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Virgin Media is to launch trials with new traffic management policies

broadband analyst — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:15:28 +0000

The cable broadband provider, Virgin Media is to bring further changes in its traffic management polices that will affect the customers of its three broadband products â€“ broadband M, broadband L and broadband XL. The earlier traffic management policy announced by Virgin Media was taking into account just the downloads made during the peak hours, between 4pm and 9pm. However, the latest policy which will be on trial period and will apply only to the selected locations like Preston, Wigan, Blackpool, Camden, Dalston, Enfield and Haringey, will have additional time for traffic management in two segments when the uploading and downloading of its customers will be monitored.

It has also been made clear that the usage during the different time periods will be treated separately and the customers have strictly adhere to the upload limit and download limit specified for the specific time period. The new traffic policy has also pointed out how much speed will slip when the customers are found to breach the download limit during these hours.

Out of three time segments, the time period between 3pm and 8pm will have the monitoring of the uploads on the lines.

Broadband M
10am – 3pm: Download 900 MB.
4pm – 9pm:Â Download 450 MB
3pm – 8pm:Â Upload 200 MB
Resultant speeds due to Traffic Shaping:Â DownloadÂ 1 Mbps and Upload speeds 128 Kbps.

Broadband L
10am – 3pm: Download 2400 MB.
4pm – 9pm:Â Download 1600 MB
3pm – 8pm:Â Upload 700 MB
Resultant speeds due to Traffic Shaping:Â DownloadÂ 1 Mbps and Upload speeds 128 Kbps.

Broadband XL
10am – 3pm: Download 6000 MB.
4pm – 9pm:Â Download 3000 MB
3pm – 8pm:Â Upload 1400 MB
Resultant speeds due to Traffic Shaping:Â DownloadÂ 5 Mbps and Upload speeds 192 Kbps.

Virgin Media Chief asks the IPTV services to share the cost

Gavaz — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 07:50:40 +0000

Neil Berkett, CEO of Virgin Media, in an interview for the magazine The Royal Television Society, stated that the ISP is in talks with content providers with regard to its plans to prioritize the traffic to such sites if the content providers agree to share the cost with the ISP. The idea of net neutrality has become an debatable issue and it could be a lot of burden on the ISPs when many customers try access the bandwidth programmes like P2P sites or IPTV services.

IPTV services like BBC iPlayer are becoming quite popular in recent times and the number of people who access BBC iPlayer has increased four times since its launch. It is only second to YouTube in terms of internet traffic among the online video sites.

Earlier, Tiscali also raised its concerns over the same issue, now, Berkett made it clear that Virgin Media had to change its traffic management policy which has been neutral so far. He further said that traffic restrictions would be inevitable if the content provider do not agree to share the cost with the ISP.

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Virgin Media upgrades its package

Mersault — Mon, 28 Jan 2008 10:53:40 +0000

Virgin Media Cable Broadband Provider is to upgrade the speed of its broadband package size ‘L ‘ from the existing 4 Mbps to 10 Mbps by in near future. According to the statement from the Virgin Media’s website, the upgrading process which commences from the end of next month, will be completed by state by stage within two or three months.

With 10 Mbps download speed, a full TV show can be downloaded within a few minutes. Along with upgrading download speeds, the customers of L size broadband will also see their upload speed getting upgraded to 512 Kbps.

The website also says that Virgin customers will be informed of this upgraded either by post or by email. Neil Berkett of Virgin Media was reported to have given this statement:

“Virgin Media’s cable network gives us a natural superiority over other broadband servicesand we’re delighted to reward our customers with this free upgrade. We’ve barely scratched the surface of what’s possible with our cable network, and we will continue to look for new ways to satisfy the growing demand for even faster broadband in the UK. We’re proud to be leading the country’s superfast broadband revolution.”

It should be noted that Virgin Media has been actively involved in projects that promise higher speeds for its customers. While ADSL+2 is offering 24 Mbps speed, the cable broadband will provide higher speeds thanks to the efforts taken by Virgin Media.

Virginâ€™s current XL size broadband customers get speeds up to 20Mbps while the cable ISP has also been testing its 50 Mbps trial service in selected areas like Kent in UK.

Phishing email reported by Virgin Media customers

Gavaz — Mon, 17 Dec 2007 17:14:46 +0000

Some of the Virgin Media customers who have email account with ntlworld.com has received phishing mail that created a stir for awhile. The phishers who sent this mail impersonated the ISP itself and asked the Virgin’s customers to disclose the personal information like email id and password on or before 20th December. This news soon spread out in Cable Forum. The phishing mail received by Virgin’s customers went on like this:

Attention: Ntlworld Subscribers,
We recently discovered that your email address or someone’s email in your Group is been used in sending bulk mail suspected to be spam or fraud related letters. You are hereby advised to forward Your Email ID & Password to us for Verification of Your email Account.

If this is not completed by 20th December, 2007, we will be forced to delete your email account, as it may have been used for fraudulent purposes. We apologize for any inconveniences this may cause and appreciate your Assistance in helping us verify & resolve this Matter.

Thanks for Your Co-operation
Ntlworld , Customers Care Unit.
Ã‚Â© 2007 Ntlworld Interactive Media Privacy Statement Terms of Service

Phishers often disguise themselves as reputed firms and their mails often resemble the genuine ones. When someone gets any doubts over the mails, it is better to contact the relevant company instead of obliging the requests made in the emails.

New traffic management policy in early 2008

Gavaz — Tue, 11 Dec 2007 15:40:48 +0000

Most broadband internet providers in the UK do traffic shaping to prevent the heavy users from taking undue advantage of unlimited packages. As all uncapped packages offer unlimited downloads, the fair usage policy often puts some kind of cap at least on the usage during peak hours. What happens when a few customers indulge in downloading huge files during the peak hours? As this activity of heaviest users could drastically slow down the speed of the line, the only way that is left to the ISPs, in such a case, is to shape the traffic, in other words, to moderate the speed of these users who are downloading huge files in peak hours. Most often traffic shaping is done to help the ISPs to prevent traffic jams and to ensure decent speed for all users.

In the UK, all major broadband providers have set their own traffic management rules. Recently, Virgin Media, the cable ISP released the full details on the traffic management that it plans to implement in early January, 2008. The new traffic management policy will only apply to cable users.

The traffic management policy only applies during peak hours, i.e. 4 pm till 9 pm. Again, if you are not one of the heaviest users, i.e. not in the top 3% of users in terms of uploading and downloading, the speed of your connection will not be moderated.

If you are with Virgin Media size M package and your downloads exceed 300MB or uploads exceed 150 MB during peak hours, your speed will be managed and set to 1Mb download speed while the upload speed will be set to 128Kb.

Likewise, if you are a size L user and your usage hits 800MB download or 325MB upload during peak hours, your connection will be set to 1Mbps download speed and 128 Kbps upload speed.

The download and upload allowance during peak hours for XL size package are 3GB and 1250MB respectively. If you happen to breach these limits during the peaks, your speed will be managed immediately setting the download speed to 5Mb and upload speed to 192 Kbps.

Traffic management of all packages will at least continue for five hours from the moment you hit the permitted allowances during peak hours.

Virgin Media packages and bundles come into picture, when anyone is looking for cheap broadband options. It is also found from a recent survey that more than 40 percent of new customers in last 12 months preferred broadband bundles to standalone packages.