Virgin on the ridiculous
By Davey Winder in Editorial
Posted in Wireless, Internet on
There is no denying that Richard Branson is a business genius, you don’t make a billion without getting something right after all, but he is a fool in equal measure. Pretty much every press launch I have been to Branson has ensured the focus of media attention is on him and some silly stunt, be that hanging from a crane in a spacesuit or jumping off a tall building and doing himself no favours in the family jewels department. Occasionally, it seems to me, the tomfoolery crosses over from the PR side of things and encroaches on business territory. It is the only explanation I can think of when I have had the misfortune to travel on a (late as usual) Virgin train. It is also the only reason I can think of that he entered into that war of words with Sky TV, a war that was truly verging on the ridiculous and which every outsider I spoke to agreed he could never win.
So it has come as no real surprise to discover that Virgin Media is apparently struggling to compete in the digital TV arena, and has all but conceded defeat by moving focus away from pay TV households to those looking for bigger, faster, fatter broadband instead.
According to Michael Phillips, product director at BroadbandChoices cable provides the potential for truly high speed connections, which is why Virgin Media is currently testing a 50Mbps service. Even here, the fool card gets played once you look beyond the bearded man in a jumpsuit attached to a giant firework rocket with 50Mb stamped on the side launching into the atmosphere (OK, I admit I am only guessing that this is how Branson will launch the service) and start to consider the impact of traffic shaping on the end user speed. “Virgin Media announced its traffic shaping policy earlier this year, and even on the top 20Mb package, customers could find themselves throttled to only 5Mb during peak hours - when obviously, people are most likely to be using the Internet” Phillips told me. “In a market where broadband speeds are advertised as ‘up to’ because of the unreliability of speeds and technology, cable has proven to be more reliable than ADSL. Our own Speed Tester results - taken from over 100,000 speed tests last month - show that cable customers enjoyed an average of 47.5 per cent of their promised speeds, compared to an average of 37.7 per cent for ADSL customers. Virgin Media is looking to regain some of the 40,000 customers that defected after Sky pulled its basic channels, with applications that need much faster broadband. Few other providers can offer the type of speeds needed for high-definition video-on-demand and home surveillance but using these applications could see customers’ speeds throttled and there is little point in a 50Mb connection that is cut each time you use it.”
Phillips argues that the Broadband XL package at 20Mb has a peak-hour allowance of 3GB which could be exceeded after only 20 minutes if the connection was running at top speed. After this time, the connection would be limited to 5Mb for the next four hours. Virgin Media has said that this policy would only affect the top five per cent of downloaders. Fair enough, apart from the fact that by marketing itself as a super-fast broadband provider it is encouraging people to act in just this way - otherwise why bother with such a fat pipe?
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Loading ...Comment by Stephen Baxendale - October 23, 2007 on 11:53 am
As previous comment, since Virgin took over our cable TV and broadband in Edinburgh, the quality of service has plummeted. I am very upset with Virgin and considering moving. Last “patch Tuesday” both my work computers downloaded Microsoft upgrades seamlessly - my home computer via Virgin boradband took an hour to download the same patches. You have to phone a premium rate line to report a problem - therefore they make extra profit every time there is a problem - they are incentivised to have poor service; surely a conflict of interest. I wish I had a business where the more problems I produced the more revenue generated.
Comment by Bob Morgen - October 26, 2007 on 11:02 am
Since Virgin took over my NTL cable broadband, the quality of service has plummeted. And Virgin charges a premium rate to call them to report a service outage! Ridiculous. I tried Be ADSL2 broadband. Wonderful customer service but as you say, I get less than half the rated throughput with ADSL - about 8Mb on a 20Mb connection. Be says this is probably due to my home copper wiring which is certainly possible since it is very old. Cable performance, prior to Virgin, was 70%-80% of rated for me. So I would love to see the cable service back on a stable business and technical footing.
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