I downgraded my services to 10mb broadband a few months back as was forking out a fair chunk of money each month.

Having read that the lowest (2 or 4mb, not sure which) have now been upgraded for free to the 10mb service, I phoned up Virgin for a rant on Saturday, as you do, and managed to get back up to 20mb for an extra £3 per month - they have an offer on apparently, or at least the customer retention department has

I'm sure people are on better overall deals as my brother seems to have more than me for less (!) but might be worth a phonecall for some of you.

One pleasant surprise was to hear that all cable customers are entitled to a freebie wireless router - got one anyway, but always nice to get a freebie.

How much are you paying then? I pay £25pm for 10mb broadband only.

I'm now paying £44 per month for 20mb broadband, fairly standard phone package with free calls at the weekends and the 'L' TV package.

We've also got V+ which accounts for £5 (included in the £44) per month, and an additional box upstairs which we've since cancelled (was £5 per month) but will still pipe through BBC1, BBC2 etc.

Think I saw an offer on V+ while I was angrily surfing the website looking for rant ammunition for only £49 installation too.

ok - silly Q coming up - is 20mb broadband a little overkill? I'm on what I believe to be 4mb and it's well fast enough for me to everything I do.

No idea on cost as it's a shared BT homehub that I've hacked into.

Depends on your usage I suppose - HD video content for example is pretty huge.

It's largely irrelevant anyway as at full tilt, Virgin will cap you to around 600k per second after a matter or minutes, but if you download off peak it's useful.

ok - silly Q coming up - is 20mb broadband a little overkill? I'm on what I believe to be 4mb and it's well fast enough for me to everything I do.

No idea on cost as it's a shared BT homehub that I've hacked into.

You do not have to say anything, but it may harm your defence.....

when they upgraded the lower speeds to 10mb they should have upgraded the 10mb customers to 20mb free of charge. Thats what happened to me just had to do a modem reset to get the new speed . you will never get the full 20mb but the lowest speed i have had is 15mb which isnt too bad:)

Thanks for the tip - it was only a fortnight ago I upgraded to 10mb so I'm a bit annoyed they upgraded everyone for free. I'll be giving them a call when the lines open...

when they upgraded the lower speeds to 10mb they should have upgraded the 10mb customers to 20mb free of charge. Thats what happened to me just had to do a modem reset to get the new speed . you will never get the full 20mb but the lowest speed i have had is 15mb which isnt too bad:)

According to their website, it was only the people <10mb who got the upgrade for free - I didn't for sure anyway.

Speed depends on quite a few factors, but I get a rock solid 2400kbps when downloading from newsgroups

Virgin are quite receptive to customers concerns over charges. I sent them an e-mail one evening on how I felt that their charges were too high and that I could get a better deal as a new customer and not one as one of their long standing customers. Within 15 minutes of sending this e-mail, they were on the phone to me promising to reduce my monthly payment from £51 to £31. That's quite impressive.

I haven't seen any sign of my free upgrade from 2mb yet, no doubt it will be forthcoming.

Same here im still at 2mb and it's the 1st i've heared about this upgrade.

Speed depends on quite a few factors, but I get a rock solid 2400kbps when downloading from newsgroups

Me too lol

2.5MB of data per second FTW :D

Same here im still at 2mb and it's the 1st i've heared about this upgrade.

Virgin Media switches 2Mb customers to 10Mb News - PC Advisor

Happening in May according to a few pages.

2.5MB of data per second FTW

I know

I'm still not used to it and originally had 20mb way over 18 months ago. 50mb is just crazy

I know

I'm still not used to it and originally had 20mb way over 18 months ago. 50mb is just crazy

I'm used too it :)

VMplans to upgrade 2.6m customers with 2Mb cable broadband connections to its superfast 10Mb service in May -that's great .Found/suspected that lately they've been capping the 2m -though still get 2.08/.23 on a test at speedtest.net

Edit to add

Tried a modem reboot JIC -but still 2M

Edited 22 April, 200917 yr by VWD

When I moved from the flat in Oct 2007, the area still wasnt digital!

Infact I still think it's analogue, as telewest>VM havent upgraded the area!

The free wireless router is a Netgear WG614, which is only 54Mbs Wireless G, but I suppose it costs you nothing. See: Wireless equipment - Wireless N & G broadband routers

We originally signed up for NTL's 128k "Broadband" Internet and now hopefully going to get 10 Meg. I don't know what we are paying ATM as since we signed up for Direct Debt, they haven't sent us a bill by e-mail or post. I'm sure that is illegal. Before that we paid by phone because NTL & Virgin always got the bill wrong.

There are several threads on Digital-Spy about this free upgrade, such as Virgin Media to Upgrade 2Mb/s Customers to 10Mb/s - Digital Spy Forums

I have a colleague at work thats just been upgraded from the 2mb to 10mb service. As part of the upgrade the price he pays has increased slightly, but the service even though its 10mb is still capped as per the 2mb service with regard to STM. Those on 10mb already will be staying on 10mb but will have a much more generous cap and better data rate when they reach the much higher STM limit than those on the upgraded 2mb service.