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Last week, Stop the Cap! took a look at Virgin Mobile’s new unlimited $40 prepaid wireless broadband service. Early testing looked promising, with speed test results that were well within economy tier DSL service and better than expected. But by early this week the story began to change.
We’ve continued testing the service here and have noticed that while Virgin Mobile’s service turned in respectable performance during the business day (East Coast time), once people started heading home, it’s a completely different story. For the last five days the service has deteriorated to the point of unusability by dinnertime.
It had gotten so bad, we went back to using Cricket’s wireless broadband.
So what’s happening?
First, it’s important to distinguish that these problems are impacting only Virgin Mobile. Sprint’s postpaid customers can use the same cell tower and backbone network and not experience any performance issues. Virgin Mobile’s home location on Sprint’s data network is in San Francisco, and until September 2nd, all traffic headed for the Bay Area to what is basically a virtual LAN on Sprint’s network. The IP address we were assigned was actually an internal address for that virtual LAN.
Our problems started appearing Monday afternoon when we noticed web pages refused to load completely. Since many web pages are composed of content from a variety of different web hosts (Google Analytics, advertising, embedded content, etc.), if parts of the page refuse to load, the page itself may not appear at all. Advertising blocks were the worst problem, often leaving one staring at a blank web page waiting for the ad content to render.
By Wednesday, this problem simply made using Virgin Mobile for broadband untenable. Few pages — even Google’s home page, refused to load reliably. When pages did appear, they took longer than dial-up in many cases. We tried to perform some diagnostics but found trace-routing impossible after the third hop and speed tests could not be loaded, much less run reliably.
The fact the worst problems occurred in the late afternoon and evening hours point to a network completely overloaded with customers.
And indeed, Virgin Mobile admitted as much when it replied to some tweets indicating it had quadrupled capacity by the end of this week. Some users also reported they no longer connected exclusively through the San Francisco (Walnut Creek) location.
As of Thursday, anecdotal reports indicated some service improvements, but the service is still prone to slowdowns during peak usage times.
A few things are evident now that a week has passed:
- Virgin Mobile Wireless Broadband does not share the better performing Sprint postpaid data network those customers receive. Virgin Mobile customer traffic shares a much smaller “pool of bandwidth” because of the limitations imposed by its routing.
- The company needs to either abandon its current routing scheme or dramatically modify it to accommodate the traffic.
- Refunds for disgruntled customers are often available for the hardware, but don’t expect to get a refund for data usage.
- The service problems come regardless of the device used or the number of signal bars you receive.
- New routing cities have popped up since Thursday to supplement San Francisco — Charlotte, N.C., New York, Atlanta, Boston, Southfield (Mich.), Los Angeles, Philadelphia, and a few others. Feel free to share yours in the comments section.
On Friday, Virgin Mobile suffered a major outage caused by a power failure that has stopped or seriously delayed delivery of text messages. The outage is also affecting some data connections and customer service availability. Angry customers have been pelting the company’s Facebook page with hostile remarks since the outage began.
If you signed up for Virgin Mobile wireless broadband, please share your experiences in our comments section!
Other stories of interest:
- Virgin Mobile Introducing Unlimited Mobile Wireless Broadband $40 A Month on Sprint Network
- Virgin Mobile Bungles Broadband2Go $40 Unlimited Introduction – Embarrassing “System Problems”
- Verizon Wireless Introducing Prepaid Wireless Broadband, But Get Your Wallet: $15 A Day For 75 Megabytes
- Virgin Mobile Broadband Increasing Usage Allowances, While Maintaining Existing Pricing; Cricket Could Be Next
- Virgin Mobile Introduces Prepaid Broadband2Go At Prices2High
Haven’t signed up yet, but it seems like Virgin Mobile *is* trying to do the right thing here by adding significant amounts of capacity across their network, which uses Level3 primarily rather than Sprintlink (do a reverse traceroute from http://lg.he.net to see what I mean). I’m guessing that Level3 bandwidth is actually cheaper than Sprint’s own Tier 1 network…a bit ironic since Sprint owns Virgin Mobile but whatever…so there’s some cost differentiation between the two services.
Also, while I don’t agree with the whole private IP address side of things with Virgin Mobile, CricKet does the exact same thing, and AT&T firewalls you from the Internet on most ports. Verizon and Sprint proper don’t do this, for what it’s worth.
Honestly, Virgin Mobile is probably a victim of its own success at this point; it can’t seem to add bandwidth quickly enough to keep apace with demand, which is rightfully rampant considering that $40 per month is the sweet spot for internet access, mobile or fixed, and “unlimited” has a lovely ring to it.
Virgin Mobile’s broadband data is obviously being routed differently than Sprint users’ data. Sprint is clearly providing less resources to Virgin Mobile customers. There are reports in forums with users who have both Sprint and Virgin Mobile devices where side by side tests showed that Virgin Mobile provided sub 300 kbps download speeds while Sprint devices provided 1 – 2.5 Mbps downloads.
It’s the same as Datajack where they were routed through Rackspace. At least here, Sprint owns Virgin Mobile and thus have reasons to provide more resources. Which they did. After those tweets from Virgin Mobile about expanding capacity, users reported their IP addresses being located in more places other than just Walnut Creek, CA.
Thanks for answering my questions. I do have a bit of engineering knowledge on how CDMA 3G EVDO works so your post has answered my questions. So basically the reason this service is so god-damned cheap is that
1. Virgin Mobile’s subscriber internet network is one big cluster of a NAT at the packet gateway.
This makes them cheap because they don’t want to pay for the costs of acquiring real routed IP addresses (truth to be told this cost has gone up substantially from ARIN lately due to dwindling supply until we are all using IPv6 which is not going to happen until 1-2 years in the future or companies are FORCED to switch due to technical constraints).
2. Their engineering team probably due to lack of resources and unanticipated growth through the NYTimes article the other day routed ALL of their subscribers traffic in the USA through ONE packet gateway (routing) in the Bay Area. This is extremely inefficient for both practical (latency) and uptime (there’s no fail-over nor geographic redundancy).
3. So they added more packet gateways for geographic redundancy. This is good. Except… I’m pretty sure (I don’t have the service, just knowledge) the QoS priority on Virgin Mobile is a-lot-lower than Sprint’s own post-paid subscribers or anyone using service directly from Sprint. So if the EvDo channel at the cell site is maxed at capacity, the Sprint pre-paid subscriber has priority over the the Virgin Mobile subscriber. This makes sense because the Sprint subscriber is paying more for higher-quality service. (Paul’s comment above mostly confirms this.)
4. The back-haul to the packet gateway/MTSO/hub is the same, same as above for the packet gateway with the QoS (Sprint subscribers over Virgin Mobile).
5. Their using Level3 versus Sprintlink. Funny, Virgin Mobile is owned by Sprint. Or their added BGP Tier 1 Upstream redundancy (this is good for diversity, Level3 is usually cheap and better actually….)
6. I won’t be recommending this service until clients receive full public routable IPs. This won’t matter to the lay-man but I can’t count on how Virgin Mobile/Sprint’s engineering team has configured their packet gateway to do VPN passthrough for my VPN.
7. The above doesn’t matter to 95% of users who aren’t in technical/engineering/ or have a VPN. If you’re just web browsing or chatting it’s cheap broadband internet.
8. Cricket/MetroPCS is different in that they built their own network but like you said with Cricket they also give out private/NAT’ed IPs to their end-users.
I have corporate discount with Verizon Wireless, although expensive, works great! (I don’t go over the 5GB as it’s my backup connection, my home cable modem does all my media needs unlimited for now hopefully into the future.)
I can’t wait for Verizon LTE! Verizon despite their media furor, does do NETWORK ENGINEERING right, especially on the wireless side. I can say that from my personal observations and knowing.
So I buy the new Virgin Mobile wirelss and $40 unlimited/month card, get all ready for high-speed internet access, and would you believe it, it’s slower than a hare with a mouse up it’s butt?
the whole week that’s transpired since i bought the damned thing has been one long nightmare, and that’s being polite about it.
I called virgin mobile’s customer support number 4-5 times, and was treated to the standard communication dilemnas. First: the middle eastern chick who acts like she’s the one who’s being wronged just b/c i can’t understand her wretched accent. Second: the overweight, pompuous comic book/horror movie nerd who assures me that going with virgin mobile was no mistake as the crunching sound of dorritos waffles through our phone conversation, and then revealing to me that my connection problems are my mistake because my computer is not close enough to the nearest window in my house. Last, and surely least: the illegal immigrant, who after i explained to him the shoddy customer service that would soon precede his own LITERALLY snores in the background…..MUST have been a tough day on the job.
Silly anecdotes aside, i can say ONE thing for VB-They have proven themselves without a shadow of a doubt to be the worst internet provider: from the initial false hype, to the shoddy product, right down to the insipid costumer service reps.
It’s been a hassle from start to finish. It’s only been a week, but it’s felt like a lifetime, or at least a decade of one. 50% of the time, the google main page didnt even pop up. When it did, that was the best internet coasting would come to. Further pages would take several minute if at all. As a lark, tonight i decided to type “virgin mobile wireless is horrible” just in the web search box, and came along this directory which included this site. How ironic, one of the few times service works, it’s when i’m critizing the company.
Only a few posts here, but i found the initial essay up top by Phillip to be informing, as well as the post above mine.
Still, this is the second time I’ve tried to post a response, so this comment may never go through anyway….
What a week its been….ahhh. Stilll, no real worries, as I bought the damned items from Walmart, and have a completely competent 15 day warranty. the goods will be returned before the end of the week, and I’ll be going with either Sprint or Verizon.
thanks virgin mobile, thanks for nothing.
While the service may not be as good as any other carriers mobile broadband devices, keep in mind that this is ridiculously inexpensive AND unlimited. No other carrier will even tempt us with any plan above 5GB. More and more people need mobile broadband now, not just business users, and I wish more of the carriers would realize that. There is money to be made in this unlimited game!
Now, as for my experience with the Virgin Mobile Broadband, it’s been great. Pages load fast and I haven’t experienced any downtime. Both my boyfriend and I have the service expect he has the Mifi and I just have the regular USB modem. Downloading from iTunes has been fine. I can get a song in about a minute and a half (usually a bit less) and that’s not a big deal at all seeing as when I had Verizon mobile broadband it took about 45 seconds – 1:15. I’ve also been able to play World of Warcraft just fine with no lag whatsoever and my boyfriend has been playing multiplayer games on the PS3 network just fine.
Our good luck could come from where we live but I highly doubt it. We live about an hour from Atlanta, Ga off a dirt road in our city (read: the boonies).
And if anyone is wondering about their phone service – that’s good too. I usually end up having full bars. I’m a broke college student so when I heard about their new mobile phones (blackberry and lg rumor touch) and the unlimited broadband, I jumped on it. It does what I need it to do and that’s just fine with me.
I was using the virgin mobile modem for my ps3,since they switched to unlimited my ps3′s been telling me I have a NAT type 3 setting which is really annoying.It was type 2 before they switched and it worked.I don’t think I can change the modems settings.
I purchased this device a few weeks ago. The first one and a half to two weeks it worked pretty well. Then everything crashed, and I could not get on at all. I called the company. After waiting and being transferred and waiting again, I got someone who said they would make me “smile” by taking care of the problem before I got off the phone with them. Sweet guy. But, in the end, all I heard was a dial tone — somehow I got disconnected, and the lack of internet service remained. I was out of time and had to call a day or two later. This time a woman told me that they were having problems delivering their service and that it should be up and running within twenty four hours. Days went by. Still no service at all — other than being able to get to the Virgin Mobile website, but no others. Finally, I will have to give up and try something else. Going to the library for internet all the time is very inconvenient.
I made the mistake of signing up –service is terrible. They had another outage today and could not tell me when it would be fixed. Avoid Virgin Mobile at all cost.
Have been using Vm since it went unlimeted.it goes from running at max to running at min all the time.Mostly it works well enough.
We live in an area that has no landline dsl,fiber or any other option(satilite is too expensive.)
It seems like just when we are about to can them our bandwidth comes back and it works well.
We had millinicom unlimted(it uses sprint also) but cost $70 a month.The service was a tiny bit better but not enought ojustify the $30 over vm’s cost.
I bought the Virgin Mobile USB dongle, tested it out with the 100 meg $10 plan just to run benchmarks, and it all seemed to work great. So I bit on the unlimited $40 plan, with an eye at replacing my overpriced $60/5gb per month contract with Verizon.
Well, the speed is half as fast as Verizon, which I don’t so much mind. But even though I’ve got a good clear signal, the connection tends to simply die pretty often. It does the same thing on all of my PCs, even my laptop. It loves to “connect” just fine, pulling an IP and pretending everything’s good, but half the time it just doesn’t get out to the net, failing to even open their own mandatory popup start page. There’s something flawed in their network infrastructure. I’d wager half the time I want to use the service it’s simply not functional.
It’s a nice idea, this unlimited internet, but with all the persistent downtime it’s more like a buffet where you can eat all you want but half the time the restaurant doesn’t actually put anything out on the table.
I need reliable wireless internet too much for this flaky service. Even with a measly bandwidth allowance I’m not cancelling my Verizon just yet, and it’s not too late for me to return this USB modem to Wal-mart for a refund…
[...] Virgin Mobile (Sprint prepaid), and Clearwire. There have been multiple stories like this one, this one, and now this about the data clog on Virgin Mobile and their getting caught throttling without [...]
I called tech support after a outage.After being hung up onor just palin lied to 15 times i filed an fcc complaint and contacted VM escalation line(turns out it is sprint).
They emailed me back and said my service should be back up,it was.
Since then when i have an outage i email them and not VM’s csr’s.
Gotta love the bait and switch unlimted.Why should the even think about capping us when there up and down pre 5gb service does it for the.
btw we average 4-5 bars with 85db’s signal.Still isn’t consistant speed.