Virgin Media Introduce Speed Caps
Virgin Media are introducing speed capping measures that for users who download large amounts from the Net during peak hours. Peak hours have been defined as 4pm to midnight which is much longer than for most other ISPs, who consider 6pm to 10pm to be the peak.
Virgin claim that only 5% of downloaders will be affected, but looking at the bands I’m not too sure:
- M tier users who download over 350MB will have their speed capped at 1Mbps during peak
- L tier users who download over 750MB will have their speed restricted to 2Mbps during peak
- XL users who download over 3GB in peak hours will have their speed restricted to 5Mbps
Once a user hits the download limit for their tier then their speed will be capped for four hours. The bands look pretty low to me so I’m sure that it will affect more than 5% of users. Also, the way the scheme appears to be setup will extend the period of capping e.g. if a XL user hits the 3GB limit at 11pm, then their speed will be capped for four hours until 3am.
Personally, I’m quite disappointed by this as I regularly download more than 3GB during ‘peak’ and I wouldn’t even classify my usage as heavy. I’ve also been a big champion of Cable’s unlimited policy in the past and this feels like a big let-down.
The Virgin Media FAQ tries to make out that many users will benefit from the upcoming 20Mbps upgrade (although looking at the timetable it looks like the dates have slipped already), but most users don’t need more speed - they want unlimited downloads.
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Comment by mat on 28 July 2007:
so they say they can offer you 24meg down an ADSL line - i doubt that very much
oh and BTW - VirginMedia have in trial 50Meg and also 100Meg - these have been in trial since it was BlueYonder
And the fact your service has got “worse” since march has nothing to do with Virgin taking over. All they have done is replace the logo on the bill etc to a virgin one. quite literally only the name has changed, not the porducts/service
as for capping download limits, i agree it is a bit harsh, that has always been one of the best features having unlimited access
Comment by mat on 28 July 2007:
so they say they can offer you 24meg down an adsl line - i doubt it
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Comment by Oh on 18 July 2007:
@cipher again. You can’t blame Virgin for Murdock’s decision to make sky1 exclusive to sky.
Comment by Everton on 16 July 2007:
@cipher
I hear your pain, but I don’t reckon much to your chances of getting Virgin to listen to you as their service is for residential use only, and they if you tell them about your work use, they will say you really should be using their business product!
Comment by Cipher on 16 July 2007:
I’m a long time Ntl/VM customer and before that Diamond cable (nottingham) must be nearly 15 years now probably and up untill now i have no complaints with the service, bar a few technical glitches now and again. I use programs on my computer which regularly use files sizes well over 10 gig from various animation and cgi images. I work from home and share my work with colleagues using ftps and other methods. This capping has now made my job damn near impossible and we are losing clients rapidly because of the backlog. I pay a lot for this service and i was never asked or shown any form declaring these changes. I think its disgusting how we are treating like shit all for there profit. I’ve already lost sky one and i pretty much lost my internet. I’m sure like many others Virgin Media you can fuck off i’m switching and you can expect a letter from my lawyer very soon.
Comment by stew on 4 July 2007:
Duffman & R HOOD.. If people are running things like games servers. download Linux which is 3gb a go. or use the high end package for its intednted purpose.. for heavy downloading t hen you can rack up 3gb within an hour. i have lots of times because i have remote access to my machine, use Bittorrent to download linux and share the internet with other ppl in my household. why the hell should i pay £37 to be slowed down to dailup speeds. in the long run speed capping will be harmful to the envorment.. think of all those people will have to leave their computers on overnight to finish their big downloads.
Virgin is such an ironic name as its so screwed..
Comment by Will on 17 June 2007:
Well my Xbox 360 regularly downloads 1 gig files which are game demos. If I download a full game it’s 7GB. I need the speed and I’m also being affected by the cap. I only have 4 meg speed at the mo, and i find it almost constantly being downgraded to 2 meg. For the moment I think I’ll reschedule my download times, but long term I’ll be looking to changing my ISP (after 5 years of service).
I was considering upgrading to 20 meg, but lets face it, the only reason someone is going to upgrade to that sort of speed is because they want to download a lot of data (say 10GB) in a short space of time (ie, within a few hours). If we get capped after the first 3GB then it’s pretty pointless upgrading.
Comment by marty on 9 June 2007:
i download 5 to 10 gigs a day somethings more 3 gigs is nothing