[Gllug] Broadand in London without phone land line

[Christopher Hunter]

On Tue, 2010-11-02 at 20:37 +0000, Martin wrote:
> On 02/11/10 19:50, Richard LEGER wrote: 
> > Hello everyone, 
> > 
> > 
> > I am considering Virgin Media Broadband 10Mo package via Optic Fiber
> > to home which seems the cheaper deal with quite a sufficient
> > bandwidth for home usage.
> > 
> > 
> > I was wondering what you think about Virgin as broadband supplier or
> > if you would recommend a better supplier in London offering better
> > deal for connecting a flat to Internet where there is no land line
> > (so no adsl access).
> > 
> > 
> > I have tried 3G connection (from three.co.uk) but it is not working
> > very well and is limited in quantity and services.
> > 
> > 
> > There is no need for phone line as VoIP is used instead.
> > 
> > 
> > Recently someone mentionned he use https://www.bethere.co.uk
> > unfortunately such service require BT land line.
> > 
> > Thank you in advance for any advice or Internet reference you may
> > have on this question.
> > 
> > If you feel bother by this message simply ignore it ;-)
> > 
> > 
> > Cheers!
> > Richard
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> > 
> I've been with Virgin for the last 5 years. I can't say I have any
> reason to complain. I only had to call
> them once over this time. I get the speed I'm paying for. I don't have
> any experience with other ISPs though
> so you might wait for other opinions.
> 
> regards
> Martin

I had the misfortune to use Virgin's "20 Meg" service.  It seldom
achieved much over 7 Meg, and would occasionally give bursts to 19 Meg,
showing that it wasn't local limitations reducing the speed.  Their
"fibre network" is actually only partially fibre to the cabinet, and the
vast majority of it is crappy quality coax.  They have severe download
caps - your speed will drop to about 10% of the speed you get at best
for up to 24 hours.  This cap comes in at ~ 1Gb of data, so downloading
two Linux distros in a day isn't really possible.

They persist in falsely advertising "unlimited" internet and specious
speed claims.  They also sell browsing data to various "targeted
advertising" companies, so your browsing habits are broadcast to all and
sundry.  Your service will be disconnected for "violations" if you
either complain about their abysmal "service" or if you connect to any
filesharing site (they even classified Sourceforge as a pirate software
site).  They are entirely without either scruple or clue.

Their TV "service" is an appalling joke, too.  When our local cable
company was "Cable Camden" then "Cable London", the service was great.
They had well over 90% of the households around here because of the
non-existent off-air TV signal.  By the time Virgin had been here for a
year, they had just under 5% of the households.... 

For the sake of your sanity - avoid!

Chris 

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