Virgin Media Community

[hashmo]

Hi guys,

I used to have "Unlimited mins + Unlimited data" SIM £32 a month.

Then in October 2021 I combined my Virgin Mobile with my Virgin Media Services and was moved to "Oomph Unlimited data SIM", so I just have one monthly payment now that covers my phone, broadband, mobile.

Since the pandemic started and I had to work from home I usually use my mobile in tethering mode to tether my laptop to.  (My home broadband really hasn't ever been good enough to cope with working from home and doing zoom video conferencing).  And my Virgin Mobile tethering has always been good enough for me to work from home and to do zoom video conferencing on my laptop - so I've just used that - unlimited data has made this possible of course!

But in the last few days (since Monday 22nd Nov 2021), I've noticed that the internet quality through tethering has been awful.  Zoom calls keep freezing, and the sound quality breaks up and my internet connection on my laptop (which tethers to the mobile) is intermittent.

Is anyone else experiencing the same thing?  Is there anything you can think of to explain this?  Maybe its a general thing or maybe its related to me moving to the Oomph package?

[Hayley_S]

Hello @hashmo, 

Welcome to the community, thanks for posting.

I am sorry to see that your new mobile SIM is having issues.

Have you ever tried using your wired connection from your Hub to your laptop? Rather than using your mobile internet?

Many thanks,

[hashmo]

Hi Hayley,

Thanks for this.  Yes laptop using broadband seems to be holding up for the moment so I am able to continue to work from home using that.

The main reason for this post though was that I was wondering why the performance through the tethering route using my virgin mobile connection has changed in the last couple of days. 

Thanks

H

[Hayley_S]

Hello @hashmo,

Thank you for letting me know this, I am unsure why the new SIM's internet was not working for you. Could be that the laptop was requiring a higher bandwidth for the work being done.

Many thanks,

[hashmo]

Thanks Hayley.

Hmm, I'm not doing any more bandwidth work on my laptop than I had in the past before Nov 2021, so I'm not sure if it could be that.  The whole tethering at home set up was working really well from Jan 2021 until about 22nd Nov 2021 (at the point my allowances refreshed).  Also note I was moved from a sim only package to oomph package (to be part of my other Virgin media services) around October 2021.

Is it possible this is related to the move to Virgin is making to Vodafone?  Vodafone has always been notoriously bad in my area.  I always had to make sure that my mobile provider was TMobile/Orange/EE in order to get good service.  When I first joined Virgin they were based on the TMobile network so I got good service through that.  Is it possible that I've been transitioned to Vodafone?

[Robert_P]

Was it a new SIM in October hashmo? If so, it will more than likely be on the Vodafone network. If this is bad in your area this may explain the problems whilst tethering, the coverage for Vodafone can be found here

Rob

[hashmo]

Thanks Rob.

I gave 789 a call to ask if i was still on EE or if I was on Vodafone.  They said I was moved over to Vodafone in April 2021 which was well before my issues started in Nov 2021, so I guess that's not the issue.

The lady on the phone took a look at the service status and said that there was some 4G work going on in my area and sometimes that takes up to a week to get resolved, so maybe that's the issue.

I ask how I could check this service status myself and she pointed me to this page:

https://my.virginmedia.com/faults/service-status

When I go to that page it shows me :

then when I click the 'coverage checker' link in the 'Mobile' section it takes me to :

https://www.virginmedia.com/mobile/coverage-checker

But there's no actual place I can see the coverage or any sort of status related to 4G in my area.  The lady on the phone said 'I can definitely see a yellow triangle with an exclamation mark and it tells me there is 4G work going on in your area'.  She couldn't understand why I couldn't see the same thing.  The only I have above is a link to O2.  Am I doing something wrong?

[newapollo]

Hi @hashmo 

I found this link to a Vodafone coverage checker if it helps.

https://www.vodafone.co.uk/network/status-checker 

[Tom_F]

Sorry for any confusion hashmo, as far as I'm aware the VM service status doesn't show mobile issues - if you're using the Vodafone network then the link helpfully provided by newapollo above would be the best one to use - if you zoom in on an area it provides quite a lot of detail.

Tom