[Gllug] Off Topic: Backup ISP

[Christopher Hunter]

On Mon, 2011-03-28 at 23:01 +0100, Christian Smith wrote:

> And the problem being? I've no idea what runs to the house, but if the
> bandwidth is adequate, they could use string and tin cans for all I care.

The bandwidth to your home is severely limited - they use the cheapest,
nastiest coax they can find, which deteriorates rapidly when put in the
ground (it's not the right type, and isn't specified for underground
use).  
> 
> FWIW, I have virgin broadband via cable modem, and find it very reliable
> and more often than not get the 10Mb/s I pay for. I notice the contention
> in the early evening peak time, but that's to be expected.

No it isn't - that's symptomatic of an under-specified network.  They
claim 50 Mb/s service is available, so the poor saps paying for that
will really suffer when the contention kicks in.  They haven't got
anywhere near the capacity they claim to have, and have to resort to
"traffic shaping" (and then they sell the details of your browsing to
advertising companies - in clear breach of the Telecommunications Act).
> 
> I'd expect the cable service to be more available than an ADSL service,
> as if cable goes down, cable TV goes down generally. I've no experience
> with VM ADSL.
> 
> Regards,
> Happy Virgin Media Customer

You're the ONLY person I've ever heard say anything good about Virgin!
> 
> PS. I have had to deal with their customer service once, to report a
>     fault that ended being a local infrastructure fault. They answered
>     quickly, were transparent in acknowledging the fault, and service
>     was restored within the hour.

That's unique, too.  Outages around here last from days to weeks, and
usually result in VM losing even more customers.  In the days of Cable
Camden, take up of cable around here was close to 100%.  Since the VM
takeover, it has fallen to <10%.  This should give a fair indication of
their "quality of service" to the people in Muswell Hill!



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