At last broadband speeds as promised with Virgin Media and Fibre optic broadband

Norwich broadband speeds over fibre optic cables

I recently changed from old copper cable based broadband provided by Zen Internet to fibre optic provided by Virgin Media, and I must say I am wowed by it's performance. See above. I am paying for 30mbps and I am getting 30mbps!! fancy that, actually getting what you pay for.

For the first time, I can now stream movies from lovefilm directly through my media centre with no stuttering....

Previously I was paying £25 per month for 8mbps over copper lines but actually only getting (if I was lucky) 1 mbps. Now I am paying £21.49 for 6 months then £30.74 and that includes the phone line.

The last time I wrote a blog on this was when I was living in Guildford, South East England, here: http://www.simonrhart.com/2009/03/broadband-speed-test-south-east-england.html

It still amazes me how broadband service company's can charge you a certain fee for a service you have no way of getting. Imagine if this logic was used in all industries, like the motoring industry. You take your car in to have the tyres replaced, but the garage charges you for a full service instead!! madness!

Broadband Speed test - South East England

I recently changed ISPs for my home network. I now use O2 (in UK) O2 bought Be Un Limited a while back. I was on Sky - Sky bough Easynet a few years ago. Sky was very slow and unreliable.

The upload bandwidth was almost no-existent. Experience playing on-line games was not much fun due to the lag. You need good upload bandwidth for playing on-line games successfully otherwise you just get slaughtered.

I used http://www.speedtest.net to measure the speed of both networks. As you can see, it is a big difference between the two networks. Also notice the ping response differences.

Anyone else in my area, Guildford, South East England who is on Sky should consider O2.

Here are the results:


Sky Easynet (before)


O2 (Be Un Limited)

I am around 5 miles from the BT exchange.