Virgin Cable Major Outage

[Richard]

Thanks all,

Reason for wondering about reliability was that we had AOL for 4 years and although it went slow sometimes we never had an outage. Worst outage with Virgin was 6 days followed by this at nearly 3 days and various 1 day and 1/2 days, hours, and periods of slooowwwww.

I'm looking at BT who can do their 30MB fibre optic service round here for about the same price. Cheaper actually til I rung Virgin and they knocked ours down to meet it.

Now found my webspace again anyway so that's a relief.

[bikerhifinut]

Originally Posted by Shian7

Leave me out of it!

LOL!

I am in the unfortunate position of apparently living in "a remote rural area", BT's words not mine. We live in a village 10 miles as the crow flies from the centre of Middlesbrough. Needless to say we can't get anything like broadband down the BT line and the telephone itself is prone to noise. In the end I opted for a wireless connection provided by a small independent who specialise in broadband to rural areas. its expensive but i generally get 8meg on their "up to 10meg" deal. they aren't too great at customer service either. If we get a fault after 5pm or at weekends then forget getting hold of their tech team. But beggars can't be choosers. I just wish Virgin, Sky and BT would research who they keep bothering and try to flog broadband to as they patently can't supply it to us.

But at least I can now get internet radio without it stopping and starting while it buffers up.

Ho Hum.

[Richard]

Originally Posted by Shane

Que?

Shian7 works or used to work for one of the telecoms outfits



Originally Posted by Shian7
Leave me out of it!

LOL!

I am in the unfortunate position of apparently living in "a remote rural area", BT's words not mine. We live in a village 10 miles as the crow flies from the centre of Middlesbrough. Needless to say we can't get anything like broadband down the BT line and the telephone itself is prone to noise. In the end I opted for a wireless connection provided by a small independent who specialise in broadband to rural areas. its expensive but i generally get 8meg on their "up to 10meg" deal. they aren't too great at customer service either. If we get a fault after 5pm or at weekends then forget getting hold of their tech team. But beggars can't be choosers. I just wish Virgin, Sky and BT would research who they keep bothering and try to flog broadband to as they patently can't supply it to us.

But at least I can now get internet radio without it stopping and starting while it buffers up.

Ho Hum.






Ah yes, we're a few miles out of Nottingham but fortunately (when all is working) Diamond Cable did us many moons ago then NTL took over, now Virgin. Just down the road they didn't and they're still on copper and a slow exchange.

It may be that these companies follow each other around doing what they see as bigger more lucrative areas but in the end competing against themselves which keeps the price low. Surely there is a need for them to start picking smaller areas even if they have to increase the price to them. When we get the outages it makes me realize I'd be happy to pay more or have a slower service if it was genuinely reliable. The problem when it goes out is you don't know if it will be minutes or days.

[Richard]

Phoned BT and they don't do personal webspace with their packages, I'd have to pay hosting, so it looks like I'll stick with Virgin yet again, just one more time, which is what I said the last time

PC is playing up again, darn, it's only 7 years old and another mo board cap has just popped, locking up with more than a couple of pages on the web. Chanced my arm and fitted the 3rd 30p cap and yes, it lives again. Can't go on though, all is backed up on the terrable drive so a new computer is on the cards. What to get though, I'm not a gamer so apparently laptops are popular and PC world sell 9/10 laptops rather than desktops these days he said. Hmm, bet I couldn't ever fix one though, but it would be a bit quieter than this thing and I could plug a decent monitor and keyboard into it I suppose.

[colin.hepburn]

Hi Richard
Yes I think desk tops are fading out now
I had nine build to my spec about four years ago now but it is still up there as regards power and can still be upgraded to day to quad core 64 bit just by changing the possessor and adding another four GB of ram to the M board it also has a 1GB graphics card with HDMI output
My pc is close to gamer spec at time of buying but I too am not a gamer but it gives you a fast pc for normal use here’s the spec of it

[david]

Richard,
Do yourself a favour and get a Mac Mini and you'll live happily ever after!

Good for music too, although I had to laugh when a recent Hi Fi World tested a £600 power supply upgrade for the Mac Mini when you can buy a laptop with a built in BATTERY power supply ridding yourself of all psu problems for a small amount of extra outlay!
David

[Richard]

Thanks Colin and David, yes folk seem to agree that laptops are taking over many areas now and Mac are good. I'll get familiar and update to something before the old girl gives up!

[david]

On the Broadband front, Virgin has been playing up this week here in London with ridiculously slow speeds at times. I've happily used Sky before in the country with no problems bar one small outage.

But if I use one of those comparison sites, it shows that Virgin theoretically offers by far the highest speeds in my area, so doesn't seem worth changing.

The three things I hate most about Virgin are:

-Indian call centres

-the dreadful counter-intuitive Tivo box

-the Usain Bolt driven direct mail campaign that told me my Broadband speed would be doubled by July (we are still waiting!)

David

[david counter]

sorry but I'm struggling to see the point of the tivo, it doesn't seem to more than the V+, am I missing something?

I also hate Indian call centres and greatly dislike the Usain Bolt adverts that promise all sorts of things

wouldn't it be nice if enough people complained that Indian call centres could go

[Greg.]

I'm on Virgin and also dislike the Indian call centre when there is obvious bad communication and difficulty getting the call handler to understand my problem. In contrast, I had to call them the other day and the handler was totally understanding of my phone problem and easily made the necessary referral to local engineers. They have now visited me twice, made changes and my problem has got worse! Yesterday they told me they'll be directing a senior engineer to deal with my problem and thereafter I've heard nothing and no engineer has called. In this particular case, Indian call centre was great, subsequent British local engineering service has been ****!