I have been a Virgin media broadband customer now for 18 months and for broadband I doubt that I will ever switch as it has been absolutely perfect for me.


As I didn't take any other Virgin service with it, just the broadband I cannot comment on any of their other services so this review is about Virgin Broadband only.


Before I switched I had a disastrous experience with Talk Talk who from the start never managed to get my internet up and running reliably and as this service went through the BT line, one blamed the other and after spending weeks on the phone and getting nowhere I insisted they cancel the contract which thankfully they did, and so began the search for a new provider.


I came across Virgin Media and noticed they had some fantastic packages, but as Mr. Benn is perfectly happy with his Sky TV and phone package I decided to look at Virgin's Cable broadband deals.


The big plus for me was that virgin use fibre optic cables which run underground so do not go through the telephone line. Cable is quicker and more reliable for a lot of people as if you have to run your broadband through the phone line the further away you live from the phone exchange will result in slower speeds.


I made a quick call to Virgin who checked my post code to see if there were actually cables set up in my street and thankfully there was. I picked 10 meg broadband and got a deal for 18 months £14.99 for 15 months and £26.00 for the last three months with free equipment and set up included.


They arranged for a technician to come the following week and a few days later sent me a welcome pack and confirmation of the contract.


The technicians arrived on time and opened a little grid from just in front of our garden wall, I had not even noticed it was there before and pulled up some cable from it, and ran them to my computer room which is upstairs. They then drilled a neat little hole through the wall pulled the cable into the bedroom where they attached it a very small box and screwed the box to the wall. It was a very tidy job and no decorations were spoilt. The technicians attached everything to the modem which was supplied and connected it to my pc and set it up for me.


I did a few speed tests and I was actually getting around the 10 meg mark which is more than enough for playing games on and I have played some big ones like Aion, World of Warcraft, Age of Conan and the like. The chat bars were full of people lagging, a lot of them had better pc's as well but this never happened to me once.


The customer services are excellent too. My service has only been down twice and when I phoned to find out why I got through very quickly and told both times upon giving my post code that yes indeed there was a technical problem in my area and they were trying to sort it out quickly and would credit my account with £10.00 for the inconvenience and both times the service was off for less than an hour.


I have since bought a wireless router (which on some broadband packages Virgin supply free) and I run my laptop off it downstairs as well.

My contract came up for renewal last month so I rang them to ask them if they could do it cheaper than the £26.00 they were charging me and indeed they could. They gave me a new 12 month contract at £20.00 per month so I am more than happy.


I would highly recommend Virgin Media and it is worth taking a look at their website. There are too many packages for me to tell you about here such as TV, broadband, telephone with different inclusive minutes. Their website is very easy to follow and you can find out if you have cable in your area by simply putting your postcode on their site.


The Website address is www.virginmedia.com.