Virgin Media to cap speed for heavy downloaders
8th May 2007
Virgin has announced a range of capping measures for heavy internet downloaders during peak hours. Virgin Media views peak hours as between 4pm and midnight, and they claim that this speed cap will only affect 5% of users from each tier of their service.
This differs from many ISPs who use FUP (Fair Usage Policy) to cap the amount actually downloaded. This has caused an uproar with many users who are signed up to unlimited broadband but in some cases have less download capabilities compared to a capped ISP such as Madasafish. Virgin Media have tried a different route; instead of capping the amount of downloads, after a certain level the speed of the connection will be reduced as follows:
- Virgin Media M: advertised as 2Mb/s, however users who download more than 350MB during peak hours will have their downstream reduced to 1Mb/s, and the upstream reduced to 128Kb/s for four hours.
- Virgin Media L: advertised as 4Mb/s, however users who download more than 750MB during peak hours will get their downstream reduced to 2Mb/s, and the upstream reduced to 192Kb/s for four hours.
- And the top service Virgin Media XL: advertised as 10Mb/s, but users downloading over 3GB in peak time will be reduced to 5Mb/s downstream and 256Kb/s upstream for four hours.
You can see Virgin Medias packages and our other top rated packages here
Member of the Internet Services Providers' Association
Member of the Broadband Stakeholder Group
8 comments
So Virgin are doing a fantastic job of ruining what was a fantastic service. In france and Germany you can have a 20MB service for only 35 Euros uncapped. The UK is now lagging behind in the global internet development stakes, whereas a year ago we were way ahead of the game. What happens when providers introduce VOD internet streaming of HD content direct to your home theatre PC. You need a connection speed of sustained 22-25MB for 1080p multi-channel audio x264 video ( a movie in this format is 12GB + ). So where does that leave capped users then???? We need to move forward not backward. IBM are testing optical networks using existing cheap fiberoptic technologies and can sustain over a 100GB PER SECOND. As copper is becoming more expensive shouldn’t “progressive” companies like Virgin Media be investing in a national Fiberoptic Upgrade to their cable network??
Steven Gosney, 20th May 2007
They do have a national fibre optic network. It is only copper from the cabinet to the customer’s house.
Simon, 16th July 2007
Ever since Telewest changed to Virgin Media the service has gone downhill. Telewest always kept in touch via email, but Virgin do not. I only found out about this capping scheme today and for the last week thought there where issues with the internet. I’m not a heavy user of downloading but this capping seems to have affected me.
I’m considering changing ISP’s very soon.
Steven Johnson, 17th August 2007
Richard Branson set to get heads rolling at the Rock!
Hope he has more success with this project than he has had with NTL and Telewest.
I have been a Telewest broadband customer for years but since the recent Virgin takeover things have become a real mess.
He fires thousands of staff and our services are now terrible, what was once a really good service provider is now hardly usable. In just a few short months they have capped our usage even though the adverts state clearly unlimited, changed the billing of phone calls from second to minute, now charge 25p per min to report a fault on its end, that’s if you are prepared to wait an hour to be answered.
I could go on all day about this but guess you get the picture. So the advice I would give to staff and customers of the rock is beware the light you might think that is at the end of the tunnel is just what’s left of your credibility going up in flames.
Mark Wood, 12th October 2007
I am a Virgin customer and my broadband speed has dropped to 326kbs. I am on the £24.99 a month package I have tried speaking to Virgin but without any luck. Virgin was top of my list if I needed anything. But now they have gone downhill.
Steve Noble, 17th October 2007
Absolutely disgusted! Being a paying 20MB customer I feel deceived. The only thing that should be throttled is Mr Branson’s neck!
Not only am I paying for 20MB service, reducing to 5MB after 3GB download, I am in fact getting even less than 5MB - I’m getting a pathetic 1MB - approx 80kb/s!!! Thanks Mr Branson. Couldn’t leave Telewest alone could you, you just had to mess!
Rob Barrett, 23rd October 2007
I completely agree, Telewest was one of the best ISPs around now well… As an online gamer i find that my speeds and ping fluctuates on a nightly basis. I constantly get thrown off games for too higher ping.
I have 4mb/s broadband which should work perfectly fine for all games.
In short…. don’t go with virgin media for anything as you’ll get ripped off and if anything goes wrong , they’ll never fix it as they only have one person on a phone in India dealing with complaints!
Matthew Dutton, 18th November 2007
I’m on an 8 MB connection with Virgin Media (non-cable). I have just been capped for a second week, but much worse than the others I have read about. After 4 o’clock it almost goes down to dial-up speed, about 0.08 MB (download speeds of 10 kb/sec). That line is shared between 3 computers, so when all three are online, each computer has the same as an old dial-up connection. Even during off peak times the line only runs at 2/3 of its normal speed. This is awful.
I think that I will ring up to complain as this level of capping is well worse than anything stated on their website (they state capping to a minimum of 0.5 MB).
Charlie K, 14th April 2008