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[Geekofbroadband]

We can leave TalkTalk for free because of their new price changes it couldn't come at a better time because they are awful.

So the main reasons why I am considering Virgin is because of their faster speeds, cheaper for calls and broadband, and the unlimited calls to landlines and most importantly mobiles.
There's only 2 ISP's I know of who have unlimited calls to mobiles which is TalkTalk and Virgin. When we were with BT Infinity our bills were over £100 a month because of calls.

So it looks like my options are to try Virgin Media's 300Mbs download and 20Mbs upload, we have never had cable before so it would be a new installation and our area has recently been upgraded but I know about DOCSIS and I am a bit worried I wont get anywhere near my speed or it being awful because of utilisation.

And my final option would have been Plusnet, people say they are like BT Infinity but a bit better because of their "prioritization", they have 100 minutes for mobiles which helps but I would still have to buy my own modem/router and hope my speed doesn't drop more because of crosstalk and being on an ECI cabinet it doesn't help. This is the way I see it at the moment:

Virgin Media:
Better Cabling (Supports higher speeds, doesn't suffer from crosstalk, speed doesn't drop with distance)
Super Hub 2AC is actually a decent modem/router combo, even better Super Hub 3 releasing with 300Mbs next month)
Free mobile calls
12 month contract
BUT could be bad if utilisation is a problem...

Plusnet:
Only upto 76Mbs (Actually 65Mbs due to crosstalk)
Overall cheaper
Have to buy a new modem/router combo
Can't see speed increases on VDSL anything soon
18 month contract

I know its a lot, nice to see your opinions 
 

[Wilt]

Just to add another option, Sky include mobile calls in their Sky Talk bundles.

[Geekofbroadband]

Just to add another option, Sky include mobile calls in their Sky Talk bundles.

Hmm thanks but I see Sky use the "Standard Profile" instead of the Speed profile and its quite hard to set up your own modem/router?

[Wilt]

Not sure about the fttc dlm - but yes, difficult and against the terms and conditions to use your own router. And unfortunately the SR102 isn't great.

Just thought I would throw it out there after seeing your mobile calls requirement.

[jid]

Out of interest, what issues are you having with TalkTalk?

[Geekofbroadband]

Extremely terrible customer service as in the call centres won't even think for themselves and stick to their scripts saying the same thing over and over again, the forums are more than useless when they reply if they ever reply, and I was stuck with their faulty router until they sent out a replacement which was also faulty so I bought the previous talktalk router which claimed to be better than BTHH5 and SH2AC and it didn't even come close.

[mrpops2ko]

I moved away from VM so I could use more upload, you'll have to deal with VM's terrible upstream policy. http://my.virginmedia.com/traffic-management/traffic-management-policy-thresholds.html

Apart from that, it works out pretty well from what i've seen. In areas that have both VM and FTTC, I find you don't get as much utilisation issues (i've generally only seen that in areas where only VM is available but it can happen if everybody in a certain area favours VM).

The download speed is great though. I maxed mine out all the time and it was fine for me. You don't have to deal with the dreaded DLM interleaving either (although g.inp kinda fixed that).

I'd say give it a shot. I was with VM for 15 years. The great thing I think about VM is how much you can exploit them when you are out of contract. At one point befor I left due to having concurrent year on year negotiated price drops, they were willing to give me the fastest broadband (solo product) at £25 per month. Just over 8 months on since I declined that offer, I kinda of think I maybe should of taken it up. I do like having unrestricted upload though.

[Ronski]

Do you not have mobiles with inclusive minutes? We never use our landline for calls as we all have enough inclusive minutes on our mobiles.

[guest]

IME it depends who ran the cable network in your area before Virgin.

If it was Telewest then you're golden as they did things properly.

If it was NTL then its a pure lottery - around here you can see lots of examples of "quality workmanship" like the exterior junction box ty-rapped to the next-door neighbours drainpipe, there's thousands of installs like that all over Leics - or the one I saw last week where the cable went along the top of the public pavement for a metre or so, up somebody else's wall, along the top of a badly rotted wooden fence (somebody else's again), up over the branch of a tree and finally along the top of a driveway.

[Chrysalis]

Thank you rizla, someone else who can confirm the Leics cable network is in a bad state.

[door_bell]

I live in Notts and had Virgin for a LONG time - my experience was a mixed bag. This is ex-NTL territory.

Downloads and general stuff were trouble free. I can't recall the connection ever dropping for more than a few minutes over the course of the years I had it. Maybe twice that I was aware of?

The deal breaker for me is the fact I work at home quite often and relied on VOIP (mainly Lync back then). It was TERRIBLE. Any time of the day/night, I rarely if ever had a call that didn't dip into the red indicator and made calls consistently rubbish and really frustrating.

I tried a replacement "super" hub, set it to bridge mode with my own router, cabled connections to all my devices - tech support indicated no issues. My levels were all spot on and speed tests shown no obvious congestion with a low ping to boot.

Utilisation wasn't an issue as I was the only one there, so it's not like I was saturating the up or causing my own problems.

Came to the conclusion after using someone's connection up the road that they had EXACTLY the same issues (they kindly let me try using the wireless to their hub). Same.

I moved to Plusnet when FTTC was installed at the top of my road - I'm at the top end of connections (about 300M apparently) and I've not had a bad day since with anything (VPN, TV, Steaming, work, calls).

I think it's sometimes luck of the draw, but I'd be reluctant to go back with the higher speeds they are offering now - I can only see the networking being worse now. I do wish I could have the higher speeds back on the downstream, but 20 upload is just peachy 

Let us know how you get on.

[Geekofbroadband]

We just switched back to BT Infinity in the end only 12 month contract now I will be looking at the Netgear D7800 

[Black Sheep]

Wise move ….. but I'm biased of course. 

[William Grimsley]

Sorry, this is an old thread but is it actually possible to get line stats and upload them to MDWS with the Virgin Media Super Hub?

[Dray]

Not really no, for MDWS you really need a Broadcom DSL chipset. Cable isn't DSL.