VIRGIN internet prices going up again... is SKY a better bet??

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kalvin928

kalvin928

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getting bit peeved off with Virgin now... bills due to rise another £3 a month .... added to the fact they monitor your usage in downloads etc. and because I download around 20GB a month besides streaming everything through the net... I am looking to jump ship even though my 2 year contract finishes in July 2014... is SKY better?
 
I left Virgin media for BT infinity a few months ago. Bill halved, stopped getting the annoying "fair usage" letters and got a faster upload speed. Can't complain :)
 
Depends which package you are on and if you need a land line.

If you are a low-medium user and just want fast internet with no land line, then virgin is the cheapest/fastest way to do that.

As soon as you need a land line, BT is probably a better bet and if you are a high user then definitely BT.

I called and spoke to Virgin about 6 months ago when they last put our bill up and got them to reduce the bill back down to the original price by threatening to leave for BT.

We are just on the basic 30mb package with no landline and we do get a reliable 30mb all day, every day.

For us to get the same service from BT as what we now have we would be looking at an additional £17 ish a month, there would be some extra frills, but we wouldn't use them anyway so no point really.
 
Sky are the only ones who doesn't use traffic shaping to limit your peak times usage.

Just depends on how much usage you require.
 
mickl said:
Sky are the only ones who doesn't use traffic shaping to limit your peak times usage.
Click to expand...

I think BT make this claim....no idea if it's true.
 
IanA2 said:
I think BT make this claim....no idea if it's true.
Click to expand...

I think their claim is unlimited usage which is different to traffic shaping.

For me, I would choose a slower speed but with unlimited usage rather than vice versa.

A bit like some of the 4G mobile phone plans where you get superfast speed but only 500mb of usage....what's the point?

I have the Sky fibre package at the moment and get consistent 40mbps of connection and I must easily shift 120GB+ of data a month and never experienced any slowdown.
 
appreciated the info..... found out contract was finishing on Virgin anyway and the BT infinity package seem much better value at the moment... especially with the BT sport package.... spoke with VIRGIN and even after what they offered to keep me on, didn't match the BT infinity offer.... good one!!
 
Check here:
Glasnost: Test if your ISP is shaping your traffic

Is your upload traffic rate limited?

There is no indication that your ISP rate limits your uploads.
However, some of the measurements were affected by noise, which limits Glasnost ability to detect rate limiting.

Details:
There is no indication that your ISP rate limits your BitTorrent uploads. In our tests, uploads using control flows achieved up to 17704 Kbps while uploads using BitTorrent achieved up to 17643 Kbps.

There is no indication that your ISP rate limits uploads on port 6881 or 46203. In our tests, uploads on port 6881 achieved up to 17704 Kbps while uploads on port 46203 achieved up to 17341 Kbps.

Is your download traffic rate limited?

There is no indication that your ISP rate limits your downloads.
Click to expand...
M.
 
V12 said:
As soon as you need a land line, BT is probably a better bet and if you are a high user then definitely BT.
Click to expand...

I'm a low usage customer, but for some reason the phone bills seem to be huge... :rolleyes: ;)
 
its pity because I think only 1 company has just released an 'internet only' package.... so no line rental added in.... but yeah soon as you start using the phone outside your plan, costs can spiral.
 
Been on the Virgin top whack service for years - a tad pricey, but worth every penny IMHO. Cat 6 networked PCs x 6 all get 100mb+ and the worst wifi speed in the house is over 30mb. We get all the HD Sky Sports, BT Sports, movies on Gawd knows how many TVs and an 'all inclusive' landline for £120 a month.

Sent from my iPad using MBClub UK
 
W4E300 said:
Been on the Virgin top whack service for years - a tad pricey, but worth every penny IMHO. Cat 6 networked PCs x 6 all get 100mb+ and the worst wifi speed in the house is over 30mb. We get all the HD Sky Sports, BT Sports, movies on Gawd knows how many TVs and an 'all inclusive' landline for £120 a month.

Sent from my iPad using MBClub UK
Click to expand...

A tad pricey! I think thats extortionate personally.

Its easy to get gigabit or even 10Gbit within the house but if you need 100MBit plus, internet traffic on six home PC's then what on earth are you running?

BT IMHO offers the best value for money at the moment. I pay £23 a month for unlimited usage. I get my line rental in that and BT sport. Speeds are about 11MBit. The really good bit though is you get to use every other BT customers WiFi when you need it. They therefore have the widest coverage of all. If you get an issue then you dont get into ISP blaming telephone line provider either ;)

Sky - wouldnt touch them. Owned by Murdoch who also owns newspapers that hack phones of murdered children.
 
I'm currently paying around £39 a month with BT. That includes (daily) international calls with their international calling package, free evening and weekend calls, the BT sport TV thing (which I don't use but is free) and their fastest (80mbit iirc) internet connection.

I clocked my traffic last month at just shy of a terabyte, so I consider myself a quite high volume user. Virgin wouldn't let me do this, as they traffic shaped (even my SSH VPN which I use for work).

If you really at using 600mb/s on a consistent basis, you'll find Virgin will throttle like there's no tomorrow. It's not just speed they throttle -but also number of active connections. So if you have a WebDAV server with multiple people connected it will go haywire.

What was particularly frustrating was it appeared that they whitelisted speedtest.net, so while the house was crawling without barely any connectivity, speedtest was still reporting splendid results.

Never again - it was sad as I had been a customer since blueyonder... but never again.

M>
 
Sky is just as much a rip off as BT and I can't get Virgin as I'm not in a cabled area.
 
Another vote for BT. No limit, reasonable speeds and free sports TV. As I pay rental yearly I save a bit on that so overall it comes in a bit over twenty squids. Can't complain.
 
Just checked my virgin account and it says I'm being upgraded to 50mb with no extra charges!
 
I'm with VM's broadband-only 60mb service and have been notified that my speed will increase to 100mb with no extra charge.
 
Spinal said:
Check here:
Glasnost: Test if your ISP is shaping your traffic
M.
Click to expand...


MPI-SWS
Glasnost: Test if your ISP is shaping your traffic

Results for your host (host86-133-xxx-xxx.range86-133.btcentralplus.com - 86.133.xxx.xxx):
Is your upload traffic rate limited?

There is no indication that your ISP rate limits your uploads.

Is your download traffic rate limited?

There is no indication that your ISP rate limits your downloads.

You can view the detailed measurement results of the test here.
For more details on how Glasnost tests work, please read our NSDI 2010 paper.

For details on our research on broadband networks please refer to our network transparency project webpage
In case you have questions about this tool or our research, please contact us: broadband @at@ mpi-sws org

Above is my result. So, BT, no limits, no shaping. Is that right?
 
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