RM3 9NF (Romford/Harold Hill area) awful upload speed today

[Scottyboy99]

Hello, is there an issue in the area Rm3 9nf. Noticed yesterday when doing some uploads things seemed slow. Speed tests this morning confirming that. Download seems ok but upload speed (which is usually around 50 mbits) is all over the place ranging as low as 1 mbit and 10-15 mbits at best. Tried various speedtest servers, rebooted hub. No change. Checked Sam Knows on a wired/ethernet connected computer to eliminate wifi being an issue and this returns similar low upload speed results

[Scottyboy99]

There was a virgin guy fiddling about in the street cabinet which I suppose explains the drop outs. He appears to of now gone and things are no better. What is of concern is that he said he was reacting to a fault report down my road but for a completely different door number. Can a staff member get more info on what is going on? Is this still being worked on?

As a side question, my router upstream channels are all at QAM16. I know the target is QAM64. I know this is wishful thinking. However just say Virgin fixed whatever SNR is going on outside my property, do the QAM levels recover naturally on their own in the router stats or does the thing have to be rebooted (which is quite an inconvenience when working from home)?

[David_Bn]

Good Afternoon @Scottyboy99, thanks for your post and I'm sorry to hear of the issue you've been experiencing.

There does appear to be a local area issue at play and this is estimated to be resolved on 13/03 at 09:00.

We apologise for any inconvenience this may cause you and will do all within our power to have this resolved for all effected users.

Kindest regards,

David_Bn

[Scottyboy99]

Hi David,

Thank you. I sincerely hope so. Even though every upstream channel shows QAM16 in my router stats during latter half of the week the uploads, whilst still erratic and still losing packets, had been close to 52 m/bits quite a lot of the time. However today it has nosedived to between 5 and 20. Right in time for my weekly youtube upload of my son's football match. Meaning it has taken hours upon hours. Not too impressed.

Will be even less impressed if we get to tomorrow and the resolution date gets pushed out by yet another week which seems to be par for the course with Virgin. You are not delivering on an essential service and judging by the vast amount of other posts in this forum being aware of and sniffing out problems on your network is not up to scratch. Upload speed is also big part of your advertising and with so many problems can possibly be construed as dangerously misleading. Problems crop up but the failure to tackle these things in a reasonably time frame is not excusable. With things like City Fibre gaining momentum and BT delivering FTTP to more and more homes (sure to be an option for us in the very near future) I think Virgin needs to be seriously up its game.

Thanks, Wayne 

[Paul_DN]

Hi Scottyboy99,

Thank you for reaching back out, we are sorry your usual YouTube upload of your Sons Football match took a lot longer Due to the area issues which is an SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio), this is an intermittent fault caused by a damaged or exposed cable making noise on the network, this can take a little while to locate and as our cables are often under Roads and Public footpaths we do generally require a permit from the local council, this is what delays the fix and the reason all fix times are only estimated and can change.

The estimated fix time is 17/03/23 @ 09:00.

As this is an Intermittent fault you can try pausing some devices using our Connect App, this will free up Bandwidth for the devices you need to us.

Apologies again for any inconvenience caused by the fault.

Regards

Paul.

[Scottyboy99]

Hi Paul,

So the fault is definitely due to exposed/damaged cabling or is that just guesswork? I do think actually not a lot is being done. I never see Virgin engineers in the area. So I highly doubt it is being investigated unless concrete proof can be provided in some way. Suspect the date keeps getting pushed back just to try and stave off the discontent a while longer. This needs greater priority as this has gone on too long. Judging by the amount of posts in this forum it seems the Virgin network is in a shoddy and badly maintained state. The internet now plays a crucial role in everyday life and many people now work from home making it even more important.

Given that I have only been with Virgin a few months and the installer cut through a load of existing cables and now this I think Virgin should be trying much harder to sort this out.

Thanks, Wayne

[Kath_F]

Hi Wayne, 

We appreciate your patience on this one. 

Whenever there is a fault raised, the teams will 100% be working on things. Sometimes the issues are further afield so just because you're unable to see anyone working on it, it doesn't mean we're not. As mentioned by Paul, a lot of the delay is down to needing permits and permissions which at times does have a timescale set by your local council and not something we can expedite. 

Hopefully there will be no further pushbacks but pop back here to let us know how things are after the new estimated fix time. 

Apologies once again. 

[Scottyboy99]

Did anything happen on the 17th? I really would like some more detailed colour on what has been going on and what steps the virgin engineers are taking. As a customer I feel entitled to know this rather than vague references and estimates.

Thank you

[John_GS]

Hi @Scottyboy99 

Thanks for coming back to us. I am sorry it's not resolved for you. 

I have checked the ticket and the estimated fix date is the 22nd at 11am. Please monitor the service and report back if still experiencing issues after this time.

Best wishes.

[Scottyboy99]

Hi John,

Did this get fixed or am I going to be getting another blah blah blah estimated fix date is xxxxxxxxx?

The upload is still erratic. Although seems to be mainly be around 52 m/bits it doesn't always hit this. Often in speed tests it bursts to 50+, drops away to under 20 then recovers halfway to steadily increase close to 52 by the end. What is strange is that in my router stats modulation for all upstream channels is still QAM 16. I am not technical but I didn't think it was possible to have an upload speed as fast as I see with that modulation. But I maybe wrong on that. Anyway some more detailed information would be appreciated. I am tired of the vagueness and as a customer entitled to know far more. The engineers are obviously not investigating in my opinion. There have been more sightings of the loch ness monster than there are Virgin engineers

thanks

[Akua_A]

I have had a look into this for you @Scottyboy99 

I can confirm the issue is still ongoing as the current estimated fix time is currently 31 MAR 2023 at 12:00. I can assure you, our team is doing its best to resolve this issue for you. Please bear with us. If the issue persists after the estimated fix time, we will take further steps.

Thanks,