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Posted By: Wheels Fu#k Virgin media - 14th Aug 2007 8:41am
I have been waiting since Thursday for my tv/phone/bb and i just rang them back and spent 20mins on hold to be told i can not have any of there services!!!

the people across the road have it as well as many other people in the road. im SO dam p!ssed off right now. i need the net for the laptop/home pc/Xbox.

now I cant do sh!t and the subscriptions that i pay for online like Xbox live are useless.

Can anyone suggest another service provider to me please.
Posted By: AX_125 Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 14th Aug 2007 11:34am
Dont bother with Sky either, they are pretty useless.

Tiscali have always been the best, most reliable BB supplier for me, my family, friends and colleagues. Noone i know has ever had a problem with the service.

Everyone i know with Sky BB has experienced problems with the TV and the Internet, Including myself.

I think the site www.broadbandreview.co.uk might be helpful to you.
Posted By: Wheels Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 14th Aug 2007 2:01pm
just tried http://www.broadbandreview.co.uk/ but got no were.

i think witt Tiscali i need to have a current internet conection with someone else. frown or have a BT landline (i dont)

Posted By: Davey_Martin Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 14th Aug 2007 2:18pm
am with virgin media and have been since the days of blueyonder - never had any real problem at all... however, if i was to change ISP for wotever reason Tiscali is one i would def consider.

a few ppl have mention Be broadband as well, cant get them up here but can at my old address. www.bethere.co.uk/
Posted By: Wheels Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 14th Aug 2007 2:40pm
wow thats a great ISP.

I just phoned BT and they want £125 installation charge of a phone line. gutted.

I need all 3 services tho Phone/BB.TV so i want to go with SKY to make it easy but everyone says the BB is cr@p. and I need a good one for Online Gaming so it needs to be 100% reliable.(i hate lag)
Posted By: AX_125 Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 14th Aug 2007 3:03pm
Just aslong as you know, I have had nothing but problems with Sky, with the internet cutting out every 10 mins sometimes. The internet not working at all other times. I am usually without a connection around 90% of the time (although it seems to be a bit better recently)

Sky broadband would also require a telephone line.
Posted By: Davey_Martin Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 14th Aug 2007 3:06pm
we are with sky for tv, bt for fone and vm for broadband, have tried the package deals but there is always something that isn't so good
Posted By: MattLFC Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 14th Aug 2007 8:33pm
Take a look in the Sky Broadband thread matey, AX is the only person seemingly having problems with it.

There is at least 5 other users, including myself, who have admitted that since they got the bb, its been rock solid. To be fair, every single company has unhappy customers, and the amount of time AX has been having problems, tbh either there is a major fault on the line/DSLAM connection which is nout to do with Sky, or he simply hasnt been reporting the faults/exaggerating his claims, because if all our services were that bad, do you really think Sky would have gained nearly 1 million customers in just 14 months (look at what happening with TalkTalk for instance)?

Customers like myself require internet access to make a living, my computer is connected most of the day and night, if the Sky was crap, I would be the first person to leave them and go elsewhere, believe me.

My installation and activation was hassle free, the majority of people I have referred to Sky have also had the same experience, with the exception on one, being AX. Outside of Wiki, most of my family are now on Sky Broadband, they all turn to me for technology advice and I am the one who explained the cost benefits of Sky BB to them.

I dont game, so I simply can't comment on its gaming performance, I dont know if anyone else on this site uses it for gaming, maybe there is someone and can comment on its performance??

Personally I have been happy with Sky... im not so happy with my Sky+ box atm, which I have said on more then one occasion, but to be fair to it, its a 4yr old PVR2, which is used every single day, and I turn the power off to it of a night, which does cause premature mechanical breakdown.

Its not actually broken as such, its more a case of sometimes it can record dodgy, whereas it was fine for the first 3 years or so.

Having said that though, it's more due to my sheer laziness that Ihavent screwed a new PVR3 out of them yet, and its got to the point now where, because in the future they will be launching an IPTV on-demand service for customers with SkyHD boxes to begin with, followed by new compatible Sky+ boxes (if the manufacturing cost of the SkyHD boxes doesnt seriously come down), that I am now considering cutting my losses and getting SkyHD with a nice 300GB hard drive (not interested in the HD tbh, just the bigger storage space, Sky Anytime and the IPTV On Demand service)...

smile
Posted By: Waddi Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 14th Aug 2007 9:15pm
2 people I work with have the same problem as AX, they randomly lose their connection willy nilly and it can takes ages to re-connect. I prefer alway connected Fibre optic Cable broadband, Who offers that? lol

Don't all ISP's but VM require you to be connected to a BT exchange something that BT quoted you £125 to do.

My opinion stick with VM, but complain complain complain, You can get a lot of freebies/offers out of them. Freind in work phoned up and threatened to go to Talk Talk as it was cheaper and was upto 8mb broadband although he knows its only 1.7mb in his street, They gave him a XL broadband which is 10mb soon to be 20mb (if it isnt allready) for the price of M broadband for 12 months and free phone calls anytime for 12months, but he had to sign a new 12month contract, which seems to be standard policy with VM at the minute.

But dont go wireless.
Posted By: MattLFC Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 14th Aug 2007 9:37pm
Originally Posted by Waddi
I prefer alway connected Fibre optic Cable broadband, Who offers that? lol

raftl raftl

Tell us some more jokes lol. The amount of times I have, over the years, esepcially during my time as a mod on nthellworld.com working in the interest of ntl, heard people bang on about this "state of the art fibre optical network" its laughable.

Check the connection that goes into your modem.... is it fibre optic?? No, not unless you live in Dolphin Sqaure, because FTTH isnt available in this country and probably wont be for a long long long time.

In fact, its not even HFC, nver mind FTTH. So forget all this shite you have heard about fibre optic networks, Easynet (Sky Broadband) have a much bigger "fibre optic network" then Virgin will ever have, in the form or tier 1 IP transit and carrier backbones

So if people want to argue this "fibre optic" shit in the case of Virgin, go ahead, but Sky already has one over in the form of real international backbones and carriers, OC24 anyone??

I now gets a vision of the cable man with a piece of co-ax in hand, telling a noob customer "well its our state of the art fibre network that delivers all these channels".

raftl
Posted By: Waddi Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 14th Aug 2007 9:58pm
So did NTL own NTHELLWORLD then?

I know that from the brown box to the modem is co-ax but do VM not use fibre optics to send the signal from their end to the little brown box outside you house then? and isnt this what helps keeps the constant connection speed? this is a serious question Matty, Im not being sarcastic.

Was I atleast correct with this stament:
Originally Posted by waddi
Don't all ISP's but VM require you to be connected to a BT exchange something that BT quoted you £125 to do.
Posted By: MattLFC Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 6:08am
Not all ISP's require you to have a phoneline no. Also, AOL can provide services over the cable network without a phoneline, although they dont like to do it (they have a long standing agreement wth NTL and Telewest to do so).

All forms of DSL require a phoneline - Dont for one minute believe that because DSL is over phonelines, it is way outdated technology, in tests VDSL2 has outperformed DOCSIS 3.0 cable and is coming to market way faster (dont even think Virgin will get DOCSIS 3.0 anytime soon, they can't even afford to convert the network to DOCSIS 2.0).

Aye, NTL unfortunatly bought nthellworld.com, I was already a mod on there, when they bought it, they shut it down about a year later, being the snidey pricks they are, they said they were building a replacement namely NTL Community, but it never came, much like the rest of the promises they make that never, or take years longer to come to frutation.

Whelan has your house ever had a phoneline? If so, it wont be £125, its only that price if they need to do a new install.

With regards to the network, its a 20year old network that has seen very little in the form of investment or upgrades etc since it was built by the likes of Mercury, Bell Cablemedia and Cabletel, and the technologies that make it (DOCSIS 1.1, euroDOCSIS and DAVIC - yes its a mish mash of technologies, one of the reasons why some area's have better and more advanced services then others) are well well behind the times. True, its fibre optic until it hits the UBR, but your only as fast as you weakest link, and your weakest link is co-ax, which surprisingly is pretty much the same as BT's phonelines.

At least DSL can handle uploads without struggling, a small number of users on a single UBR all maxxing out their upload at the same time can kill the download for every single user on that UBR. Thats why the contention ratio on cable is so low at only 20:1, because they are shit scared of multiple users maxxing their upload and causing problems.

smile
Posted By: AX_125 Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 6:54am
Originally Posted by MattLFC
do you really think Sky would have gained nearly 1 million customers in just 14 months (look at what happening with TalkTalk for instance)?


http://www.reviewcentre.com/r107118_2_Sky_Broadband.html

I know at least 5 people with the same problems as me. Migrating away from previous reliable ISP's to a very unreliable service from Sky.

I even know one girl that was mis-sold the service similar to myself, she was told she could have the 3 for £26 but was actually put on the £50 odd per month service.

Just because they took on 1 million customers, it doesn't mean they are a good ISP.

My mother ended up leaving TalkTalk after 3 months because they didn't supply her with anything, but had her paying full price.

One good thing about Sky's technical service, at least they are english speaking. So i am getting no-where speaking to an english person rather than a call centre in the middle east.
Posted By: MattLFC Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 7:05am
Well pretty much everyone I know who is using Sky, is happy with the service, as I say, except for yourself.

Being placed on a £50 per month service, when even using the connect service it would only be £38.00 per month is also bollocks... either she is a noob and added summit like Sky Movies and/or Sky Sports and is only able to get the connect service, or she basically got Sky World and either the the max broadband speed or the mid with the higher tier phone service.

People always get talked into things by sales reps, you will be amazed at how easily people give in when sales reps suggest they should take x deal instead of y, because x is better for whatever reasons, when really they only actually wanted y.

Again, any large company such as Sky WILL undoubtedly have some unhappy customers... you show me a company on the ssame scale that doesnt? Im not being funny, but Tiscali have a terrible reputation within the ISP industry, again, like many other large ISP's.

I suppose I like to be with an ISP is going to be around tomorrow, the state Tiscali have been in financially over the last few years (they have been days away from going bankrupt on more then one occasion), theres no guarantee they will even be able to provide your service tomorrow.

Through any problems that Sky and other ISP's are having, including cable, at least there is very little chance of them going bankrupt next week.

As for TalkTalk, imho, they should be banned from advertising and have their sales call centre shut down by trading standards, because they are taking on even more customers, yet as you say, they can't even provide a service to the ones they have full stop.

smile
Posted By: AX_125 Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 7:13am
They were told they could have the deal for £26 a month and decided to have the movies and Sky Sports. Which should of took them to about £43 a month. But it looks as though they had the exact same problem as I did where they were told they could have the £26 deal, but it was unavailable.

Luckily, like myself, it looks as though after numerous calls they are getting it for 40 odd a month.

I really do hope my Broadband gets more reliable.

Yeah, My mum just cancelled her connection with talktalk and they tried to charge her 3 months line rental and a cancellation charge. When she phoned them up, she got passed through several people, when she eventually got through to an english speaking person, they hung up. Sounds as though she is having a real nightmare.
Posted By: MattLFC Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 7:25am
To be honest, I hope everyone bb whichever ISP they are on works as it should do, im a firm beliver in people getting the services they are paying for.

Somewher along the line, you connection has been screwed up, and it is amazing how BT Wholesale (or BT Openworld if your not on a "connect" package) havent been able to resolve it as yet.

As its starting to drag on matey, id recommend you cnsider contactng Ofcom and trading standards, you only need to send them a basic letter of complaint, Ofcom for sure take all complaints seriously and can put the wheels in motion to force BT to resolve things, trading standards can just give Sky and BT an xtra push because if they dont, the complaint gets added as yet anoher un-resolved, which eventually one or both companies can be fined for.

From what I hve established, 30% of people seem to have problems getting Sky activated, but once its done, its reliable. The rest seem to have it activated and running fine in general. Any problems after activation seem to go un-reslved for long periods of time because BT are dragging their heels with everything to do with Sky basically because they are losing hundreds of bb customers a week to Sky, so both BT Wholesale and BT Openworld, who are responsible for managing and maintaining the line and exchange wont do much.

Sky have prviously had applications for the opening up of the maintenance to Easynet declined on two occasions from what I understand, so until Ofcom finish investigating BT for their malpractices with regards to Sky, its just a waiting game, and apparently if one is having problems and phones BT, thy are all too happy to guarantee they can hav your srvice up and running within days if you switch to BT Broadband.

Yet again, the customer is the loser in a battle for supremacy in the telecoms industry.

frown
Posted By: fordsteve Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 9:05pm
as matt says as long as we get what we pay for does not matter who it with the only think that matters is what the help is like when it breaks down so we all need to start fighting to get what we pay for and not take any shit from them
Posted By: Wheels Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 9:08pm
I wish i could argue it out and get my BB installed but they said they wont do the construction for me to have it.

so im cutting my losses and paying the £125 + £50 (not enough points on credit check) then paying £31.99 for the first 6months and then £37.99 for the next 6months to have just a phone line connected with a BT home hub & BB internet.

im just gonna have to deal with watching freeview TV.

I dont want to take the chance with the negative talk on Sky BB and risk the real chance of being stuck with a crappy ISP for X amount of months and be unable to play games online. so im just going to get BT to install the lot (less hassle)

Anyone have any problems with the BT home hub?.

ide say my internet usage was like this:

40% online gaming
10% Torrents
5% music downloads
20% web browsing
25% video streaming (watch alot from stage6 on my tv)

(% is usage not MB's downloaded)

as you can see gaming takes up most of my internet usage and anyone that knows about it will understand how important it is to keep a constant connection with a good Ping.
Posted By: Waddi Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 9:34pm
Im surprised Microsoft havent set up an ISP in this country (I dont know if they have anywhere else).

With enough media propaganda I think a lot of people would sign up thinking it the only one compatable with windows vista or I.E or MSN etc.
Posted By: AX_125 Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 9:35pm
My mum is with BT home hub, they have had no problems with it since leaving talk talk
Posted By: MattLFC Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 9:38pm
Microsoft used to own 10% of NTL and 15% of Telewest... they were actually looking into buying them out and merging them in about 2001/2002, but then NTL and Telewest both decided to shit on Microsoft and chose Liberate 1.2 (known as CR3 on CWC/NTL) for their STB software over Microsoft software, so Microsoft promptly got rid of their shares in both companies.

Had Microsoft have got ahold of NTL and Telewest at the time, cable in the UK would have been mega by now...

As for Liberate, their software was slow, shite and way out of date... they went bust a few years later and Comcast ended up buying the remains of the company.

frown
Posted By: Waddi Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 9:46pm
If MS had took over cable, we could have media centre STB's and all sorts by now. DOH

how is the majority of internet delivered in the good ol' USA?

Cable, phone line or other????

and what speeds are they upto now?
Posted By: MattLFC Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 9:53pm
Cable is prob about 60%, DSL is prob about 40%... dunno about average speeds, not even sure on top speeds anymore, I do know that there is a cable provider offering 30Mbps (Cablevision iirc??) and my mate has 10Mbps as standard with charter.

AT&T offer a nationwide VDSL service now, dunno what the speed is, they are currently upgrading the network to VDSL2 though, i think it should be nationwide by the end of this year iirc, its about 50 - 100Mbps.

Dont be fooled by numbers though matey, faster internet services is just a marketing scam tbh.
Posted By: Waddi Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 9:58pm
but I like big numbers..... lol

Is Sky BB free if you have SKY TV. if so, what tv package do you need to be on?
Posted By: MattLFC Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 9:58pm
I should add that upload speeds in the US tend to be higher then comparably rated services in the UK, thanks mainly to them using more advanced and newer technologies such as VDSL for DSL services and DOCSIS 2.0 for cable services.
Posted By: MattLFC Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 10:04pm
Sky Broadband is the following pricing, you only need the basic TV package which includes 2 "channel packs" (basically non-premium channels like UK Gold, Discovery, Nikelodeon etc are available):

2Mbps/448Kbps - Free
8Mbps/448Kbps - £5.00 per month
16Mbps/800Kbps - £10.00 per month

All these services are on ADSL2+ and are only supplied as "upto". I am 1.69km away from my exchange and can max my 8Mbps service no problem on both upload and download.

Sky have another 8Mbps spare on ADSL2+, nobody is sure whether they are reserving some of the DSL spectrum on the line for IPTV, or whether they are using the full spectrum and just leaving it as upto 16Mbps because they know its unlikely people will get above 20Mbps unless they live very near the exchange lol.

My guess is IPTV though, as they are rolling it out to SkyHD customers soon (could be 2008 though), with a view to offering a full IPTV service when BT complete the full upgrade of their network to the 21CN in 2009, as this will be perfect for high bandwidth applications like IPTV services.

smile
Posted By: Waddi Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 10:12pm
What about Vodafone Mobile Broadband

1.4mbs, 3gb limit, wireless connection anywhere theres a 3G signal - £30pm

it could be an option....
Posted By: MattLFC Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 15th Aug 2007 10:17pm
looool its built for emails and basic web browsing on the move, will have a strict FUP and also the ping will be poo on it hehe.

Not ideal for gaming lets put it that way.

Iirc, T-Mobile and Three do better deals then that if you want the web on the move.

smile
Posted By: Wheels Re: Fu#k Virgin media - 16th Aug 2007 10:11am
Thats right Matty.

I am on T-mobile now to send this message and they only charge £7.50 a month for full web n walk. tbh i think its amazing as i can send live web cam footage wear ever i am even when driving and the download speed are pretty good. (dont know the actualy speed, ill do a speed test.)

The only thing is tho that it will be no good for gaming and i would be unable to use it with my Xbox on Xbox live as i doubt ide be able to install the nokia software onto the Console its self.
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