Virgin Mobile have become the latest network to cap mobile data speeds, to a lowly 2mb/s.
Rumours had been circulating, but Virgin admitted the 2mb/s cap last night and tried to put a positive spin on the situation, saying “to ensure all our customers can continue to enjoy the benefits of mobile data on the move”. They also stated that they were “confident we’ll only ever increase the maximum speeds available to our customers in the future.”
Now speed caps get most people annoyed, and this does seem to be an almost emergency measure. Going for such a low speed cap (half of T-Mobile’s) and saying they will work up from there suggests they are dealing with some serious capacity issues. We don’t know whether Virgin have had a sudden influx of customers they didn’t plan for, or if they’ve had some bandwidth pulled back by EE, who’s network they use, but it looks like something caught them by surprise.
The new speed cap applies to both contract and pre-pay customers.
Link – The Register
I’m a new customer to Virgin Mobile and now I’m starting to regret joining them. I’m on a good tariff and get a £5 discount because I’m a Virgin Media customer but I’ve noticed their data speeds are slow and I’ve also noticed an increase in the number of times I have full signal and hspda but my phone refuses to connect to data services and it’s not my phone because I’ve checked.
6 weeks into a 24 month contract.I do not get to use the smartphone they supplied with the contract to its full potential!
I’ll bet this will be down to EE forcing the cap rather than Virgin. After all Virgin don’t manage the network.
It’s does smack of Virgin having rug cut out from underneath them, but no-one’s likely to admit to that.
So not content with hammering their own customers, virtual networks are now being hit too. Considering they’re supposed to be the “first 4G network”, they are very reluctant to let anyone access it!
What is with this country… This is like opposite of progress! I am sure our data infrastructure is not that bad – I really don’t get it.
On the other end of the scale you have the likes of Three who positively encourage you to use data, and the likes of Vodafone and O2 in the middle who are still a bit stingy with their bandwidth. I almost switched to 3 again before Xmas, but couldn’t quite bring myself to do it because of bad experiences I’d had with them in the past. Their network was always pretty good though, at least in the places I traveled.
Vodafone (my current main provider) are ok, but I’d say their data (3G) network isn’t quite as good as O2 (who I also use). Seeing as data is my main concern, neither of these quite do what I want them to, and I’m paying a good amount per month.
Virgin always struck me as quite a good provider, at their price-point, so it’s a shame they’ve had to resort to this for whatever reason. I could get a decent deal with them as they’re my Broadband/Landline/TV provider, but this kind of thing does put me off somewhat.
LOL, reason #2131 not to go on contract…..