Sunday, 11 March 2012
Friday, 9 March 2012
Tortoise or Hare? O2 or Virgin?
YOU remember the story of the tortoise and the hare. And, if you don't, you'll remember this: slow and steady wins the race.
It's pushing it a bit to call O2 slow and steady - they're one of the faster ADSL2+ providers - but put them next to Virgin Media and, well, they go back into their shell.
So, who should you pick: Virgin or O2 broadband?
How big is the speed difference between these two? It's not to be sniffed at.
The statistics below are daily averages from Ofcom's last large-scale speed test, compared with the advertised 'up to' speeds for each deal.
In short: Virgin Media are knocking O2 out of the park.
For those in a fibre area (check Virgin Media availability here) with a large household or a fondness for streaming video those speeds should make Virgin an easy winner.
However, note that the two top O2 unlimited broadband deals - All Rounder and The Works - now offer truly unlimited downloads so, given that the cheaper Virgin Media deals have somewhat draconian fair use policies they may not be the best bet for very heavy downloaders.
The fact that Virgin Media's deals over 30Mb get the provider's superfast superhub, much better than O2's bog-standard wireless router, should also make a big difference to broadband speeds which can degrade by around 30% over a wireless connection and more with a poor quality modem.
Only O2 The Works offers one of the top wireless 'N' routers.
However, although Virgin Media beat O2 on broadband speed O2 win in the rest of our categories: price, flexibility and customer service.
O2 give big discounts to their pay monthly and PAYG mobile phone customers: about £5 off their broadband every month plus free connection, rather than a £25.53 fee.
Even without an O2 mobile, they're cheaper than Virgin but, with an O2 mobile, they beat Virgin definitively (for simplicity, we've excluded set up fees and introductory discounts in this comparison).
That's true of the most basic deals...
... but even when customers choose to go up a notch and take better broadband and more calls O2's comparative package prices are still beating Virgin's.
* note that the O2 prices are for their mobile customers, for non-O2 customers add £5.
Line rental prices
As you can see above, part of the reason that O2 is cheaper than Virgin is that their line rental prices are far lower, reducing the overall cost of their deals significantly.
Note that when you take Virgin Media broadband and phone, the provider hides the cost of their extra calls (i.e. it's always £13.90 no matter how many calls are included) and, instead, adds the extra cost to the broadband price.
The list below, then, is a guide to the approximate cost of Virgin Media line rental when you add in those extra call costs in a bundle.
As you can see, however, the cheapest O2 line rental deal doesn't come with any inclusive landline calls. That means it'll only really be good value for those who never or only very rarely use their home phone.
However, even comparing like with like, O2 consistently come out on top in terms of line rental price.
The increase of £7.90 a month would, for example, work out as an effective price increase of £94.80 a year.
Finally, though, it's well worth noting that Virgin Media are the only provider who allow home broadband users to go completely phone-line free, although ditching line rental altogether does mean an extra few pounds a month on the price of broadband.
Virgin Media contracts run for between 12 and 18 months, with the shorter contract being offered to those who don't take line rental.
The cheapest O2 contracts are also 12 months long but the provider does offer a 30-day rolling contract, albeit for a small fee.
As with all large broadband providers, both O2 and Virgin Media have had their share of bad reviews.
Neither seriously underperforms when it comes to customer service but if pushed to choose Virgin or O2 we'd go for the latter.
O2 are proud of their UK call centres and, while that doesn't necessarily equal better service, it seems to have given them the incentive to actually deliver better, faster answers to customer problems.
Still undecided? Check out our dedicated review of O2 broadband and our guide to whether or not Virgin Media is any good.
Please read the following notice:
This guide may not include all of the products available in the market.
While we make every effort to ensure and maintain current and accurate information on this site, we do not keep all guides updated and this guide may contain prices, deals or facts which have now changed.
Readers are always advised to check the full details of any product with the relevant provider before applying, as well as to conduct their own research.
We aim to provide free reviews and comparisons of consumer products. To keep the site free, we are paid by some providers when new customers take products after they've clicked on our links. We don't allow our editorial content to be affected by those links, however we may not include all of the products available in the market.
Please read our full disclaimer for other important information that relates to the information and service we provide and your use of this site.
If you would like to get in touch with us you can contact us here »
Tuesday, 6 March 2012
BT Infinity vs Virgin Media XXL
THEY'RE the biggest broadband providers offering the fastest fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) internet access in the UK but which one's the best?
The good news is that a little competition has done both companies good.
Both BT and Virgin Media are desperate for your business and there's an option to suit almost every household in terms of price and downloads.
So, first things first: who does the fastest broadband cheapest?
Here are the current cheapest options for both providers:
As you can see, by this basic measure, BT are currently winning on price.
However, the reason they can charge less is that their cheapest option comes with a 40GB download limit, unlike Virgin Media's service which is unlimited.
Do downloads matter?
40GB isn't a small allowance and it should suffice for those that largely want superfast to stream a good few hours of video a night without interruption, as well as surfing and checking emails.
For P2P lovers, gaming or streaming addicts, however, either unlimited Infinity or Virgin Media XXL are likely to be a better bet.
BT Infinity's unlimited deal comes with a fairly fair fair use policy.
XXL's fair use policy is also very lenient: only those who have had the upload speed upgrade to 5Mbp/s will have upload speeds restricted during peak times.
All in all, however, there's little difference between the two in how downloads are managed.
Ditch your phone line
Virgin Media do distinguish themselves, however, by allowing customers to sign up without a phone line, although the price cut for doing so is somewhat lower than you might expect.
Virgin Media XXL without home phone is £30 a month for the first three months and £35 a month thereafter.
BT Infinity's cheapest deal is just a few pounds more but ditching your home phone line means potentially making bigger savings overall by not paying for landline calls, plus avoiding any future price increases on line rental from either provider.
More on broadband without a phone line »
One provider advertises up to 50Mb and the other one only up to 40Mb but is there actually any difference in reality?
The technical difference between BT and Virgin Media resides in how their respective superfast networks connect to your home.
BT's 'up to 40Mb' Infinity broadband service uses superfast fibre optics to link together BT exchanges and green street cabinets, creating a fibre-to-the-cabinet network.
From there, BT connect to your home via a normal copper phone line, referred to as 'the last mile'.
Virgin Media have a separate fibre optic network which runs underneath the pavements of the areas in which it is installed (remember the chaos of all that digging?) and then there's a short stretch of more efficient coaxial cable that connects a customer's home to the fibre connection outside.
This also helps to explain why BT advertises it services as 'up to' 40Mb - it doesn't know exactly how far away your house is from the street cabinet.
Close by and you could receive 35-40Mb, further away and perhaps only 25-30Mb, a possibility Virgin have been keen to play up ever since the BT Infinity launch.
Virgin Media likes to gloat that it can always guarantee an advertised speed thanks to the close proximity of its fibre to every customer's home.
Future speeds
However, the advertised speeds on a package like BT Infinity are likely to increase as BT will gradually deploy new technologies to boost speeds in years to come.
In fact, BT has already announced that it will be upping the maximum speed of its 'up to 40Mb' packages to 'up to 80Mb' fairly shortly.
Virgin Media has also launched a 100Mb package which was, in turn, trumped by BT, who began pimping a 110Mb fibre-to-the-home deal.
Finally, both Virgin Media and BT are big on broadband bundles - phone, broadband and TV all on one bill - and focusing on finding the best one is often a larger practical concern than worrying about a few Mb difference in speeds.
As you can see from our Virgin or Sky guide, it's a tricky question.
BT vs Virgin TV
Both Virgin Media and BT offer TV deals through their cable network to really make the most of their superfast speeds. We go into both in more detail in our BT broadband, phone & Vision review and is Virgin Media any good guide.
Both offer a large range of on-demand content, at least some of which is free to all customers, all the core Freeview channels and movies or Sky sports for an additional monthly fee.
However, Virgin Media has the edge for the sheer number of channels available - 175 with TV XL - and its TiVo box, one of the top set-top boxes on the market.
Please read the following notice:
This guide may not include all of the products available in the market.
While we make every effort to ensure and maintain current and accurate information on this site, we do not keep all guides updated and this guide may contain prices, deals or facts which have now changed.
Readers are always advised to check the full details of any product with the relevant provider before applying, as well as to conduct their own research.
We aim to provide free reviews and comparisons of consumer products. To keep the site free, we are paid by some providers when new customers take products after they've clicked on our links. We don't allow our editorial content to be affected by those links, however we may not include all of the products available in the market.
Please read our full disclaimer for other important information that relates to the information and service we provide and your use of this site.
If you would like to get in touch with us you can contact us here »
Monday, 5 March 2012
Virgin Media: Stop the Broadband Speed Con
VIRGIN Media have called on other broadband providers to 'stop the broadband con' and display what it describes as 'honest' broadband speeds.
Unsurprisingly, other broadband providers weren't too happy at being described as con artists and went to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) which upheld the vast majority of their complaints and ruled that the ads could not be shown again in their original form.
But did Virgin Media have a point?
In November 2010 Virgin Media launched a campaign mini-site called 'stop the broadband con'.
"Many [broadband providers] are advertising superfast broadband speeds they know full well they cannot deliver, offering speeds of 'up to' 20Mb but delivering an average of just 6.5Mb," Virgin Media founder Richard Branson wrote in an open letter on the site.
There was, of course, a large dollop of self-interest in the campaign: Virgin Media's fibre network delivers faster speeds with less interference over longer distances than ADSL. It still doesn't always deliver advertised speeds, but it does come closer than most.
According to the Ofcom report immediately preceeding the campaign, where Branson got that 6.5Mb figure, Virgin Media XXL, an up to 50Mb service, delivered speeds of 31.8Mb to 35.2Mb at peak times and 45.9Mb to 47.4Mb off peak.
The provider is well known for making high speeds a virtue, even managing to persuade many existing customers to trade up.
In August 2011 an Ofcom report found that 75% of Virgin Media customers currently on 30Mb+ deals had upgraded from the provider's slowest 10Mb broadband.
All in all, any change in the rules would likely benefit Virgin Media more than most ISPs.
In that same vein, the campaign was also a direct attack on Virgin Media competitors.
Later in his letter, Branson referred to the "fairytales and broken promises" of UK broadband providers - a clear reference to Sky's long-running fairytale-themed ad campaign.
Without honesty about broadband speeds, Branson said, "there's little incentive for companies to invest in better services and improve your broadband."
A comment which implies, of course, that consumers don't notice how fast their broadband actually is - just what the advert said when they bought it.
Practice what they preach?
Although they don't say so explicitly, we presume that Virgin Media were rooting for broadband providers to display average, rather than 'up to' (or best possible), broadband speeds.
Funny, then, that at the time they didn't always do so themselves.
The provider's ADSL packages, for example, were only displaying 'up to' speeds, just like other providers, when the 'con' campaign launched.
In one sense, Virgin Media's advert was in a grand old broadband tradition.
There's no shortage of people willing to criticise 'up to' claims in broadband speed advertising.
But Sky and BT weren't really defending 'up to'.
Instead, the complaints were largely concerned with how fair Virgin's comparisons with its two biggest competitors were, rather than the sentiment.
Too harsh
Sky told the ASA that the ads amounted to an "unjustified denigratory attack" on other ISPs.
The ASA agreed. "We considered the ad went beyond highlighting the disparity... and that it implied other ISPs dealt with consumers dishonestly in relation to broadband speeds," their judgement read.
Unfair comparisons
A Sky spokesperson argued that since all broadband providers give consumers an individual line speed estimate (as they're required to under Ofcom's voluntary code of practice) the current system allows new customers to make an informed decision.
However, as Virgin Media argued, line speed estimates aren't easy to compare without consumers putting in a considerable amount of time (and in the case of providers like TalkTalk getting a sales call for their trouble).
Virgin must have been pleased when, a few weeks after the ASA decision on their ads, Ofcom called for an end to 'up to' speed ads.
Under Ofcom's voluntary code of practice on broadband speeds providers should explain to customers that the speeds that they'll receive are likely to be lower than the headline speed advertised. Most do.
Broadband providers are also required to provide a more accurate estimate of line speed when consumers sign up for broadband by checking their postcode and home phone number.
'Up to' may not be ideal but it's also not the whole picture.
Clearly we need to have a debate about what broadband speeds - as advertised - are understood to mean and whether they sufficiently hold broadband providers to account.
As to whether there's a better way to advertise broadband speeds, that's a question to which Virgin don't appear to have an answer.
Please read the following notice:
This is a news article. As we don't update any news articles it may contain prices, deals or facts which are no longer available or are now inaccurate.
Please read our full disclaimer for other important information that relates to the information and service we provide and your use of this site.
If you would like to get in touch with us you can contact us here »