Right, we’ve been with Virgin for three years. Phone and TV have been perfect. broadband not so much. Now we’ve had engineers round regularly, router replaced, disgnostics etc etc. Formal complaints the works. The last engineer reckons we’re on an overloaded server and that’s why we always get kicked off at busy times but he thinks it’ll probably be a while before it gets sorted.

We’re moving house in a few weeks and to move Virgin would mean a new 18 month contract which means we couldn’t ditch them unless we buy the contract out.

So alternatives? BT and sky haven’t got fibre in our new street but we are less than a mile from the exchange so I assume broadband would be quite good. How do people get telly delivered when they use sky or BT? Satellite for the former I guess.

So, what do non-fibre, non-virgin people use and how good is it? For refeeence, we pay 60 quid a month right now for 30Mb, Large TV package (about 150 channels) and XL phone package (unlimited call, any time)

Thanks.

Hi Samuri, I’ve been looking into the router issue you posted abut before and I don’t think you have the newest router, well the model you listed is the same as the one I’ve had for two years anyway. There is a Superhub2 (not called that though) now which apparently seems to solve the dropped connections and YT streaming issues:

http://crave.cnet.co.uk/gadgets/virgin-media-super-hub-out-now-is-fastest-in-uk-50011373/

I spoke to VM about getting one and the customer services lady didn’t seem all that surprised that I was after one but has handed me over to the technical people who have reverted back to form on not following up on what they say they’ll do. I’m guessing that they rely on people giving up chasing them to be honest.

I’ll keep you posted on this as to whether I get anything out of them re the new router.

Thanks. The engineer says everything is great at our house and when it’s working it’s great, very fast, wireless is good too. Connection and hub work fine. It’s just we get disconnected when the internet is busy, i.e. evenings and weekends which we’re told is because the server we’re on is maxxed out with no obvious intention to add any more.

That router you’ve shown above is different to ours….but if we look on the existing router we get good signal strength on all channels (these new routers take multiple 20Mb channel streams and mix them together to give the higher bandwidths).

To be honest I’ve had any problems with the connection to the router either its just that any kind of streaming constantly ends up buffering and as unwatchable as a result.

not sure on your specific needs re tv/phone etc, but have you considered no landline (most people have mobiles now), no tv package (we only watch freeview, you may be different) and no broadband (mobile dongle, or tethering a laptop to phone data instead etc)

like i say, may be totally unsuitable for you but just thought id throw it into the mix 🙂

Aye. I personally could do without TV and a landline but I doubt my wife could.

Getting broadband from someone, relying on mobile minutes and getting freeview works for me but apparently we *need* Sky Living.

Right now I’m considering the basic sky package since that provides us with the additional channels we have to have plus a good broadband deal and phone package.

I’m a little reticent about letting go of cable. Once you’ve got 30Mb, it’s hard going back to something slower.

We have Talk Talk tv

I’ll let you google whether that gets you Sky living
we pay a just over £30 a month for

Broad band at around 10Mb/s, no down load limit

Unlimited land line calls upto an hour

“Free” Youview box. That gets freeview though our Arial and the ability to record and pause live tv etc. It also has loads of players integrated.

We get some box sets and films free on demand. We can also rent some films from Lovefilm. We currently have no SKY but can ad a single month of sky with no tie in

The only negative is that iplayer is flaky, weirdly worse than plugging a lap top into the tv. But its not the speed to our house that’s the problem, with Apple tv we’ve downloaded a whole HD movie buy the time we’ve watched half of it

(I weakened Sky living is an extra £15 month)

I don’t have to tell a man of your calibre about Samknows do I?

I’m with Sky. The service technically is flawless, can’t fault it. God help you if you ever have to contact them about problems though.

Im currently on virgin, getting 20 meg broadband and unlimited anytime calls. All for pricely sum of £45 a month. Looked around at alternatives and talk talk looked best value as i would get a line instaaled for free and if i paud up fromt for line rental (£114 ) i would get their tv box and unlimited calls for £10 for first 6 mnths then up to £15 for remainder of contract. Sounded a good deal so i phoned virgin requesting disconnect and ended up with new deal of £120 up front for line rental then £17.50 month for basic tivo, unlimited anytime calls with 150 mins to any international or mobile phone, along with increase to 30 meg broadband. Cracking deal. So my advise is to tell them youve signed up elsewhere and see what they cone back with.

Find out the estimated speed for the new place. I went from 20mb to 8mb (next to the exchange to a mile away) when I moved, and don’t really notice the difference. Can still use iPlayer and HD YouTube.