Virgin broadband on its own - how much? Also, Vonage any good?

I had NTL broadband a few years ago and stopped it.

Now I'm thinking of going back to cable broadband with Virgin but I
don't want their phone or TV - just the broadband.

Their website doesn't give any details of the price for broadband on
its own. Anyone signed up lately and can tell me what the basic
service costs?

Of course I will ring them and ask but I want to know what price to
aim for if there is any scope for negotiation!

I'm planning to ditch my BT line and associated ADSL broadband from
Tesco and use Vonage via Virgin broadband for my phone. Anyone got any
comments on Vonage?

Thanks

From what I have read online Virgin are basically the spawn of Satan.

I can recommend Eclipse from experience.

http://www.eclipse.net.uk/index.cfm?...rcode=WILLIAM1

Be also sound good, from online reviews.

Before that I had Toucan, who were utter s****.

And before that UKOnline, who have good support, once you get through.

"Murmansk69" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:00cb61bb-f928-4b6f-99dc-(E-Mail Removed)

[snip]

: : I'm planning to ditch my BT line and associated ADSL
: : broadband from Tesco and use Vonage via Virgin
: : broadband for my phone. Anyone got any comments on
: : Vonage?

Not printable ones.

Ivor

Like the other chap said I would be careful about virgin media. Many a
time have we heard no this group of how there service used to be good
but as soon as virgin took over it always been problems. Second there
standalone broadband service is more expensive on it own that as a
package. I have had a look, but it looks like they have removed the
price. But if i remember correctly when I was looking into their 20mb
Broadband, standalone was £37 per month but together with phone was
only £33. Like I said they had very bad reviews so I never signed up.
BT may be more expensive but you do have a better level of customer
service and as for your ADSL there is a lot more competition in the
ADSL market than I cable so you could get a better deal with them and
although you may get a slower connection speed than cable, but a in
theory should be a lot less hassle.
Signing up for a voip provider as a primary phone line is not a great
idea. If you have any of the many problems that many people have had
with virgin media then your likely to be without phone for a good few
months. As for call charges they are probally cheaper, and as a
company I have not heard much bad news about them, but then again I
have not had any great news about them.

>"naza" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
>news:b549d403-b641-4658-9df4->(E-Mail Removed)...
>Like the other chap said I would be careful about virgin media. Many a
>time have we heard no this group of how there service used to be good
>but as soon as virgin took over it always been problems. Second there
>standalone broadband service is more expensive on it own that as a
>package. I have had a look, but it looks like they have removed the
>price. But if i remember correctly when I was looking into their 20mb
>Broadband, standalone was £37 per month but together with phone was
>only £33. Like I said they had very bad reviews so I never signed up.
>BT may be more expensive but you do have a better level of customer
>service and as for your ADSL there is a lot more competition in the
>ADSL market than I cable so you could get a better deal with them and
>although you may get a slower connection speed than cable, but a in
>theory should be a lot less hassle.
>Signing up for a voip provider as a primary phone line is not a great
>idea. If you have any of the many problems that many people have had
>with virgin media then your likely to be without phone for a good few
>months. As for call charges they are probally cheaper, and as a
>company I have not heard much bad news about them, but then again I
>have not had any great news about them.



No problems with Vonage, remember they have a feature where you can set a
number all calls should go to if you broadband connection is down, such as a
mobile number.

On Sat, 9 Feb 2008 14:07:48 -0800 (PST), Murmansk69 wrote:

> Their website doesn't give any details of the price for broadband on
> its own. Anyone signed up lately and can tell me what the basic
> service costs?
>
> Of course I will ring them and ask but I want to know what price to
> aim for if there is any scope for negotiation!

Also amazed that I can't find their broadband on it's own prices on their
website.

I'm on their "L" (4Mbps) package. It's costing me £25 per month. Broadband
only - nothing else - like you I don't want anything else. I think that
perhaps I'm paying a bit too much :-(
--
Regards,

Hugh Jampton

naza wrote:
> time have we heard no this group of how there service used to be good
> but as soon as virgin took over

Argh. Virgin did NOT take over ntl, it was the other way round....

(and the service got neither better nor worse IMHO. YMMV).

Beware of Vonage, they 'line rental' is a rip off,
the equipment they provide is locked to their service and
their call prices / packages aren't very competitive.
Not to mention they were / are on verge of bankruptcy for ages due to court
case in US.

For basic VoIP service look no further then sipgate.co.uk, who will give you
FOC UK geographical No.,
then you can add / use other providers depending on your requirements.
You will get more info on uk.telecom.voip..
Regards,
Martin

Hugh Jampton wrote:
>
> Also amazed that I can't find their broadband on it's own prices on their
> website.
>
> I'm on their "L" (4Mbps) package. It's costing me £25 per month. Broadband
> only - nothing else - like you I don't want anything else. I think that
> perhaps I'm paying a bit too much :-(

Don't forget that 4Mbps is going to 10Mbps in the next few months.

"Murmansk69" <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote in message
news:00cb61bb-f928-4b6f-99dc-(E-Mail Removed)...
>I had NTL broadband a few years ago and stopped it.
>
> Now I'm thinking of going back to cable broadband with Virgin but I
> don't want their phone or TV - just the broadband.
>
> Their website doesn't give any details of the price for broadband on
> its own. Anyone signed up lately and can tell me what the basic
> service costs?
>
> Of course I will ring them and ask but I want to know what price to
> aim for if there is any scope for negotiation!
>
> I'm planning to ditch my BT line and associated ADSL broadband from
> Tesco and use Vonage via Virgin broadband for my phone. Anyone got any
> comments on Vonage?
>

I had much the same plan with voip and VM. Using the VM XL 20Mb/s product.
However I have found that my connection does suffer a very significant
slowdown in the evening 4pm - 1am and weekends. Getting only 1 Mb/s (or
less) from a speedtest in the evening would be common. However it did
appear to slow per thread/connection, so if you had many connections you
could still get high speeds.

I also found that ping times are very variable. Going from much faster than
ADSL to much much slower. So if you do a tracert the numbers are all over
the place where as form Zen they were normally arround the same.

The throughput also appeared to be variable over short timescales. It was as
if VM was squirting the data down the line at very highspeeds and then
pausing.

I did test the VOIP quality with a phone and it was OKish most of the time.
I had problems using it at the same time as p2p. I did also use the VOIP
quality tests that come with Visual Route and they reported highish jitter
and problems with QOS due to pauses. The conclusion being that the line
wasn't really up to quality VOIP.

Overall I have decided it is not worth the risk of getting rid of my BT line
and being tied in for a year and have hence decided not to procede with VM
beyond the 30 day trial period.