Virgin Media cable connection

Apptreciate help in obtaining answer for friend of mine who runs Mac Desktop - sorry don't know model or OSX version

His broadband is provided by VirginMedia vai cable connection. He has the XL package running 20Mbps. His intitial problem was one of download speed or lack of it. As a Virgin customer myself, I popped round and it was evident that he wasn't going to get above 2Mbps!. Having moved to XL packages months back, no one at Virgin bothered to check whether his modem was cable of 20Mbps - it wasn't. A new one has been delivered and installed. Testing via Speedtest.net - The Global Broadband Speed Test has never given a result above 11.5 Mbps Raising this with Virgin Support their tests to his modem show download of (around) 20Mbps (or so they say). With them on the phone my own tests around 8 -10Mbps. They suggest I test with Windows based machine. I plan to do this as I have a laptop with XP installed.

My friend says Virgin told him that as he had a Mac then he needed the XL (20Mbps) package. I have no experience of a Mac or the OS/X operating system so can't comment other than I find this hard to believe. Any knowledgeable people out there that can shed further light on this issue ?????

Well i've been a Virgin customer for years and their Broadband speed has always been near the service i was paying for. I recently upgraded to the 10Mbps service and it was running well over 9, tested with speedtest.net.
That was a while ago while i was still using an XP Laptop. I only switched to a Mac a couple of months ago and have not had any Speed issues.

I've just done another Speedtest and its running at 9705!

I really can't understand why having a Mac would mean he needed a bigger Broadband speed ! !

It's got to be a problem with Virgin rather than his Mac...

Thanks for reply. Your response just confirms my suspicion in that my friend has been duped to subscribing to a more expensive package than was necessary. He is a light broadband user and 20Mbps for what he does is well over the top. Not sure I belive response from their support unit in stating that their testing at 20Mbps whereas I'm seeing significantly less. All this will be persued with Virgin. Thanks again.