Wednesday, October 15, 2014

Virgin Media has come

At last I have constructed the internet setting in my home.


In general wireless internet connection is widely spread in Western countries. You can enjoy internet for free in some hotels, restaurants, and McDonald's, as I wrote in the past. However, it was not easy to introduce a new environment of WiFi at home.

I compared some internet service providers to make decision. In the UK, BT is the biggest company of telecommunication. It administers telephone, broadband, and TV as a package.

It is troublesome that most of broadband providers offer the internet connection service coupled with the phone. I have no intention to have a fixed phone, TV either, so this kind of service is redundant for me. Additionally, these services tend to take long term to be set up. Some Japanese bloggers write it took a couple of months. Furthermore, many providers request us to make a 2-years-contract. I am planning to leave London the next year.

Instead, Virgin Media provides broadband services exclusively, yet it recommends contracts coupled with phone and TV. Fortunately, there is a cable available to connect to Virgin Media in my flat already. One year contract is available. Additionally, one of my colleague also recommended it. So, I made a decision.

There was, however, one problem. A UK bank account was required to begin the contract. I had to wait till opening my bank account. Then, I made an appointment via the internet. It is fortunate that it took only two weeks from application to coming. An amusing engineer came to my flat and immediately set up the connection. He gave me a WiFi rooter so that I did not have to buy one on my own.

I measured the connection speed, as below.

Broadband Network Record Speed Test


USEN speed test


The data seems to depend on the measuring system. Approximately it the speed is same as other services of WiFi such as McDonald's. I can watch some video streaming without stress. So cool.

*sequel

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