Internet provider Virgin Media (O2) has finally fixed a fault that left a small number of their broadband customers, specifically some of those on top tier packages (e.g. 1Gbps), with half their normal upload rate (i.e. 50Mbps instead of 100Mbps). But it’s unclear why the seemingly simple problem took over a month to resolve.
The issue, which was raised by a couple of ISPreview’s readers (special credit to David) and via Virgin Media’s Community Forum, first appears to have started at the very beginning of June 2024 – after a period of normally routine network maintenance. This left some customers with a stuck c.55000000 bps (55Mbps) upload profile instead of c.1230000000 bps (123Mbps).
Problems with stuck or incorrect speed profiles do sometimes happen on Virgin Media and in theory they should be a quick fix on the network side (note: a hard reset of the router won’t resolve this). But what’s surprising is how many weeks and hoops the customers had to jump through just to get the fault both recognised and then resolved.
The provider’s support team initially denied that there was a problem and even questioned whether one of those affected needed 100Mbps uploads: “I called support to inform them, but they seem clueless and could only say they will monitor for 24 hours, and think it’s fine, and even asked why I needed more speed as if I should be happy with 50Mb (even though I’m paying for double),” said phonic2k.
One of the other customers was also sent a new router, which is unnecessary for resolving this sort of problem. But the good news is that, after a long battle, Virgin Media informed those affected on Tuesday this week that they’d finally managed to resolve the issue.
A spokesperson for Virgin Media told ISPreview:
“Due to a fault, a small number of customers were not receiving their normal upload speeds. This has now been fixed and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.”
As usual, VM gave no details to explain why the problem had occurred, how it was resolved or why it took so long to fix (stuck profiles should be an easy fix). Sadly such ambiguity is not uncommon among major ISPs.