It's been done in various methods on EHV power lines aka Energis. Depends on the method that has been proposed, however cat working is a royal pain.

In reply to a post by Rockh:

Hot Glove can be done at any voltage upto 440kV. The linesmen at work who do this, do have a few screws loose and some impressive kit.

So the high voltage sometimes blows their pants off?

Virgin have indeed been busy infilling areas.

I know Leicester has been infilled, a poster on here Crysalis I think he's called finally got VM 20Mb and it was massively over subscribed.

I live in a cable franchise area and the developer would not come to an agreement with Telewest so we didn't get cable. I enquired about getting it installed and they said it would cost around £350 per home to run cable in the street. Their current budget is £250 so they said at the moment it is not going to happen.

There are streets around here with the green virgin cabs and conduit to all the homes but the cabs are empty and there is no coax under the pavement. I'm sure these will be done first before any of our homes.

Could you have cable only ISP's that use the Virgin network yet don't have anything to do with VM?

Could you have cable only ISP's that use the Virgin network yet don't have anything to do with VM?

your question is a bit of a contradiction as obviously they would need a wholesale agreement with VM. AOL used to do "AOL over cable" in the UK, may still exist as a legacy product.

No reason at all why it couldn't be wholesaled but it depends what you're trying to bypass. If the connection from the cabinet or the local coax is overloaded that would affect any ISP using it, surely ?

I still think have a reall independent local loop is the way forward. It makes no sense now that TV & data have converged to have two seperate networks.

I would bring both the BT local loop & the Virgin Local loop & TV network under a single independent company. Its business would just be to provided and maintain the local loop. It would provide no end user services.

Whilst the local loop is tied to BT or Virgin it will never be truely open and the regulator will be constantly having to step in. At present BT will do its best within the legislation to keep the competition out

Other ISP's & Teleco's will always be at a disadvantge when the critical part of the infrustructure is owned & controlled by their biggest comptitor

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

Other ISP's & Teleco's will always be at a disadvantge when the critical part of the infrustructure is owned & controlled by their biggest comptitor

However all independent companies in all lines of business jump far more for their biggest one or two customers than they do for the rest. Far more than is currently allowed to BT Openreach and BT Wholesale by OfCom, weak-kneed though it is.

Thought: Singe telecoms/TV loop - how do you merge the disparate technologies without spending billions?
Also do you outlaw other local loops, thus forcing all community broadband to close or hand over to the new incumbent.

One big single loop sounds very philantropic, but those running it will be the same small faces, and thus the same sort of things will end up happening. It may actually stifle innovation

I would bring both the BT local loop & the Virgin Local loop & TV network under a single independent company.

that'll cost a Bob or two.

One big single loop sounds very philantropic

it sounds like communism to me. That's widely regarded as a good idea too, not.

Or a commercial company that can now create its own monopoly and serve its largest customer best, ignoring requests from the smaller providers.

e.g. big provider XY wants to see unlimited cheap as chips and wants traffic management down at local node level (so they can buy less backhaul), and traffic management becomes the norm. with unmanaged costing around £2 per GB.

The current situation is not Ideal, but its very hard in reality to create an ideal situation.