Dave Thorp's Blog

Slightly earlier than planned but we are now totally disconnected from virgin media with our phone service now on BT, Sky got installed yesterday and O2 broadband activated itself in record time by activating just over 1 working day after we ordered it.

So how are we finding the changes. I’ll avoid talking about BT as a phone line is a phone line in respects of making calls so I’ll just talk about the TV and broadband.

TV

The main difference is probably the reduction in tuners in the sky plus box compared to the v+. There is the lack of HD as well but since we don’t have a HDTV and virgin media only have one HD channel that really isn’t a great loss.

The sky plus seems to function fine with the additional benefit being I can now set programmes to record whilst I am out from my iPhone. We also now have full teletext services which is nice (Yvonne wants to look at holidays).

Probably the only bad thing is the installers left some wires trailing that we need to tuck under the carpet at some point. Oh that and the sky plus doesn’t confirm when you press to delete a recording, it just deletes it. There was also an annoying rotating light on the front of the sky plus box when watching a sky plus recording but I managed to turn that off!

Broadband

Now this is probably where I would notice the difference as we have moved from a 20Mbit service to an up to 8Mbit service. Our broadband synced at 5.5Mbit last night but since then has increased to 6.1Mbit.

Oddly we have not notice too much of a speed difference. Probably the main reason for this is virgin media traffic manage their 20Mbit service and reduce it to 5Mbit if you dare actually try and use the 20Mbit service. So in actual fact taking this traffic management into account our service is now faster!

I was also concerned from the number of O2 broadband users experiencing slowdowns at peak rate. I am pleased to say however that so far we haven’t experienced this.

Conclusion

We’ve actually made a huge change by switching from having phone, broadband and TV with one supplier through cable to having them provided by 3 different suppliers through satellite and a BT phone line. So far so good though and this is saving us £15 a month on our previous prices. We also now get three small manageable bills rather than one chunky one.

Of course this saving could be negated as Sky gave us free sports and movies for one month to try and Yvonne is quite liking having the movies so we could end up keeping them. Oh well easy come easy go

Just found out that my area is going to be a trial area for virgin media’s new traffic management which is even more fun and confusing than it was previously but now also seriously limits your downloads at the weekend if you download over 7.5Gb

Thank god my BT line should be installed on Friday and then I can sort out getting O2 broadband. If I hadn’t already cancelled my virgin media service this may have been the final nail in the coffin. If they don’t want people to use a 20Mb service they shouldn’t offer it (and they are even starting to offer 50Mb which will probably eventually get traffic managed down to 12.5Mb)

Full details of the new traffic management HERE

Been spending the last few days arranging connection of a BT line and installation of Sky. We’ve been with Virgin Media for 2 and a half years but over the last few weeks become very disillusioned with their customer services and their ability to abide by the terms of our contract.

So we are switching our phone to BT, one that’s installed we’ll be getting O2 broadband and our TV is switching over to Sky. On the plus side this is costing £10 less a month than the equivalent package was on Virgin Media and also splits our bill into 3 smaller more managable chunks.

So those are the three planned switches so which one is unplanned. Well just after Christmas we went on a comparison site and scottish power came out cheaper than our current deal on British Gas. So we applied to switch. Get the paperwork from Scottish Power and actually it turns out more expensive so I call them to cancel which I am assured they will do. Did they?

Did they balls? Get a letter today confirming my gas switch on 11th Feb along with a prepayment card. So our supply has been slammed. Complaint to Scottish Power and BBC Watchdog sent!