Virgin Business Broadband - Am I making a mistake?

I am close to signing up for their 50 meg deal which comes packaged with a phone line with free calls to landlines inc 0845 & 0870 nos + the first 10 mins free to any UK mobile.
The main part of the package is the 3 to 5 meg upload (except between 18.00 and 23.00)

Does anyone want to put me off my plan?

Hi Steve,

I guess it depends on what you are paying for this package and whether you are in a Virgin area or not.

If you'd like any advice feel free to drop me an email - laura.marshall@lakesidetelecom.co.uk, let me know what you'll be paying, and I'll give you a bit of free advice!

Laura.

I know a few people with this mate, and it seems pretty good!

I use to be with Virgin Cable Broadband.

I found the equipment flacky at best and whenever I'd speak to them for help it was always my equipment that was at fault.

I've long since moved to a different supplier and am still using the same equipment (minus Virgin Modem) and everything works fine.

Personally I'd avoid at all costs.

Only if you were a fan of NTL!

I've got virgin at home, 50Mb (got a proper connection at the office) when its working its brilliant, the problem is over the past 12 months I've had about 6 lots of downtime. On more than one occasion it's been down for days. Their support isn't brilliant even if you can get through to them. 

If you can get BT inifinty and a decent ISP I would go for that.

One of the biggest things about having a virgin fibre connection is that it gives you two completely different technologies, I would consider getting virgin as your main connection and a very cheap ADSL connection from a good ADSL provider such as Zen Internet.  

Hi Steve

I am in Fleet and use Virgin Broadband I think 10meg plus phone line and Cable with the new Tivo. It has it's ups and downs.... I would love to be able to sing the praises but as one provider is usually as poor as the next....

Internet seems fine. Not too much in the way of downtime. Phone line on the occassions that it gets used is fine.

Tivo is O.K but clunky and the movie channel element pixelates all the time and is pi** poor. I know that isn't necessarily of interest to you but it has meant we have had to deal with the customer services or lack of an a number of occassions. It is possibly some of the worst I have have experienced. Apart from being in outer mongolia or the likes, it is always your or the equipments fault it is always a hassle to get put right after hrs of queing on the phone and the kit is pretty flakey as I think someone else mentioned. 

I find it hard to recommend even though we have had it for 10 years, just got used to being treated like a no mark I guess when it does go wrong...

Thank you for the responses. As usual, conflicting input, some say good, others bad.
David, I thought NTL were no more - bought out by Virgin. Ages ago, in Wimbledon, I had Telewest broadband which wasn't terrible.
Perhaps I should have mentioned that it is the Business package I am going for - I have heard the support is slightly better.
but the part that really attracts me is the 3meg (so they claim) upload speed. Does anyone know of another provider who can offer this for a reasonable price.

Can you hold out till June? BT is apparently going to have FTTC (Fibre to the Cabinet - 40Mb down up to 10Mb up) available at your landline number at the start of June. In terms of reliability BT's new service outstrips Virgin by miles - plus you can have up to 10Mb upload rather than just 3/5.

I might just hold out for that. I wonder what BT will be charging? They are not know for 'economical rates"!

I think it's around £30/month direct from BT for the business version. What sort of upload/download amounts do you do monthly?

Been with Virgin cable (formerly Blueyonder, formerly Telewest)  for 14 years. Cannot fault the internet service, very reliable and of course as it's cable you get the advertised speeds. I could probably save money by going elsewhere but I'd rather pay for reliability.

It seems fine... 

All of these comparisons have one trap in common: Broadband is heavily location dependent. 

Julian Wellings has good experience, and so had I when I still lived in Islington. But I have clients here in Exeter and their Virgin cable is shaky at times.

I also beleive that the socalled business version of BT services is only a marketing label to allow them to charge more. Absolutely the same juice as BT non-business stuff. 

Upload speed: 3-5 MBit/s is generous, don't you think, what do you really need 10 MBit upload for. Streaming video to many subscribers in a commercial style? Runnng an own (web)server from your premises?

nah, if you're in a digi cable area, you'll get the speed, that's it.  Sure it might go down from time to time but that's ok - it's a good excuse to continue writing another chapter of ones book!