Virgin Media denies overselling broadband in Bristol

Friday, October 19th 2012 by Paul France

Slow broadband in Bristol not down to overselling, insists Virgin Media

Slow broadband in the Bristol area is not being caused by overselling, Virgin Media has insisted.

Virgin Media has insisted reports of slow broadband in the Bristol area are not the result of overselling.

Many customers said their cable broadband connection is unusably slow at peak times - during the evening and at weekends - and claimed they were informed by Virgin Media staff that the service has been oversold in their area.

According to the Post, the most affected parts of Bristol are the BS6 and BS7 postcode areas, which include communities such as Bishopston, Cotham, Lockleaze and Redland.

Although the cable company admitted its broadband network is underperforming in some locations, it insisted a fix is in the pipeline.

Speaking to the newspaper, a spokeswoman for Virgin Media explained the issue has been caused by the need to carry out upgrades on network equipment known as nodes, which have sufficient bandwidth to serve the customers connected to them.

"To give some context, our network in Bristol has approximately 230 nodes overall, but four of these are in need of an upgrade," she said.

Remedial works are currently taking place and Virgin Media expects them to be completed by December at the latest, the spokeswoman added.

Comments (12)

simon

19th October 2012

its the same every year at this time of year- september to january (last 3 years un-useable internet in st andrews at peak times) engineer told me they have oversold and need to adjust the nodes at the bristol hub . but why it takes months to do. customer sevices are a total joke how can someone in india fix a problem in bristol lol

terry

22nd October 2012

i phoned customer services saturday and was told i did not have a problem!!!!!!!!!
download speed of 0.01 Mb sec.

thats not a problem?????

Adam

28th October 2012

Virgin Media are peddling the same announcement about this problem not being over selling, As a long sufferering Brisol BS7 VM subscriber I'm going to call BS for their announcement which has obviously been written by Virgin Media PR.

When you state "..it‘s important to note that the issue is not caused by over subscription to our services. We have plenty of capacity in the area thanks to recent large scale capacity upgrades and network optimisation."

1) Why do the problems occur during typical peak usage periods?

2) If there is 'plenty of capacity in the area' why the problems?

3) Every single support request I've raised has ended with the support staff member explaining that my area is 'over provisioned' and until there is cat c network work which may involve digging up roads etc then there is nothing that can be done. Errrm isn't over provisioned another term for over subscribed or over sold??

Anyone reading this who is thinking of subscribing to Virgin Media for their 'superfast' fibre optic broadband should realise they may actually end up with an unstable 0.15Mb with up to 20% packet loss which is what I have been having to use.

Louise

1st November 2012

I laughed after a new staff member posted today.

"Some parts of the Virgin Media network are indeed oversubscribed or as we call it overutilised. We have been giving out fault references for this issue for several weeks in this thread." - Steve Brett

This was the post from the Forum Manager regarding Bristol alone. Also as it was stated in the Bristol Post -
"Whilst demand for our services in Bristol is high, we’re already upgrading our network as we work through our speed doubling programme. So it‘s important to note that the issue is not caused by over subscription to our services. We have plenty of capacity in the area thanks to recent large scale capacity upgrades and network optimisation." - Mark Wilkin

What a load of lies. :)
DO NOT sign to VM. They will sign up so many more people than the tech can handle, give you no warning, and then give you a resolution date of whenever they have time to fix it.. ohhh.. in say.. half a year! Even now they can't even get their story straight. I have since joined a new ISP. Byebye.

Rich

6th November 2012

I first raised the issue linked to over-utilisation of their network back in February (as all the evidence pointed towards this - ie works well at 3am, but not when most people are awake and want to use their services), when I was starting to find their network unusable. We are now in November, and alas, the situation has only got worse. What have they been doing during these 9months?

Can't beat a bit of pro-active customer support.

I've foolishly been a VM customer for over 5 years, and as Simon mentions above, each year you enter a battle with technical suppport to try and get services restored - normally it would work well for 9months, and then the new student intake occurs, and services are shocking. This year, issues were evident back in February, and thats well before the student intake...

Well at least after 8months, VM have finally admitted that they are at fault - just hope their resolution time is a lot quicker!

jason

23rd December 2012

virgin are a joke... and a cristmas cracker grade one at that

it is oversubscription! if it wasnt over subscribed it wouldnt have a capacity issue all over bristol
EVERY week i get a letter saying "over 80% of your area is connected why not join them" addressed to the householder / anybody the area has been slower than dial up for months so stop selling it you utter... cant wait for infinity even with its throttling it will be a 3840% increase in speed if it even gets close to its maximum

paul

13th January 2013

guess what guys not just bristol niether i am in bolton bl4 area and had same problem since june2012 and i get all same things has above but they still want there money at end of the month and if you cancel direct debit god forbid they charge you ,its a pity we cant charge them for all times we haven got what they say we should have lol
there are loads of complaints of this on there forums http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Up-to-120Mb-Speed/bd-p/100Mbspeed its getting worse

Paul O

28th January 2013

London SE27 - the same issue, too many users at peak times - up to 120meg runs at about 5! I'm told that a network upgrade is taking place now and the capacity issue will be resolved; not sure if I trust them or believe the sales spiel.

I have noticed BT doing a lot of work around here, so maybe Infinity is the way forward. Sir Richard, you're letting paying customers down!

Elaine

18th February 2013

Here in BS11 Lawrence weston i have had slow speeds for about two years, I am meant to be getting 45mb but im lucky if i get over 5mb!

At first i used to call them all the time, But now i dont call as much as noone listens! Im told the area is over subscribed and thats that!

But at least once a week i still see virgin media vans in my street installing a new customer!

Its disgusting, I have now had to put in a Talktalk 1mb connection to help out as virgin is so slow and unreliable!

I wish someone stuck up for the little fish like us as i feel so helpless.

matt

25th February 2013

Also in Lawrence weston , with supposed speed of up to 60mb !!!! Actually running at less than 1mb for three days now !!!! Feel like i'm being robbed .

Elaine

27th February 2013

Over 130 pages of complaints over on the virgin forums.

matt

1st March 2013

Here we go again , it's the weekend so my 60meg !!!!! connection becomes less than one !!!! BE WARNED , DO NOT SWITCH TO VIRGIN BROADBAND IN BRISTOL !!!!

14Mb up to	£10 per month	Go
16Mb up to	£17 per month	Go
60Mb up to	£5 per month	Go
16Mb up to	£2.99 per month	Go
14Mb up to	£3.25 per month	Go
15Mb up to	£1.20 per month	Go

Virgin Media denies overselling broadband in Bristol

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