Hi all I'm in a bit of a dispute with Virgin media at the moment... I pay for landline & broadband with them since April. I was supposed to be getting 100mbps, and I am only about 20-30ft away from their cabinet. They even laid new cable to my house, fitted new connection boxes and phone socket. To begin with speeds were ok. But for the last couple of months they've been dreadful. They haven't fixed anything, I'm paying for a 100mbps service that is on average giving me just 14mbps... For the last week I've been taking screenshots of those speeds and saving them on my computer, tests have been run each day at various times from afternoon to evening... But even at 2am this morning it was still just as bad. I stream a lot via netflix and amzon video. My tests via speedtest and netflix's one speed checker (fast.com) have shown that on average my speed is 8-9 times slower than advertised. My tests indicate that my speeds are not even fast enough to stream 4k conten... which is the main reason I signed up for it in the first place. I'm getting a degraded service. I feel like I'm being ripped off, but am locked into a contract until April 2018. What can I do to get out of it early, is the fact that they're providing such a poor service enough to claim breach of contract?

People moving house will be able to easily compare broadband speeds at different addresses before buying for the first time under government plans Internet firms will be ordered to hand over data on broadband speeds for individual addresses rather than just geographical areas under changes contained in the Digital Economy Bill. It is hoped the move will encourage price comparison websites to create easy to use searches of broadband speeds at different properties. Currently, if a house-hunters wants to check how quick broadband is at a property of interest they must individually approach every different internet firm. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/09/12/broadband-speeds-for-every-property-to-be-made-easily-available/

Tougher rules to let customers exit their contract New rules being introduced by Ofcom will let broadband customers exit their contract at any time if they aren’t getting the speed quoted by their provider. Currently customers can only cancel their broadband deal penalty free within the first three months of the contract. After that time they are charged a penalty fee to exit, even if their broadband speed is slow. Under the new rules customers can cancel at any time, if the speed they receive is slower than the speed they were quoted when they signed up. http://www.which.co.uk/news/2015/06/slow-broadband-speeds-now-you-can-cancel-406021/ That's the theory, meanwhile in the real world: Three in four households pay for internet speeds they never receive – but very few can use new Ofcom rules to switch providers More than 13 million households who pay for internet speeds they never receive are unable to use new rules allowing people to exit slow broadband contracts. As well as the headline speed, the provider must give a so-called "minimum guaranteed" speed. This is the highest speed available to the slowest 10 per cent of households in their customer base. The new rules introduced by Ofcom last week allow people to leave contracts early only if the speed is below this "minimum" level. Experts said it was therefore likely that just 10 per cent of the 22 million British households with broadband will be able to make use of the new rules to leave their provider. Customers who receive speeds just above the minimum threshold may be unable to argue their cases and will face fees to terminate their contract early. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/shopping-and-consumer-news/11682353/Millions-with-slow-broadband-cant-use-new-exit-rules.html ADVERTISING

Hi Am transfering some data from one External HDD to another - about 40gb worth. However, i have noticed that the transfer speed is only 84kbs. Doesn't need a rocket scientist to work out that this is going to take ages. Any idea why the transfer is so slow?

For the past 2 weeks the 3G on my phone has been way below 1mbps which is unacceptable. I've been on to vodafone several times who blamed the phone despite the 3G speeds being good elsewhere, the sim card to which they replaced it, then numerous masts not working correctly despite their live coverage checker saying everything was fine. Now I have been back on today and the advisor tried to sell me a Sure Signal box for £75 which I wasn't prepared to pay. The advisor later stated that " We can confirm that it is not fault at all, and there are no faults or anything reported in the area as we got the confirmation from the team it might get updated more in the future and you have a service working Ryan yes it could be slow but at the end of the day you are able to use your service for calls, texts and internet " They are now basically trying to say they have too many customers in my area so that's the reason the service is poor. I pay a great deal of money to them every month for them to take this shocking unhelpful stance. It was basically there is nothing we can do. Absolutely frustrated!

Trying not to be cynical but despite the call centre in India finding 'no fault with our line' and the problem must be with our internal wiring, we see an increase in our D/L speed from a consistent 0.6 to 0.7 mb/sec to 1.3 mb/sec. Called quite a few times before (over a period of about 5 years) and followed their advice by unplugging this and unplugging that. but this time, didnt unplug a damn thing but experienced the usual doubling of speed anyway. Sherewsbury, where I live is known for very poor speeds and no alternatives (i.e cable) and the reason I called them this time wast that the BT homehub would not stay connected for a period of more than 20 second or so. Its been like this for the last 3 days, but suddenly comes stable within minutes of calling the BT helpline, and has remained stable with not one crash in the last 8 hours. Anyone else experience a miraculous improvement with BT connection when they talk to the Indian call centre? (despite them saying that there is no problem). I dont mind them finding a problem or creating a solution but what does boil my p*ss a little is when they blatently tell me its nothing to do with them and is our internal wiring, when clearly it is not the case.