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
April 4th, 2008 at 6:26 am
yes i think virgin media is a total joke advertising unlimited downloads/music and then they impose capping. i myself have more than 1 computer in the house and between 4pm and 12midnight its just impossible for all of us to surf the net even though we dont have anything downloading at all. come on Sir Richard branson get your finger out and sort the problem as your customers are NOT happy at all.
but also i must say these are not the worse as AOL are even crapper.
April 13th, 2008 at 12:00 am
I’ve just found out about this - absolutely disgraceful. How the hell can they get away with advertising an unlimited service? Crooks.
April 25th, 2008 at 12:55 pm
ntl/virgin suck.
i am just on the phone to them, on a premium rate number and they don’t know the difference between bandwidth and speed.
even their “superwisor” made the same mistake. incredible ignorance.
they expect to throttle peoples service and not allow them the facility to be able to monitor their own usage?
is that ridiculous or what?
ok well, i just got off THREE phones calls and finally got thru to “customer relations” and they offerred to reduce my internet only package from £18 to £10.
so even tho the customer “service” is outsourced indian rubbish, even tho they have reneged on my ntl UN limited contract, by throttling my connection back, even tho they have no facility for customers to see how much bandwidth they are using…at least it’s cheaper now.
i have been with ntl/virgin for nearly 2 years, so i don’t know what they can offer you, but try that.
btw, orange do 6gb capped for £12 a month. i’m going to see if they actually manage to put the £10 change thru, first (that could still get screwed up), before deciding to stay with them a bit longer.
cheers,
bill
May 4th, 2008 at 5:54 pm
I have had nothing but problems with virgin media since I went over last August from Ntl Freedon 2meg to their 8meg adsl service, had my line tested by bt, was capable of getting 4.7meg, NEVER have I had anything near that from virgin, best I get from them is 2meg, made loads of calls to their ‘help’ line to no avail, eventually got in touch with someone (a mr Dave Island) that could actually do something for me and finaly last week I had a decent connection, but as soon as I used it for one day, BAM!!! CAPPED TO 7K, the 8 meg service that I am paying for has been at 7k for the last week, basically dial up, Branson wants to stop pissing around absailing down hotels in Las Vegas (although I do watch that clip where he smacks his back off the side of the building just to make myself feel better about virgins terrible service). I used to respect the guy but he’s pi@@ing me off with his innaction on this issue, he cant be ignorant to the problem as everywhere you look online, Virgin are berrated by their customers, he needs to grow up and deal with these very real problems that the people who made him a multi millionare have with virgins service, or more like lack of service. Get rid of that rip off ‘you have to pay us to report a problem that you have with the service your paying for’ phone line, spend some of those millions upgrading the system and stop arsing around in his mid life crisis,
got my mac code yesterday, GOODBYE virgin media the worst most underhanded, thieving isp out there
hello BE broadband, nice to meet you. whats that no capping, unlimited downloading, would you like to go for a drink?? ;o)
May 6th, 2008 at 6:23 pm
i could be using bittorrent to download many things. not just illegal movies et al. how dare you filter bittorrent traffic surropticously when i pay through the nose for broadband that lags against the rest of europe. £15 for one meg a second it’s just simply embarassing compared to what speed i could get for the same money in france. and don’t even get me stated on asia. if people are desparate enough to leave a computer on for two weeks to download a movie illegally then let them. the last time i checked this was a democracy if we start filtering the internet we’re just becoming china.
May 16th, 2008 at 10:04 pm
Well wot can I say…. Whoever thought up this speed cap is as sharpe as a sponge!!! What aload of b*****s.
I, like most people, am paying to have the fastest broadband available to me and after they upgraded me from the 10mb package to the 20mb package all went down hill. £38 per month now wasted!..
If you dont pull your finger out of your ass and sort this out then you will have another £38 less a month going in to your account - Rippoff media!
Come on virgin… Take on board what people are saying to you and DO NOT OFFER A SERVICE YOU CANT DELIVER!.. And remenber that its the small people like us that makes you mighty… but piss off the small people and you will fall!
May 25th, 2008 at 11:04 am
Reading this only makes me more Pi@@ed off i cannot say more than im going to cancell my VM servised incl tv phone net . its an absolute discrase VM = Communist a@@holes !
May 29th, 2008 at 12:27 am
i’ve been with vm now for a year (contractually obliged to stay there).
the first 3 month’s my service was abysmal, download speeds of under 100kb streaming 100mb files took hours to buffer and web pages taking 10 mins plus to load, coming from 8mb broadband to the 20mb cable ofc i was shocked, i rang and emailed them at least 20 times each time being told my UBR was being upgraded or some lark, and that it would be fixed in a few days,
i finally got a half decent service when i rang them up and told them to sod off, i was changing isp. miraculously overnight my broadband was fine, then a few months later the same, but this time downloads where horrible, streams laughable and a constant ping of over a 1000ms in WoW, 2 mins delays on Ventrillo etc etc.
So i ring up broadband support several times to finally speak to a guy who was just about to quit who told me the truth, he said that VM had hugely oversubscribed the network and that they wouldnt be buying any upgrades to deal with it, meaning that everyone was being funneled through servers that could only handle half the amount of people, this was the reason my ubr was being fixed before, he then told me the most shocking bit, VM have no plans to even try to fix this untill next year AT THE EARLIEST??
the joke is i had faster dl speeds on a 6.4mb bt line than this rubbish, the max dl speed i have ever had on a 20mb line is 2.4mb a sec, my mate on the other side of the city on a 10mb line gets 3.5-4mb a sec??
now im throttled each and every evening from 4 till 2 am because i play wow and apparently the data transfer of Wow and ventrillo is over the top..
i wish someone would sue these theives for false adverting and breach of contract, i know i would join any such lawsuit.
yours one peeved vm “XL” customer
June 11th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
well ive been a customer for many years. basically since broadband came to the uk, but since the underhanded tactics of these communists. its looking like i will be taking my custom elsewhere.
they say brtain is a country of free speech, until you complain about something.
November 12th, 2008 at 9:51 pm
im suppose to get 10 mb broadband but every night from around half 4 -5 o clock
im lucky to get 1.6 -2.0 mb no good if you play online gamming because it buggers your ping rate up which virgin dont understand.
i find this is not good enough and when you email virgin media for answers the just send aload of crap back to you
Ive wanted to go to there VIP package of 20mb plus extra put i might as well throw my money in the bin