Virgin Business Broadband

[deniser]

After my epic problems with BT I am considering switching to Virgin Business broadband for the reason that they have completely separate cables to BT.

Does anyone use them? What is the service like in terms of reliability/service/downtime?

 

[S-Marketing]

After my epic problems with BT I am considering switching to Virgin Business broadband for the reason that they have completely separate cables to BT.

Does anyone use them? What is the service like in terms of reliability/service/downtime?

I have found it to be fast and generally reliable. Although if I had a pound for every time I had to turn the router off and on again to get it working I would no longer need to be in business.

 

[mpbtech]

Depends on the service you go for, I had a client with managed service from virgin.. It was fast and never went down but it was expensive.

 

[deniser]

I have found it to be fast and generally reliable. Although if I had a pound for every time I had to turn the router off and on again to get it working I would no longer need to be in business.

Oh dear, this is exactly the problem I am having with BT. Does it take a long time to come back on?

 

[deniser]

Depends on the service you go for, I had a client with managed service from virgin.. It was fast and never went down but it was expensive.

It's £8K pa, a bit beyond my budget unfortunately!

 

[S-Marketing]

Oh dear, this is exactly the problem I am having with BT. Does it take a long time to come back on?

No, it really is a case of turning it off for 30 seconds, flicking it back on, and its then straight back online, usually for the rest of the day. My not needing to work if I had a pound every time may have been a slight exaggeration.

 

[deniser]

No, it really is a case of turning it off for 30 seconds, flicking it back on, and its then straight back online, usually for the rest of the day. My not needing to work if I had a pound every time may have been a slight exaggeration.

That's good, the BT one can take a good 15 minutes to come back on.

 

[Emcar Vending]

I've been using Virgin broadband for years and I cannot recall any downtime or ever having to reboot the router.

 

[sonnas]

After my epic problems with BT I am considering switching to Virgin Business broadband for the reason that they have completely separate cables to BT.

Does anyone use them? What is the service like in terms of reliability/service/downtime?

i think its totally dependent on your location.

i moved to virgin as i too had terrible downtime with BT. then virgin went down for over 3 months. in the end had to rely on the BT connection which by then had recovered and never went down. go figure..

 

[S-Marketing]

I've been using Virgin broadband for years and I cannot recall any downtime or ever having to reboot the router.

We always find this on the forum. Usually whatever product or service we talk about we find that everyone has a different experience when using it. Personally I used BT for years and never had a problem. I only started using Virgin as the cable was already here when we moved in, so it was easy to set it up.

 

[5wire]

We have home Virgin Media broadband and have had it since 128k was available under NTL. They're brilliant, their support can be a bit cack when you're on the phone but they are better than BT in my opinion when it comes to support.

In terms of the Broadband, we've had it a few times but it is to be expected for maintenance, I'm sure with businesses they must just re-route you through difference exchanges, just so it takes a little bit longer rather than cutting you off entirely.

The only drawback I've found is the upload speed in comparison to download, our 50mb BB downloads at roughly 5.5mb/s but we upload at approximately 800kb/s - 1mb/s, I assume this is better for businesses though.

Hope that helps from a domestic side of things and their service..

Edit: here is a speed test just done to London; http://www.speedtest.net/result/1328970900.png

 

[ScotComp]

I love Virgin Broadband, I wouldn't got to any other provider their network is just far better than BT.

The support is alright, but again better than BT.

 

[british steve]

We have a (so called) 20Mbps backup line, its runs at an average speed of 2.7Mbps. Because we live in a student area in Plymouth Virgin say they can't do anything about it and keep fobbing us off. I actually have a 3G mobile dongle that runs faster than our virgin connection. Have found that Virgins technical support staff are as Thick as Pig S*** having told us on one occasion to take our computer to a computer store and have them re-install windows for us - half hour later the broadband kicked in and started working again.

That said I have heard from other people that the service is fast so maybe it's just about where we live!

If anyone from Virgin ever reads this try sorting out St Judes in Plymouth because the service truly is a pile of Poo

 

[bediwin]

It's £8K pa, a bit beyond my budget unfortunately!

For that sort of price, it's a leased line you've been quoted for rather than a cable internet connection.

A leased line is a totally different animal - it comes with guarantees of availability for one thing and the bandwidth is not shared with anyone, so 20Mb really is 20Mb.

 

[m31]

We've been with Virgin Media (NTL) for years both at home and at work. I love them to bits Never had any real trouble. Don't know much about their support simply because I've never needed it really apart from a phone call to set up the service at the begining

We are now moving to new business premisess where I cannot have a cable so went for BT instead and the trouble already started. I am so not looking forward to it.

Give me Virgin cable any time!