Virgin Media Community

[map-ketone]

I just got off the phone after 45+ mins to Virgin.

I am working from home (obvs!) on a 100mb connection. As well as web development work all of my shared files including video projects and other large files and folders are handled via Dropbox, so clearly there will be lots of broadband activity both up and down.

I have found that recently my upload speeds have consistently been throttled to BELOW 0.5Mbs — while upload speeds remain reasonably high.

This is proving to be unworkable.

I spoke to Virgin out it and the lady on the phone seemed to have Gb figures about how much data had been uploaded  / downloaded (more than 60Gb uploaded I think she mentioned?) and said that it was a lot. Fine. And that 'the broadband connection will adjust because of that'... ? 

Is this right?
How do I go about changing this?

In desperation I agreed to increase my connection to a 200Mb account, as it is critical I am able to upload faster than what I have at the moment. But curious to hear what the Virgin media policy is — this restriction is making it impossible for me to work from home, and surely at this time VM should be doing everything they can to expedite home workers?!

Any tips and assistance would be gratefully received!

Matt

[map-ketone]

Updating my own post here — another day trying to deal with internet reminiscent of the dial-up era... in particular the upload speeds are making it near-impossible to do any kind of video conferencing, and especially web development work involving even minimal data transfer. See upload speeds captured today.

I am in the London area (Area 15).

Does anyone else out there find that their upload speeds (and download) has been dramatically restricted? 
Is there anything that can be done?

The last person at Virgin that I spoke to seemed to be suggesting that was perhaps something to do with heavy usage (ie they are restricting my account as we are using a lot of bandwidth), can this be true?

[gary_dexter]

No they don’t throttle speeds based on usage 

[map-ketone]

Thanks Alessandro...

Strange that the VM contact was mentioning that my usage was a reason for slow speeds...

what is a plausible explanation for the shockingly poor upload speeds then?

is this simply overburdened and under-delivered broadband supply, in which case then VM must be in breach of contract...

or is there another technical issue that might explain this?

[apcyberax]

all ISP design a network to be contended. There is never enough bandwidth to go around.

For example if you have 100mbps of bandwidth you might tell 20 100mbps services on it.
This is called contention and would be a contention of 20:1

This is done to save costs as under normal use everyone is not using the connection to the max at the same time.

If you need guaranteed bandwidth this is possible using lease lines but you are paying £1000/month.

Think of the network like the road network. Not everyone road can carry every car at the same time as that would never happen so they are designed to allow a small amount of people at one time.

The lockdown is a unforeseen event that can't be planned for and even if it was planned for the post would mean everyone would be paying leased line costs to support the extra capacity

[map-ketone]

Thanks for your time.

out of interest what is the contention ratio on VMs 200mb connection? Is that made clear anywhere?

I am aware of how consumer broadband works, and wouldn’t expect full up /down broadband speeds as advertised... but there has to be a reasonable level for service supplied for people paying a lot of money, and trying to make ends meet working from home. 

if it gets to the levels we were seeing over the last few days surely something must give, customers on restricted incomes unable to work due to a utility failure should be entitled to recompense...

[apcyberax]

No ISP will tell you that sort of information.

Also even Ofcom have suspended the dues for automatic compensation during covid