A Bit Over The Top?

[Firehorse]

I got this email from virgin media today. I can understand why they would reduce the speed but reducing it all the way down from 8mbps to 80kbps is very extreme seeing that almost all websites these days can be at least 1-2mb per page.

Hello there,

We’ve noticed recently that you’ve been using your Virgin Media Broadband connection to upload and download a lot more than we’d expect.

While we’re pleased that you’re enjoying using our broadband service, when someone downloads an unusually large amount of information over a long period of time, it can slow down the internet speed for other users. So, to make sure our service is fair for everybody, we’ll need to moderate the speeds of your service as mentioned in our Acceptable Use Policy.

If the amount that you’ve been downloading is affecting other Virgin Media users during peak times, we normally only reduce your speeds to 512Kbps for the rest of the day, and this is usually enough to help us make sure that everyone can enjoy a speedy broadband connection. But, if your use is higher than normal during the peak times of the week, and doesn’t seem to be getting any less even with the reduction to 512Kbps, we’ll eventually reduce your broadband speed during peak times to 80Kbps – and that’s for the rest of the week.

How this affects you
Because we have seen prolonged high usage on your account, we’ll be moderating the internet use during peak times for the rest of this week (until Sunday night).
This means that from 4pm to midnight from Monday to Friday, and 10am to midnight on Saturday and Sunday your broadband service will be 80Kbps (that’s just faster than a dial-up connection). During these times you might want to stagger your use, so that you’re not doing everything in one go. Outside of these times, you’ll be able to use your service as normal, with speeds of up to 8Mb. If you’d like to find out a bit more about why we do this just click here.

Keeping track of what you’re using
To avoid this happening again, you can cut down on the amount you’re downloading at peak times and, after Sunday, we’ll put things on your account back to normal. To help keep track on this, there are lots of handy tools available on the internet which can tell you how much you’re downloading over a specific period.
If the next time we look at our users we notice that you’re still downloading more than we’d expect, we’ll just apply the usage restrictions again and let you know what’s happening.

Want to know more about our Acceptable Use Policy? Just click here to read the whole thing.


The Virgin Media team

Seeing as we only get a slow speed anyway even when I don't download much I think that our speed until the end of this week will be as good as useless since other users would slow our speed right down below 30kbps.

Has this happened to any of you? What do you think of the temporary speeds? Isn't the whole point of "Unlimited Bandwidth" that you get to download as much as you want?

[Wootzeh]

I'd change internet provider if they did that to me O.o

[Swinkid]

I'd change internet provider if they did that to me O.o

I would too.

Im with virgin, never had a problem. Although there is one problem id like to get rid of. That is my slow speeds. I pay for 10MB connection but even during off-peak times, ive only ever reached a max of 250kbp/s

[Loqo]

I'd change, I'm with Virgin also but I have never got a E-mail like that. The internet speed if always quite fast on this.

[Captain]

That's what you get for downloading all that porn.

[N!ck]

That is unnaceptable as it indicates they are either using a contention ratio of 100:1 (highly unlikely) which is illegal as far as i am aware. But, i'm guessing if you accepted ther ToS then they can do 80Kbps if thy want.

As a BT wholesale customer the lowest they should reasonably cap you down to imo is 160Kbps as this is what a 50:1 contention ratio (what BT wholesale is on) works out as on an 8Mbps line.

[Firehorse]

That's what you get for downloading all that porn.

I was downloading photoshop not porn. The download failed soI had to try several times and that is basically what I downloaded so much of.

I reinstalled vista last week and I have been downloading loads of the programs I had installed before.

[Recursion]

I always said VM were crap.

[Earthquake]

You should email back with a complaint or an explination, or phone them..

Or join BT !

[:job2]

Thats rather harsh, also in the email they made themself sound very cocky, which isnt a good thing for a proffessional company.

Also, downloading photoshop 'a few times' wouldnt be that much with BT I think its like if you download over 60GB a month you get capped (thats alot of photoshop lol)