Exactly a year ago, I asked "What's the point of Gigabit broadband?" Well… I'm about to find out! Despite my well-publicised annoyance with Virgin Media, they are the only fibre provider in my area. They've also recently merged with O2 - my old employer - and are offering a free speed boost to any joint customers. I had an old pre-pay O2 SIM, so spoke to Virgin and cheekily asked for a free speed boost. They said yes! Wye, shy bairns get nowt! A few days later, Virgin sent me an upgraded VM S…
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(This is a curmudgeonly post which is going to look ridiculously outdated in a few years.) My yearly contract with my ISP has just come to an end, so it was time to shop around for a better deal. They presented me with the following monthly options: Drop to 100Mbps for the same price I'm paying today (£44) Keep at 350Mbps for a tenner more (£55) Rise to 500Mbps for a fiver more (£49) Go to GIGABIT for a lot more (£60) Mmmmmm GIGABIT...! Obviously it's classic anchor pricing. And obviously …
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Earlier this week, I noticed that Virgin Media had upgraded my 152Mbps service to a whopping 322Mbps. Sadly, it was fairly short-lived - but here's what I can tell you about it. Using my SamKnows monitoring box, I'm able to see regular snapshots of my broadband performance. My 152Mbps service is usually rock solid - there's very little variation in its performance. Last week, however, it shot through the roof. (Download Speed .csv file) Whoa! The only fly in the ointment with Virgin's…
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Do you ever sign up for something, forget about it, then get pleasantly surprised when a parcel turns up at your door? No? Just me? Last year, I noticed that the SamKnows website were looking for volunteers to take part in their European broadband survey. The product is the rather uninspiring named "Whitebox". The SamKnows Whitebox is an industry-approved measuring device, designed to measure performance of your broadband connection. It has been developed to enable you to accurately measure…
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