O2 & Virgin Media To Merge

O2 have certainly had split airtime and handset payments in the past, with the handset payment ceasing at the end of the finance period, and the airtime section effectively continuing at the same price as a SIM-only deal.

I hope we see the back of Virgin Media as a brand. Not only is Virgin a pretty toxic brand in itself but '**** Media' always seemed an odd name for a cable provider.

When I think of Virgin Media, I think of their street cabinets that are made out of baco-foil, can be opened with a lollypop stick, and are a shambles inside. The mess you see is not a result of vandalism, that's their typical standard of installation

You'd be happy to have your TV and Internet supplied through one of these ?

Yes. My internet has failed once in 13 years and was back after two hours.

VM cable is oversubscribed in my area, which leads to common issues around speed.

When EE's stores were rebranded, they added the BT logo to the signs... even in Hull, where BT doesn't even operate because we have KCOM instead!

So, O2/VM won't not use the Virgin name on shops just because there's neither mobile coverage or cable TV available in a particular place.

I wonder how much the quality of the initial install varies from area to area. My connection and my parents' in Nottingham is flakey as hell, regularly dropping out at peak times. When I lived in Sheffield my connection was amazing... although that was back in the days of 50Mbps being a super premium product with very low contention (as it was the only product using DOCSIS3 at the time).


The cabinets Yorkshire Cable used seemed to be much (much!) less prone to being prized open with their contents dangling all over the place than the ones Diamond Cable used around here. Was/is fit out equipment and standard tightly regularly by the Cable Regulator/Ofcom?

There's a council estate near me where the interconnecting cable between flats were hanging down and the junction box was forced open for years.

It wasn't until Hyperoptic came to install their own service that they tidied up VM's pisspoor work and closed the box.

I think it can vary quite a lot. Remember that all the networks were originally built by different companies to different standards. Most have been through several different owners since then, each of which had their own different standards for maintaining the network. Even now I believe that some work is outsourced to different companies in different parts of the country.
Where I am the network is fairly good, mostly because it was fully rebuilt a number of years ago, so is newer than most. I often read about people with problems where the cabinets are falling apart or the network is oversubscribed, but have never experienced anything like that myself. I have seen issues whilst visiting family elsewhere in the country, so it does appear to vary depending on where you are.

I guess there are two main issues here :

1. Physical connectivity integrity (i.e. whether your RF connection to and from Virgin Media is secure and someone can't unscrew your connection or cut your cable)

2. Network connectivity (i.e. whether Virgin Media's network configuration and infrastructure provides the internet connectivity that people expect based on their local connection speeds)

There have been constant rumblings that Virgin don't engineer some aspects of their network particularly well - and run it 'hot' (so lose packets - in the expectation that lost packets will be re-requested and re-sent)

This ignores the quality, or lack thereof, of their Superhub in router and WiFi access point terms (Virgin's hubs have been hit by an Intel bug on their main SoC, which I believe is less of/not an issue if you run your Superhub as a modem only)

Anyone who cares about decent network connectivity is likely to have ditched the router and WiFi access point portions of their ISP router - and ditched their modem if they are allowed to. (We binned our BT HomeHub ages ago - replacing it with a Draytek Vigor VDSL modem and a Ubiquiti EdgeRouter-X and Ubiquiti WiFi Access Point. The Draytek is BT approved too..)

Yes, I told a VM customer friend to get a cheap TP-Link cable router for £20 from Argos which is compatible with VM. Never had a problem since with his wifi or Ethernet connections.

I've always used third-party routers with TalkTalk. Would always get buffering using the supplied ISP routers, but never any issues with the TP-Link Archer A900 router I use. It's worth paying for a decent router than the free bricks supplied by your ISP.

My street has no access to Cable TV or Fibre Broadband services. We do have Fibre to the Cabinet from BT - but still copper to the home.

I'd like to think that Cable services could be extended more with better people running the company. Not to mention the possibility of new channels to really compete against BT Sports etc.