I’ve been with Vir­gin Media ever since the early days, not when it was called NTL, but when it was called Cable&Wireless. Back then, the ser­vice was per­fect with no com­plaints — at least, until Vir­gin kicked in.

Now the costs are through the roof — £60 to £70 a month for 2mbps Inter­net, a few TV chan­nels we never watch and a phone line that’s not often used.

Inter­net

I can’t live without the Inter­net and use it heav­ily. Online TV is start­ing to prop­erly come through now with BBC iPlayer and vari­ous on-demand ser­vices. With 2mbps, I could enjoy these ser­vices quite hap­pily but I’m not get­ting 2mbps. The prob­lem is Vir­gin Media’s STM — their way of stop­ping any­one from actu­ally achiev­ing what they paid for. Dur­ing cer­tain times, if you down­load over a cer­tain amount, the con­nec­tion will be lim­ited. STM was intro­duced because Vir­gin Media claimed that they found that 5% of their cus­tom­ers were affect­ing the speeds of the other 95% — to me, that sounds like their infra­struc­ture can’t take the strain. Instead of upgrad­ing the infra­struc­ture, they decided to ruin it for their loyal cus­tom­ers whilst still rolling out ultra-fast broad­band and doub­ling high-end packages.

Want to know these “lim­its”? I bet you’re expect­ing some­thing high — because, of course, to have to limit the ser­vice, it would have to be high! It is in fact, stu­pidly low and so insanely low that most pack­ages can reach the limit in 10 to 20 minutes.

TV

The TV ser­vice is what you’d expect. There are only about 10 chan­nels worth watch­ing, most of which are avail­able on Freeview.

Vir­gin Media’s catch-up and on-demand ser­vice is still some­thing to be desired; it’s clunky menus and buggy sys­tem means that the chance you’ll be able to find and watch some­thing all the way through is slim. Try paus­ing, rewind­ing and fast-forwarding to see how unstable it is.

The Solu­tion

After my 30 days notice, I’ll be chan­ging ISPs to Be (24mbps), get­ting Freeview and a BT phone line — all this for half of what I’m pay­ing for now? If you have Vir­gin Media then I sug­gest you do the same!