UK Goverment Petition: Virgin Media falsely advertising unlimited broadband and guilty of network oversubscribing

Categorized | Technology

UK Goverment Petition: Virgin Media falsely advertising unlimited broadband and guilty of network oversubscribing

Posted on 25 September 2007 by Stuart

As we all know broadband companies are throttling services more and more these days, but could some like Virgin Media be misleading their customers and breaking the law.

Back in May this year The Register reported that Virgin Media had quietly rolled out bandwidth throttling across their network.

Speeds on Virgin Media’s cable network will be limited between 4pm and midnight for traffic which Virgin considers “potentially abnormal”. Virgin says the top five per cent heaviest down-loaders among its three million customers will be affected - about 150,000 broadband users across the country.

In the past few months i myself have experienced some throttling for downloading a Linux ISO and watching online streaming video and podcasts, HD Diggnation, CrankyGeeks is 730MB per show. I watch a lot of podcasts and most in HD Quicktime format so four podcasts and my limit is up. Surprisingly other times i have been well under the 3GB allowed limit during the 4PM - 12PM time period and experienced being throttled? I always run a bandwidth monitor for stats and have the XL package from Virgin Media.

http://allyours.virginmedia.com/html/internet/traffic.html

Below is the Virgin Media Throttling Details

Broadband Size: M

During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: M package download at least 350MB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 1Mb, with their upload speed set to 128Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

Even if a Broadband Size: M user has their speed temporarily traffic managed, they can still download over 1,000 music files per day.

Broadband Size: L

During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: L package download at least 750MB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 2Mb, with their upload speed set to 192Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

Even if a Broadband: Size L user has their speed temporarily traffic managed, they can still download over 1,500 music files per day.

Broadband Size: XL

During peak times, the top 5% on the Size: XL package download at least 3GB of traffic each.

Any users hitting this amount during peak times (4pm till midnight) will have their broadband speed temporarily traffic managed – their download speed will be set to 5Mb, with their upload speed set to 256Kb. This will last for 4 hours from when the traffic management policy is applied.

Even if a Broadband Size: XL user has their speed temporarily traffic managed, they can still download over 4,000 music files per day.

For a Virgin customer on their M package downloading half of a single episode of DiggNation could see them throttled for up to a four hour period. Is that providing the service that the customer has been advertised and is in goodwill paying for, i certainly don’t thinks so.

Internet providers like Virgin Media are quite clearly oversubscribing on their networks and are resorting to throttling speeds to lower congestion. The problem is they are selling a product by speed and are not offering this speed at peak times (anywhere from 4pm to 1am) which means the service you are paying for is not the service you bought or was advertised.

With today’s broadband services, eg Games on Demand (up to 4gb per download), Podcasts (HD 730MB), movies on demand (up to 2gb in size) and music on demand (anything up to 300mb per album) ISP’s have severely underestimated customers usage and rely on this underestimate to continue to oversubscribe their networks and keep the status quo.

The problem now being is that the status quo is no longer maintained as we are now being throttled on speeds and blocking ports to restrict the speed we signed up for. The ISP’s are blaming pirates but as I have clearly shown this is not the case, it is normal useage for today’s bandwidth hungry services and it is unacceptable that our service is being degraded and this needs to be investigated NOW and THOROUGHLY as the state of broadband in the UK is now suffering.

Lee Sexton has started a petition of UK Broadband Companies at the official 10 Downing Street Government Website, Please, Please sign the petition as it’s not only Virgin Media customers that would benefit from an investigation.

Petition to: Investigate ISP’s oversubscribing on their network and throttling broadband. at the time of writing the Petition has over 1,341 signatures

Virgin Media refused to comment when contacted for a statement. Apparently according to Tom a Virgin Media employee P2PViNE spoke with they do not have a press department phone number or email address. Instead he advised us to contact Virgin Media at the address below by post? Maybe Virgin are trying to save even more bandwidth by only answering postal queries, who knows.

NCL
POBOX33
Virgin Media
Matrix Court
Swansea
SA7 9BB

Like always their customer service is top notch as here is the press contact details. Virgin Media Press

We have also contacted our MP and plan to contact the Advertising Standards Agency so stay tuned for updates, and do remember to sign the petition as you can make a difference it just take the effort of a signature. Let as many other UK broadband users know about this petition as you possibly can together we might just be able to ring some much needed changes and stop subscribers being blatantly ripped off.

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Tags | bandwidth, isp, Throttling, virgin media

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8 Comments For This Post

Pages: [1] 2 » Show All

sandy Said on:
December 12th, 2007 at 8:55 pm

service has gone downhill since virgin media took over
Chris Mayhew Said on:
December 15th, 2007 at 10:31 pm

So unhappy with Virgin Media right now!

I have only recently noticed this starting to affect me over the last week and i can tell you something, it’s ****ing me off so badly.

Take for example tonight, i went over to Direct2Drive.com and purchased a game, the game was 11GB in total size, which is big i admit but now after my first 750MB of the download im being throttled down to 60KB/S! I was running at 490KB/S at the start of the download.

It’s damn right out of order and i have a good mind to cancel the ****ing crap broadband service they offer.

Telewest should have never sold out to that loser Branson.
SpamBot Said on:
January 6th, 2008 at 12:48 am

I just upgraded to VM’s 20k broadband in sheer frustration, as I am now working online from home and kept getting timed out of webpages / losing my connection. I had noticed this problem before, but it wasn’t critical when I was ‘just’ a postgrad student.
The problem kept happening, and so I rang and complained. They are sending an engineer, but it looks as though I have fallen foul of this capping. The problem always starts between 4pm and midnight… sometimes losing the connection by 4.05! Sometimes I have been working only for 2hrs. According to what I have read I should be capped to 5mb, but what is actually happening is I LOSE MY CONNECTION because it is too slow for the online app I am working on! I can’t believe that I would be using 3Gb in that short a time on a very boring web app which is basically just deliving SQL queries to a database! This is the first place I have found that would let me just leave a comment without a lengthy wait for registration, and it has been infuriating reading forum posts where everyone assumes the only people affected will be using P2P and 5mb is ‘fine’!!!!
Sorry & thanks
Outofhere Said on:
January 29th, 2008 at 5:54 pm

I mean this and I generally find any vulgarity on the internet immature and silly.

But, Fuck Virgin Media.

When my contract ends, I will never ever go near anything with this brand. VERY pissed off when them, ridiculous speed caps. Can barely browse internet. If you want to complain, they’ll bullshit you to death on their 25p a minute line.

There’s plenty of competition out there and if Virgin think they can treat pay customers like this - Fuck em.
flikapotamus Said on:
February 8th, 2008 at 6:43 pm

Thanks Virgin for cocking up yet another good service. NTL was the best thing that ever happened to the net and then you got your grubby hands on it and ruined it. At first I thought I got rid of all the connection problems that I had at the start but now I see there are more obstacles to face. Let me explain, you use fibre optic cable right? after speaking to one of your teccy’s he said you have run tests and the cables are capable of running speeds of up to 200meg. So why throttle users? if your service cannot handle it why advertise as unlimited? this is clearly false advertising. As hd is taking of and users are becoming more technical with software and so forth, does it not occur to you to up the bandwith not reduce it? we as humans are progressing and this is leading to a greater technology and faster speeds, STOP RIPPING YOUR CUSTOMERS OFF!!!! common knowledge says if you get half a service you pay half a service. SORT THIS OUT my 4mg broadband is reduced to 1mg every night, do you not think that most people are at work during the day working hard to pay for your services? do you not think that the heavy usage is going to be at night between the hours of 6pm and midnight? no wonder so many people are switching companies. I leave you with a piece of advise before you loose any more custom, give the users what they pay for!!!! Stuart bennett
BANKROBBER Said on:
February 21st, 2008 at 7:14 pm

i have been with ntl/virgin for the last 7yrs…..i just cant beleive that after paying top money for the best speeds,i will be restricted on my usage!are they going to reduce the cost of my broadband between 4pm and 1am to the 5mb rate???….i doubt it,they will continue to expect me to pay the full 20mb rate.
i do alot of 3d rendering and sending of large files to and from other 3d users.some of these files can be as large as 100gb(!!!!) and take a while to get out to my users.now i am never going to compete with other providers and will lose out so much.
my free time in the evenings should be spent enjoying my hobby……but the capping could surely be done during the daytime when i am at work??
unlimited….i dont think so!!….i will seriously consider looking into a better ‘fair’ service from a more ‘listening’ provider
Aaron Said on:
February 28th, 2008 at 7:56 pm

Virgin is a complete joke for gaming. Goodbye!
boom Said on:
March 4th, 2008 at 11:10 pm

firstofall I thought that I had problem with my connection when it dropped to 1mb/s. I send a lot emails with question what happend…
One of the answers was:
Hi there,

Thanks for your email to Virgin Media. Thats all that you are testing
by doing this is your speed between your PC and that server . This is
Irrelevent if you are trying determine your bandwidth.

I would suggest going to http://www.download.com , downloading at least 6
files at the same time and adding together the data transfer rates from
each download. The total should add up to approximately 2 mb.

If you would like to talk about broadband speeds in more detail please
telephone us. There is quite a lot to the subject, we will do our best
to make you understand the way that the Internet works in relation to
speed therefore making your expectations more realistic.

I hope the above answers your query, however, should you need further
assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us again.

Just call the Broadband technical Support team on 0906 212 1111 - calls
to this number are charged at 25 pence per minute from a Virgin Media
land line with a 10 pence connection charge. Costs from other land lines
and mobiles may vary. Our team is on hand to help you 24 hours a day, 7
days a week.

Kind regards

Alex
Virgin Media Technical Support Centre

and second one was:

Hi there,

Thanks for your e-mail received 17th January. I am sorry to hear you are not happy with Virgin Media’s traffic management policy.

I understand that you are frustrated with your connection speed being limited during peak times, and feel that we have broken our terms and conditions. e do mention that we may monitor, and in the case of some areas implement traffic management.

In areas where we have a large number of users on our network (One of the best examples being London), a small percentage of high usage customers (Approx. 5% of our customer base) are limiting the bandwidth available to other customers. In light of this, Virgin Media introduced traffic management to better ensure consistent broadband speeds for the majority of our customers.

Traffic management can only be applied between the hours of 4 and 9, and under certain conditions. On your current package, if you download 800MB or upload 325MB or more during peak times, your connection speed is restricted. If you need to download or upload a large amount of information, I would suggest doing so outside peak time. Failing that, you can download tools with which you can monitor your downloads and uploads more carefully to prevent your service being restricted.

Kick ass virginmedia, sign petition!!!

Pages: [1] 2 » Show All

2 Trackbacks For This Post

Virgin Media Throttles Broadband: The True Facts About There Service | P2PViNE Blog
September 27th, 2007 at 5:43 pm
Virgin Media Investigated By The Advertising Standards Agency | P2PViNE Blog
November 9th, 2007 at 2:03 pm

sandy Said on:
December 12th, 2007 at 8:55 pm

service has gone downhill since virgin media took over

Chris Mayhew Said on:
December 15th, 2007 at 10:31 pm

So unhappy with Virgin Media right now!

I have only recently noticed this starting to affect me over the last week and i can tell you something, it’s ****ing me off so badly.

Take for example tonight, i went over to Direct2Drive.com and purchased a game, the game was 11GB in total size, which is big i admit but now after my first 750MB of the download im being throttled down to 60KB/S! I was running at 490KB/S at the start of the download.

It’s damn right out of order and i have a good mind to cancel the ****ing crap broadband service they offer.

Telewest should have never sold out to that loser Branson.

SpamBot Said on:
January 6th, 2008 at 12:48 am

I just upgraded to VM’s 20k broadband in sheer frustration, as I am now working online from home and kept getting timed out of webpages / losing my connection. I had noticed this problem before, but it wasn’t critical when I was ‘just’ a postgrad student.
The problem kept happening, and so I rang and complained. They are sending an engineer, but it looks as though I have fallen foul of this capping. The problem always starts between 4pm and midnight… sometimes losing the connection by 4.05! Sometimes I have been working only for 2hrs. According to what I have read I should be capped to 5mb, but what is actually happening is I LOSE MY CONNECTION because it is too slow for the online app I am working on! I can’t believe that I would be using 3Gb in that short a time on a very boring web app which is basically just deliving SQL queries to a database! This is the first place I have found that would let me just leave a comment without a lengthy wait for registration, and it has been infuriating reading forum posts where everyone assumes the only people affected will be using P2P and 5mb is ‘fine’!!!!
Sorry & thanks

Outofhere Said on:
January 29th, 2008 at 5:54 pm

I mean this and I generally find any vulgarity on the internet immature and silly.

But, Fuck Virgin Media.

When my contract ends, I will never ever go near anything with this brand. VERY pissed off when them, ridiculous speed caps. Can barely browse internet. If you want to complain, they’ll bullshit you to death on their 25p a minute line.

There’s plenty of competition out there and if Virgin think they can treat pay customers like this - Fuck em.

flikapotamus Said on:
February 8th, 2008 at 6:43 pm

Thanks Virgin for cocking up yet another good service. NTL was the best thing that ever happened to the net and then you got your grubby hands on it and ruined it. At first I thought I got rid of all the connection problems that I had at the start but now I see there are more obstacles to face. Let me explain, you use fibre optic cable right? after speaking to one of your teccy’s he said you have run tests and the cables are capable of running speeds of up to 200meg. So why throttle users? if your service cannot handle it why advertise as unlimited? this is clearly false advertising. As hd is taking of and users are becoming more technical with software and so forth, does it not occur to you to up the bandwith not reduce it? we as humans are progressing and this is leading to a greater technology and faster speeds, STOP RIPPING YOUR CUSTOMERS OFF!!!! common knowledge says if you get half a service you pay half a service. SORT THIS OUT my 4mg broadband is reduced to 1mg every night, do you not think that most people are at work during the day working hard to pay for your services? do you not think that the heavy usage is going to be at night between the hours of 6pm and midnight? no wonder so many people are switching companies. I leave you with a piece of advise before you loose any more custom, give the users what they pay for!!!! Stuart bennett

BANKROBBER Said on:
February 21st, 2008 at 7:14 pm

i have been with ntl/virgin for the last 7yrs…..i just cant beleive that after paying top money for the best speeds,i will be restricted on my usage!are they going to reduce the cost of my broadband between 4pm and 1am to the 5mb rate???….i doubt it,they will continue to expect me to pay the full 20mb rate.
i do alot of 3d rendering and sending of large files to and from other 3d users.some of these files can be as large as 100gb(!!!!) and take a while to get out to my users.now i am never going to compete with other providers and will lose out so much.
my free time in the evenings should be spent enjoying my hobby……but the capping could surely be done during the daytime when i am at work??
unlimited….i dont think so!!….i will seriously consider looking into a better ‘fair’ service from a more ‘listening’ provider

Aaron Said on:
February 28th, 2008 at 7:56 pm

Virgin is a complete joke for gaming. Goodbye!

boom Said on:
March 4th, 2008 at 11:10 pm

firstofall I thought that I had problem with my connection when it dropped to 1mb/s. I send a lot emails with question what happend…
One of the answers was:
Hi there,

Thanks for your email to Virgin Media. Thats all that you are testing
by doing this is your speed between your PC and that server . This is
Irrelevent if you are trying determine your bandwidth.

I would suggest going to http://www.download.com , downloading at least 6
files at the same time and adding together the data transfer rates from
each download. The total should add up to approximately 2 mb.

If you would like to talk about broadband speeds in more detail please
telephone us. There is quite a lot to the subject, we will do our best
to make you understand the way that the Internet works in relation to
speed therefore making your expectations more realistic.

I hope the above answers your query, however, should you need further
assistance, please don’t hesitate to contact us again.

Just call the Broadband technical Support team on 0906 212 1111 - calls
to this number are charged at 25 pence per minute from a Virgin Media
land line with a 10 pence connection charge. Costs from other land lines
and mobiles may vary. Our team is on hand to help you 24 hours a day, 7
days a week.

Kind regards

Alex
Virgin Media Technical Support Centre

and second one was:

Hi there,

Thanks for your e-mail received 17th January. I am sorry to hear you are not happy with Virgin Media’s traffic management policy.

I understand that you are frustrated with your connection speed being limited during peak times, and feel that we have broken our terms and conditions. e do mention that we may monitor, and in the case of some areas implement traffic management.

In areas where we have a large number of users on our network (One of the best examples being London), a small percentage of high usage customers (Approx. 5% of our customer base) are limiting the bandwidth available to other customers. In light of this, Virgin Media introduced traffic management to better ensure consistent broadband speeds for the majority of our customers.

Traffic management can only be applied between the hours of 4 and 9, and under certain conditions. On your current package, if you download 800MB or upload 325MB or more during peak times, your connection speed is restricted. If you need to download or upload a large amount of information, I would suggest doing so outside peak time. Failing that, you can download tools with which you can monitor your downloads and uploads more carefully to prevent your service being restricted.

Kick ass virginmedia, sign petition!!!

P2PViNE Blog

Categorized | Technology