Fibre Max 2 / G.Fast

[AliG]

Hi,

 

I have Virgin Media available at my house and have been using their 100MB broadband service since I moved in. The actual speed is around 108MB download, 10MB upload.

 

I had a phone line connected up last year, but it has never been used.

 

My Virgin contract was coming up for renewal and I called them up to see what was on offer.

 

I was paying £39.50 a month for the 100MB service. This included an unused phone line and basic TV package as it was cheaper to take these than broadband on its own.

 

They offered to continue my deal or increase my speed to 200MB for £45 a month on broadband only.

 

I told them that EE were offering me 300MB service for £43 a month plus £90 cash back. The EE service also has up to 50MB upload speed.

 

Their response was we don't believe that you will get the advertised speed. I said, fine then just cancel it. I do not believe that disparaging a competitor is a good marketing strategy.

 

TBH I was sceptical also, but I arranged for the new service to be installed the week before my Virgin contract ended. This gave me the option of sticking with Virgin if it was not as advertised.

 

The Openreach guy appeared as booked on Tuesday morning. I needed an Openreach Fibre modem in the house for it to work..

 

All connected up and it synced at the maximum 330MB speed immediately. The speed over WiFi is a little slower than the sync speed.

 

I reckon there is around 200m of cable between us and the cabinet.

 

So if you live within a short distance of the cabinet and the Fibre Max/G.Fast service is available I would give it a go.

 

My phone line will now pay for itself as I can switch between Virgin and phone line every 18 months or play them off against each other. In 18 months I will be eligible for the Virgin new customer deal which is currently 350MB for £39 a month plus £110 cash back. If they had switched me to this deal without the cash back I would have stayed with them.

 

 

[Dreadnaught]

Another important difference between full fiberoptic solutions and wired solutions, which I believe includes most of VirginMedia services that inherited the cable television coaxial infrastructure, is much increased reliability of the connection.

 

I learnt about this when arranging my FTTH solution for my forthcoming build.

 

I wonder if others agree with this advantage for fiberoptic.

[AliG]

I have heard people complain about Virgin being unreliable but our service was rock solid, the speed never wavered.

 

Sorry maybe I wasn't clear.

 

Fibre Max is still a FTTC solution which is confusingly named, BT now call it Fibre 100 and have stopped offering the 300MB service as far as I can see, preferring to focus on full fibre for this speed. Hence I was concerned it wouldn't actually achieve the advertised speeds. I believe it only works within 300M of the cabinet.

 

Openreach were originally planning to install this solution to most people, but have done a U-turn and now plan to try and upgrade people to FTTH.

 

I think around 2.5m homes have G.Fast available.

 

I read a couple of weeks ago that some people now claim to be able to do 1GB over copper.

 

 

Edited June 18, 2020 by AliG

[joth]

A few colleagues on Virgin Media have been quite disappointed with it in recent months of working from home. While they are on the fastest possible (download) package for their area, the fact is for our style of home working uplink and  latency is just as important, as we spend half the day on video calls. While ADSL derivative products aren't great for uplink speed (that is what the A stands for after all), cable-derived products seem even worse as the whole cable network was never designed for these sorts of traffic profiles. At least, that's how I explain it whenever they stutter and drop out.
I'm on plusnet with a very reliable 75Mbps and don't seem to have had a single instance of lost dropped video. (Even with 2 of us on calls at the same time). Decent multi node  Unifi Wifi probably helps a lot too.

[AliG]

TBF I had no such issues when I was on Virginmedia. I had the 100MB package which has 10MB upload speed. I had very low latency, I think my ping was 11ms.

 

It could be that Virgin is more congested in some areas or it could be that they have WiFi issues. I too am using a Unifi system.

 

I get very frustrated on calls with people at work or other people who seem to have little idea what internet package they have, how fast it should run, why it is poor etc.

 

In this new WFH world upload speed will be more important. If you are working on a VPN, uploading files to a server at work, on video calls etc, then traffic is much more two way than we are used to and a faster upload speed helps. I don't think many people even know that their upload speed might only be a fraction of their download speed. One guy in the office who is a bit stuttery on Teams said he only has a 1MB upload speed sometimes. He lives in the middle of nowhere in a big stone built house with slow internet and no wireless alternative. It couldn't be much worse.

 

I am sick of explaining to people how much their router placement/quality affects their speeds. They often think they need a new computer or a more expensive service. Maybe I should start a business where I come round to your house and see if I can optimise your internet speed.