Virgin Media have now been kicked well and truly into touch.
As of yesterday morning, I'm now with Be* on their Unlimited 24Mbps service.
Of course, due to the distance of my line, I'm getting nowhere near 24Mbps. I fully understand why this is, and expected as much.
But, it was still a very pleasant experience noticing the sync on my modem change from 3100/448 (not that you ever got those speeds), to 4400/1161 (and tests show I do get close to that).
But, as a gamer, the things that are most important are the upstream (for game hosting), and the latency.
So, here's how the first 24hrs latency to the 'test' servers on the PlayStation network look with Be* as my ISP, instead of Virgin Media:-
The green peaks (maximum latency) are still a little alarming. But, they're not a major worry.
Of course, the most important factor is the 'feel'.
Well, all I can say is, it's fantastic to be able to game again. I played CoD4 (PS3) online for most of last night. It felt like a totally different game. I was able to 'see' the other characters move around the screen in a much more fluid manner (rather than being jerky/laggy). Which made fragging people a lot easier. Comms was infinitely better - no more choppy/lost voices. And more importantly, my 'ping' would show up on the status screen as good/excellent.