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How is Gaming Performance Currently (July21) BR4 (Area 20?)

earthworm48
Tuning in

Hi All,

We've just upgraded our home network and router setup and were looking for an internet service to make use of it. We are currently with Zen who have been great but we can only get up to 67Mb, and looking up when we might get Hyperoptic or Openreach FTTP and its looking like at least 4 years away.

As part of looking I noticed Virgin offer 1Gbps to our area. Now I had Virgin once before in 2011 and it was terrible, speeds were unusable 90% of the time there was terrible jitter etc. I asked if this had improved in 2016 and people said it was just the same. My Wife had Virgin in her old home in North London and it was fine so I was wondering if it is still terrible in the BR4/Bromley area? If it was ok now I was tempted to try the Virgin 1Gb service but thought it best to ask in case they still haven't fixed the same old issues... a slower but more reliable connection is better than one that can only work as expected for 5 mins a day!

Thanks for any advice on this.

16 REPLIES 16

jem101
Superstar

It’s almost impossible to say up front, there are quite a few posts around this forum from users in the Bromley area complaining about the service (high and unstable latency etc.) but it’s a big area and very unlikely that every single subscriber will have the same  could find yourself connected to a street cabinet with a dodgy amplifier and have issues while your next door neighbour might be connected to a different one and have no problems at all.

All I can suggest is that, as the saying goes, ‘you suck it and see’. If you sign up, you have a 14 day cooling off period once the connection is commissioned, if it doesn’t perform to your liking, then you can cancel without any penalty.

You are absolutely right, of course, that a slower but reliable and stable connection is far better than a (on paper) faster but less reliable one.

BumbleVMTech
Forum Team (Retired)
Forum Team (Retired)

As Jem101 has said It’s almost impossible to say up front, out of personal experience I haven't had any issues around my area with this.  Probably the best way to proceed would be to join and you can always cancel within your 14 day cool off.  If you reply to my PM i can get someone to call you to assist further

 

Regards

Rich


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Adduxi
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Gaming performance will never be a good on DOCIS as xDSL, just by it's nature.  Good advice given about the 14 day trial however. Give it a go before you leave Zen. 

If gaming is really important, you might also want to consider keeping Zen alongside VM, easy done with a DualWAN router and you'll have the best of both worlds.

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Andrew-G
Alessandro Volta

Consider also what you need 1 Gbps for.  Gaming only uses about 3-5 Mbps up and down, so paying for a gigabit connection needs some other rationale.  "Because I want it and I can afford it" is entirely valid, but it is rather like buying a road car on the basis of a top speed that you could in theory hit, but realistically never will, so you may want to consider something like 200/350 Mbps rather than going all full monty.  You can easily upgrade VM connection speeds at any time in an 18 month contract (which starts a new 18 month lock in), but you'll be unlikely to get the best pricing for an in-contract upgrade.

If you do decide to give VM a trial, then setup a BQM for Zen now, and for VM as soon as connected, so that you have latency data to support and cancel/proceed decision during your cooling off period.  If you do then decide to cancel, don't be pressured into staying, or believing promises about network faults being fixed promptly, or agreeing to have a technician back to fix faults that take you outside the 14 day cooling off period.  Use your judgement, rather than rely on easily made and easily broken corporate promises.

A couple of other thoughts:  Virgin Media's customer experience is OK when nothing goes wrong, but if things go wrong or you need to speak to somebody, the contrast with Zen can be extreme.  Read customer reviews at ISPReview.   And the wifi performance of VM's hubs is weak, so don't be surprised if the VM hub struggles where your (presumably) Zen provided Fritzbox 7530 works perfectly well.  I'd be budgeting for a new mesh wifi system rather than rely on the VM Hub 3 or Hub 4 for wifi (as I have done myself).

madgeman
On our wavelength

hi - i'm in BR1, and latency is a dumpster fire. As soon as someone like Hyperoptic etc comes along, i'll be off. I've been a Vm customer since it was cable + wireless, but as a gaming household, VM is terrible.

I've attached my BQM - it's like this every day. Internet speed (i pay for 600/40) also is completely erratic - and actually Teams struggles (which i'm on all day), let along low latency gaming sessions...

madgeman_0-1636711615108.png

 

Hi madgeman,

Thank you for your post. I'm very sorry to hear about the issue you've been having. 

I have located your account and taken a look over this. 

We do have a reported SNR fault in your area. The reference is: F009430279.

The estimated fix date is: 15 NOV 2021 17:00

^Martin

madgeman
On our wavelength

Thanks Martin - appreciate you responding. 

I am - as always - sceptical, but will keep an eye on it

 

 

hortonj88
Fibre optic

Due to how DOCSIS works the latency will always be slightly higher than an Openreach ADSL/VDSL/FTTP connection.

The difference is usually like 5ms at best.


That's in an area where contention levels are healthy.

Best thing you can do is join and use the 14 day cool off period to judge it.

If it's bad then exercise your right to cancel without penalty during those 14 days.


If you do, be careful of call centre staff telling you it takes "14 days for the line to stabilize".

It doesn't, that's just to lock you in to a contract.



********************************************************
Left Virgin Media in 2020 after being fobbed off one too many times about over utilisation.


Now: BT FTTP 900/110 connected an ASUS RT-AC86U router.


https://www.speedtest.net/result/12098955842.png

just to confirm - this is still the behaviour in Area 20 - any p2p gaming is essentially an impossible task:

 

madgeman_0-1637759521400.png