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 Splats on 7 January 2008:
Well i was on the phone to them the other day and i got speaking to a semi retired block who told me striaght about these capping laws they got
in his words i could not give to f%*&ks if he gets sacked his totally fed up with all the crap the team leaders are tell them to say to us when we ring to complain about this problem .
Right now i’ve been capped to arround 92kbps = about 11.5k in real money( Speedtest done on the site that they tell you to go onto )
He also said its a way to make us so called heavy users leave without them kicking us off.
He strongly advised me to write a letter to head office tell them about whats goin on and also send the same letter to ofcom also to print off my screen when i go on there speedtest site. So thats what i’m goin to do i’ll kepp you all posted
FIGHT THE POWER
Comment by Angry Virgin Media Customer on 7 January 2008:
I have to say these speed caps are stupid. What is the point of having up to 20mb connections which are limited after you download 3gb?.
Let me give you an example now if you start say watching streaming video via the web and you actually do some legitimate downloading and say uploading you can hit that 3gb limit in next to no time typically say 2 to 3 hours. So in theory you are actually paying for a 5mb connection at the price of a 20mb connection for a majority of the time.
If you have a 20mb connection and you never hit this limit I’m afraid to say you don’t need the connection as you simply are not making sufficient use of it to warrent such high connection speeds and should opt for the the lower tier and save some money.
Virgin media should stop advertising their speeds as unlimited and clearly state on their advertising that speeds are capped and state what they are capped to; if they did that their services would no where near look as attractive.
To use the excuse that it is to stop those who abuse the service is laughable because Virgin media has actually lost more customers then it has gained since the merger and therefore cannot use the excuse they have to put these caps in place as the network is under no extra strain then it was before the merger took place. The caps are simply there so they save money while raking your cash in as bandwidth costs them.
Telewest was a better company before the merger and alot better then NTL interms of quality of service and customer service that has seriously gone down the pan.
I’ve been with ntl and telewest for 10 years and believe me there are ADSL providers out there who’s services are alot better.
Comment by Angry Virgin media customer on 2 January 2008:
Really quite angry with Virgin media i figure and i could be wrong here but if your paying for something thats what you should get. Im only on a 2 meg cable line and i consider myself to be a fairly average internet user. With the standards of recent internet surfing you can easily reach your download limit what Virgin media are imposeing. The way i see it thats not really being unfair your just using your connection what you paid for so why the fair usage policy. I recently started checking my speeds and i am hitting 2 meg up untill the point where i hit the download limit. Than the connection is complete ( CRAP )might aswell be unuseable the pings in online games are rubbish and even trying to stream media is frustrating. They push there routers and everything that means you hit ya limit quicker if ya surfing with more than one rig how did they work that one out lol. What makes it worse you try and phone up and complain its like speaking to a robot they dont give a ( CRAP ) they dont seem to know whats goin on either. I dont phone them anymore they seem to think restarting your computer solves everything or they try and sell you more services. VERY VERY VERY poor by Virgin Media. Think its a new isp very soon Blueyonder was miles better than this rubbish. No wonder a certain high ranking individual has so much money ?
Comment by luke on 12 December 2007:
i f***ing hate virgin media and want back my blueyonder service!
Comment by John Parker on 2 December 2007:
20 MB im on and i cant even reach 1mb OMFG this is beyond the joke take a look at this for a speedtest then WTFFFFFF this is just gone stupid now its making me sick! i have a phone/tv/net package and cant leave the damn thing till the contract is over! its like hell i swear this is unreal!!!! Ive never come accross such a ripoff in all my life! Trust me to get sucked in aswell! Checkout my speedtest to a server 150 miles away from where i live getting a ping of 250! XL? PFFFFFT! U B*A*S*T*A*R*D*S
I used to get this……
http://www.speedtest.net/result/184535862.png
Now i get this garbage crap! somebody save me!
http://www.speedtest.net/result/79490687.png
Comment by thesmo on 21 November 2007:
in the past everytime telewest upgraded giving us extra speed on existing accounts my speed seemed to get slower and i mostly browse, about 1 yr ago games got so laggy i gave that up, just the other day i installed a new wireless belkin router which was slower than my old 4 port mercury router? i forget why but i had contact virgin media who informed me that my cable modem is not compatible with the 20mb account that i have, only had this package since march 07 and only now they tell me its not compatible with my package and to that they now charge for support 10p connection then 25p per min, they have sent me a new modem which is a however faster.
when i ask virgin techy who did mention i can be can be capped between 4pm and midnight he also states my speed is up to 20mb.
my speed test on the down speed before midight was 1.01kbps after midnight was to 628.96kbps
does anyone know what speeds i should get?
my old modem was surfboard sb3100
can any one tell me how long this has been none compatible?
Bring back Telewest - richard make the trains go slower in rush hour & see what happens
Comment by qwertster on 17 November 2007:
I have the 20meg XL line and have been capped lots of times before i have downloaded the 3gig my cap suposibly requires. I know this because i had DU Meter running.
The cap is also supposed to only last 4 hours yet i was once capped between 8pm and 8:30pm and by 3am i was still capped. So i phoned virgin media.
When i contacted virgin media’s customer suport i then paid 25pence a minute to speak to a guy i could barely understand from india.
After speaking to his manager the guy said we can cap you when we want where we want and he wouldn’t give a time my cap would be removed. within 2 minute’s the cap had been removed.
I would also just like to say with this cap applied you will also see a massive increase in your ping which even though your cap maybe 5meg once it’s applied you will find brouseing/gameing ect like being on 56k.
In my area there is very little xdsl and the few providers there are would be just as bad as virgin media in there own ways. ( over the years i have subscribbed to them as a second line but none have lasted more then there minimum contract.
I see virgin media’s cap as a sneaky way to limit trafic on there network so they make/loose less money.
Comment by Splats on 8 November 2007:
THEY GOT ME NOW ALSO
THEY HAVE CAPPED MY 8MEG LINE TO 512
THATS HALF A DAM MEG WTF IS GOIN ON THIS IS THE WORST CAPPIN I HAVE EVER EXPERIENCED
CONTACTIN WATCHDOG AS SOON AS I FINISH THIS MESSAGE
Ps if you reconnect and connect a fair few times cappin is removed For some time yes it does come back but hey it takes a few hours for it to do it so if u need somethink then your be fine
Comment by Splats on 8 November 2007:
They got me also now peps
they have capped me to 512k 1/2 a meg now i know this can’t be right and we should do as a few people have said and contact watchdog this has goto be against the law has to be
lookin into yet another broadband provider
Comment by Gary L (Nottingham) on 6 November 2007:
I just got my Virgin Media switched on yesterday and while I am dissapointed to find out about this (obviously they did not tell me about it) I will just move my downloads to the early hours. So in the end I won’t be using any more or less bandwidth, then I would have been without this cap.