Virgin Media + BT Boradband Help

[shilee]

Hi, I am an oversea student studying in UK.. So I am not quite sure about this.

Can I apply a BT broadband (since it is DSL) when I already have VM cable in the same house?

I do have a phone line dedicated to VM, but BT is giving free new phone line now. So I am thinking to go for another phone line with BT coupled with its broadband.

Will this work?

The idea is that I would like to have my own broadband connection for online gaming. Since there's now 4 people sharing on VM broadband, the ping is high when they start streaming videos etc. Even surfing is hard when the broadband is congested.

Thanks!

 

[Gishank]

As I gather, you can only have Virgin, or BT/Sky. Not both, due to technical reasons. Besidse for relevance Virgin is rated as the best broadband provider in the UK (speed wise) whereas BT is considered one of the worst.

 

[pr1s0ner]

I used to have VM cable and sky at the same address. I cant think of anything that has changed that should cause a problem. As long as it is cable and a BT line it certainly used to be seperate lines.

 

[Cavid]

You CAN get Virgin/BT in the same house however you'd be best to just get a 2nd VM line installed, pretty sure it's £99 for a second line installation but if you sweet talk customer services you might get a freebie!

If you really want DSL (bear mind your ping is most likely gonna be 150+ especially if you're not near an exchange) then make you let BT know you are keeping your existing Virgin line as they have a habbit of stealing VM's hardware when they disconnect it.

Again though my advice would definitely be give customer services a call and try for a 2nd line or look at upgrading your connection, VM are rolling out 100Mb broadband throughout the country and offer 50Mb to most places already, hope that helps.

 

[shilee]

You CAN get Virgin/BT in the same house however you'd be best to just get a 2nd VM line installed, pretty sure it's £99 for a second line installation but if you sweet talk customer services you might get a freebie!

If you really want DSL (bear mind your ping is most likely gonna be 150+ especially if you're not near an exchange) then make you let BT know you are keeping your existing Virgin line as they have a habbit of stealing VM's hardware when they disconnect it.

Again though my advice would definitely be give customer services a call and try for a 2nd line or look at upgrading your connection, VM are rolling out 100Mb broadband throughout the country and offer 50Mb to most places already, hope that helps.

Hi thanks for your reply. If I were to upgrade to 50/100Mb, will it save my ping? I will definitely give VM a call for the second line. Thanks for your help guys!

 

[Cavid]

If your room mates are just doing things like streaming youtube it reduce your ping because you will have a lot more bandwidth free, you tend to find if your connection is using <50% capacity you wont notice anything on your ping but if your friends are downloading massive files over a long period then upgrading probably wont help.

 

[duvetdave]

If your vm broadband is fibre-optic then you can get BT in as well. However, it would probably be cheaper to just upgrade. (Be careful of vm traffic shaping) They drop your speed by 75%. So a 10mb connection would then be 2.5mb and that between 4 users would not be very good.

Also if everyone is using wireless your ping time maybe better if you use a wired connection. If this is not practical (up in bedroom ect) then maybe consider Homeplugs

 

[shilee]

Thanks everyone, I can get <30-50 ping with VM if the bandwidth is not congested. However, sometimes everyone just like to watch a movie or so to relax and I will get 100+ ping. I assume that we don't have enough bandwidth to go. I will phone VM and upgrade my 20Mb (with daily limit) to unlimited 50Mb.

Thanks for all your help!