Forums Forums Enthusiast Forums A - Z Gadgets & Tech Virgin cost and speed increases.

Virgin broadband is increasing its charges by about 6 or 7 percent, but there is good news. They are increasing their maximum speed to 152MB and upgrading everyone's speed by 'at least' 20MB. Those of us using Virgin will have to wait some time for the speed upgrade. It will take place over 2014. I checked for New Ferry and it will be some time between July and December.

You will not be too surprised to learn that there will not be a long wait for the new charges. They go up in February for everyone!

Yep. Had my email from them. "We wanted to let you know that from 1st February 2014, the price of your line rental will go up by £1 a month. Plus, any calls you make to UK landlines outside of your talk plan will increase by less than 1p per minute. It's never nice when your bill goes up, but it means we can keep making all the things you enjoy about Virgin Media even better."

Not been very impressed with the line speed up here in Irby and the quality of the wifi unit they gave us--so they are pushing there luck for me not to consider switching

Will you notice the difference between 152mb and whatever you get now? Will you notice your speed has gone up by 20 mb?
I doubt it very much unless you actually monitor your speeds.

My lad has just been cursing Virgin. He has been trying to fill out a job application on line and twice it has bombed him out before he has completed it.Now given up

I am sure I won't notice the difference between the 60MB I get now and the promised 80 plus I will get. The doubling from 30 to 60MB was hardly noticeable. It makes little difference to a user if a page loads in 5 mS rather than 10.

You do notice it when you download a big file like a movie or a new printer driver, but these are rare events for me anyway.

Apart from the speed increase, I wish Virgin were more reliable. I keep getting outages - sometimes for an hour or a day - with little or no sensible information as to what's going on. Their favourite seems to be that they are 'upgrading the network'. The fact that they have 'upgraded' mine to zero bandwidth seems to escape them.

That will be a timer to complete the form and not virgin.

Your only as fast as the slowest connection point

I pay £35 a month, for this I get about 125meg Internet two hd tv boxes one of them is a TiVo (both just basic tv package) and I get a phone with unlimited evening and weekend calls. You don't pay for your tv boxes or your router. If either break they are replaced free of charge.

If you have sky, you pay about
70quid for a router,
100 for the sky box
14 a month line rental to BT
20 quid a month for your Internet (lucky if you get 10 meg!!)
Then a further 11 quid ish for calls
And finally about 10 quid for your basic tv.

Virgin do a pretty good deal really!

The other thing to always note when doing speed and price comparisons is that most companies exclude the Line Rental charges which is another £12ish plus VAT. The line that your ADSL line comes over is a BT line from the exchange.

At least with Virgin there is only one throat to choke

I wonder how much money they could save if they didn't:

A) Send me glossy brochures about mobiles every month.

B) Ring me trying to sell me mobiles every month.