot of bandwidth.

I'm getting about half the advertised rate from O2, though that is double the speed I was getting through Orange who were also claiming the same “up to” rate.

Orange were a nightmare to leave as they chase you month after month for unpaid fees, despite giving the full period of notice, requesting the leaving code and doing all the transfers properly.

Lol, well, if you've legally moved on, set fire to the bills and block their email address, job done :P

You laugh, but we used to be AOL customers a long time ago, ugh.
After 8 weeks of trying to get a MAC code, and either getting one and being told it was invalid by the new ISP or being given ‘oh, there appears to be some problems with the systems’ (but their grammar was even worse than that), or being told ‘we wouldn’t like you to leave', we decided enough was enough. Blissfully, we still had two phone lines, from back in the old 56k days where you needed two to use phone and internet at the same time. So we phoned BT to disconnect the second phone line, blocked the credit card payments, and rewired the sockets in the house ourselves. Et voila, no evidence of AOL existing. We then proceeded to move to UKOnline, who I was pretty content with for the 5 years we were using them. However, lack of any sort of new products from them, rumours they were going to be axed as a company in favour of Sky broadband, them still using PPP authentication, and requiring a new 12-month contract to switch to ADSL2 caused me to migrate from them to Be. That move was trouble-free.