Virgin Media review

From £6.25 a month

Our Rating: We rate this 4 out of 5 User Rating:

By Rosemary Hattersley | PC Advisor | 11 January 11

Reflecting its role as the biggest UK broadband ISP, Virgin Media turned out to be used by more survey respondents than any other. Originally a cable-broadband company, Virgin Media has expanded its territory over the past five years by offering ADSL connections in areas where cable isn’t available.

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Fifteen percent of survey users told us their broadband service is of this type rather than cable. Cable is an uncontended connection, so you aren’t competing with other customers for bandwidth. As a result, customers report that their connections usually match their expectations, with 42 percent stating the service approaches the advertised speed.

Satisfaction figures for Virgin Media broadband customers are very high. Overall, it polls 94 percent for overall satisfaction. For cable-only users this rises to 95.6 percent. Most customers are on an 8 to 12Mbps connection or enjoy 20Mbps broadband, but as a bundled deal the overall cost of TV, phone and broadband comes in at £30 a month or more.

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Virgin Media Expert Verdict »

Post Review

Reviewed by Simon7063 on Thursday 20 January 2011

Duration of ownership: 9 years

Strengths:
Very reliable service, good technical support and most importantly delivery of the stated "up to" speed or very close to it. Unlimited download, no traffic shaping on the top package.

Weaknesses:
Quite expensive, but there is no real competition for top end BB Relatively slow upload speed currently.

Overall Evaluation:
Originally on the Telewest 512Kbps package. I have had most of the BB packages up to current 50Mbps. Down time can be frustrating, but to be fair its very rare for the service to drop much under the advertised speed at each service point that I have had and only need an engineer out once in 9 years. In general very happy and no plans to change.

Landline or cable connection, Virgin Media account

Overall:

Given the generous download limits and the good-value bundle of TV, telephone and broadband, it is no surprise to find more than 30 percent of current Virgin Media customers couldn’t think of a single reason they might switch ISP. Connection speeds get a positive 81 percent of favourable feedback and 84 percent are happy with the reliability of their web connection. When problems arose, things are less rosy. Most people said they are ‘satisfied’ with this aspect, but overall only 65 percent are happy.

There are currently no price comparisons for this product.

Sky Broadband

Particularly popular with PCs users but less commonly chosen by Mac fans, Sky Broadband accounted for a 10th of the customer base in our survey. Social-media mavens and online shoppers, Sky Broadband customers had less reason to log on to BBC iPlayer than others, since most people combine a satellite TV subscription with broadband and phone services.
Orange Broadband

As with O2, Orange offers a deal whereby landline and mobile phone or mobile phone subscriptions bought as a package are discounted.
O2 Broadband

With a healthy slice of the smartphone market, thanks to the success of the Apple iPhone, O2 is in a great position to offer cut-price broadband deals for customers on its phone tariffs. And it pulls it off, winning our 2011 ISP Awards Best Buy tag.
BT Broadband

For the 17 percent of survey respondents who are BT customers, £20 is the average monthly cost of a broadband subscription. However, since a BT phoneline is required to use ADSL broadband, a more realistic figure for this and the broadband service combined is £25.
Plusnet

With 15 percent of customers who answered our survey using Plusnet, we were able to find out quite a lot about this good-value ISP. A broadband-only provider with no add-on services to push, Plusnet focuses on raw connection speed, and this enables it to win our 2011 Recommended ISP award.