Virgin Medias Project Lightning

VM has announced a major expansion of its network it is now planning to extend it to another 4 Million homes over the next 5 years so BT is now facing a serious challenge

The budget for this roll out is £3 Billion

Full Press Release here

http://about.virginmedia.com/press-release/9467/virg...

Edited by deleted (Fri 13-Feb-15 08:37:21)

Be interesting to see where they do it - I am guessing a lot of people will be complaining that they are only expanding where other suppliers already have a presence.

Difficult to find a place where BT is not

And the comments from Virgin's CEO that they will not be doing any rural areas - "because that is BT's job" shows just how they want to Cherry Pick again.

Other than BT and Kingston Comms there is no real competition. The logical thing would be to infill existing areas and provide full coverage in areas where towns only got half completed. Clearly the coverage will be focused on the urban areas rather than very rural area

The VM rollout will also force BT to look at its roll out and in particular its roll out of fibre. It has to look at bringing fibre nearer to the home or VM will run rings around BT as they can win hands down on speed

VM is a pure commercial operator BT is not. The government subsidised rollout is bring Broadband to rural areas. VM are hardly going to try to compete with a subsidised rollout

The total usual rubbish from you.

There is NOTHING to stop VM putting rolling out to rural areas - they just don't want to spend money where the return is likely to be negative and cannot be bothered to bid for any subsidies.

And will Virgin provide service to my village? NO. Is it being subsidised? NO Is BT planning upgrades yes, and at their own cost.

Cough G.Fast

Yes DOCSIS will be out to out pace it, but that has not stopped millions picking BT or others with the FTTC network.

The shouting about BT does hide the reality that Sky, TalkTalk could start to grab all new build estates etc if the CityFibre work takes off. Sky catching up and becoming a 1 to 2 million home vertically integrated TV/broadband operator is more scary than BT I'd suggest.

With them looking at covering 4M homes they have to be looking at the larger rural towns. Most of the cities are covered as are most of the larger towns

What part of the CEOs comment that they will "GAP FILL and not expand to rural areas" do you not understand?

In reply to a post by ian72:

Be interesting to see where they do it - I am guessing a lot of people will be complaining that they are only expanding where other suppliers already have a presence.

They are installing it here, well a few turnings away.

After many many years of them ignoring our area, they are now installing here.
Not down my road yet, but in the next couple of Months if they get planning permission they will be installing down my road, basically they are installing in the E12 area.

Paul

There is rural and rural. It is a vague and often misunderstood term
My understanding is that they will not be going into the real rural areas but will be going into the larger towns in rural areas

Lets start with a few basics. There are about 25 Million homes in the UK with about 50% passed by VM so about 12 Million so currently about 12.5 Million homes not served by VM so VM are looking to expand their coverage by about one third and the only way they can achieve that is by going into the larger rural towns, These are not small town you are probably looking at towns in the region of 50,000 people

Perhaps it's just me but I can't find the quote:

GAP FILL and not expand to rural areas

anywhere in the above mentioned press release.

They won't be doing much of Wales then

There is nothing the press release about backfilling as such the nearest they get is with this

"Network expansion will be prioritised according to demand from households and companies, with a focus on areas closest to Virgin Media�s existing network.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

VM is a pure commercial operator BT is not. The government subsidised rollout is bring Broadband to rural areas. VM are hardly going to try to compete with a subsidised rollout

More of the usual rubbish one has come to expect from your posts.

In reply to a post by WelshWArrior:

Perhaps it's just me but I can't find the quote:

GAP FILL and not expand to rural areas

anywhere in the above mentioned press release.

Same here, nor the first quote of "because that is BT's job". I do wish people wouldnt make quotes up and pass them off as though its in the press release.

I think this news should be welcomed by all Internet consumers. Competition is good for us. It's also a good sign that the market is opening up, finally.

I nearly fell off my chair - VM doing a significant expansion! Unheard of since ... since, well, ever!

For VM, this counts as fresh territory, so they'll have to dig a lot of streets - and the budget shows it. £3bn for 14% of the UK to put new cable into streets, vs the £2.5bn for BT to reach 67% with FTTC.

No they won't lots of distinctly urban left they can cover.

Manchester 100,000+ premises not covered by cable
Lewisham 40,000+
Barnet 80,000+
Greenwich 30,000+
Newcastle 40,000+
Leeds 100,000+
Liverpool 30,000+

The numbers very quickly add up

Just as I thought. I shouldn't moan though - my cab (SWTB cab3) is finally going live with fibre in the next week according to Superfast Wales

Try reading the detailed reports that are out there along with listening to the interviews that have been given.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

Lets start with a few basics. There are about 25 Million homes in the UK with about 50% passed by VM so about 12 Million so currently about 12.5 Million homes not served by VM so VM are looking to expand their coverage by about one third and the only way they can achieve that is by going into the larger rural towns, These are not small town you are probably looking at towns in the region of 50,000 people

Let's continue with some demographics, so we can understand the picture.

I have good figures for England+Wales - harder to find the equivalent for Scotland & NI. With this in mind, I'm assuming that E+W gets their fair share of the additional premises - so around 3.5m of the 4m premises.

In England & Wales, there are 5,500 places (from hamlets to cities) that the ONS classifies as "built up", and 95% of the population live in these places.

However, 50% of the population (and 49% of the households) can be found in just the top 31 of these places, with the smallest (Blackpool) having a population of 240,000 people.

To add 3.5m premises of additional coverage, you would now need to cover the top 100 built-up areas, with the smallest (Maidenhead) now having a population of 65,000.

The kind of place that will be at the tail end of this extra coverage include: Maidenhead, Wrexham, Folkestone, Newbury, Tunbridge Wells, Stafford, Lowestoft. The ones just outside the boundary would include Taunton, Macclesfield, Kettering, Runcorn.

I'm not hugely convinced that we tend to think of these places as "rural towns", but just "towns".

Note: To include towns of size 50,000, you would need to add another 28 places, and extend coverage by an extra 750,000. The tail would now have towns like Llanelli, Wellingborough and Horsham. Outside would be Bromsgrove, Banbury and Durham.

Have to say I agree - I don't really see them attacking too many new places, "just" filling in the (large) chunks of the urban areas that their predecessors didn't get to.

@WWWombat
Well when I was on the phone to them to confirm installing in my area over the next couple of months, the guy on the phone told me that this is the biggest install that they have ever done and that they have put loads of money in to this project, although I wasn't told how much though.

They also seem rather quick in the installs, I am following their progress on road works and its seems fast.

Going by their speed so far the rough estimate the guy told me on the phone seems about right.

Paul

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6840-4-million-ex...

Has a graph of current coverage levels on it now. My money would be on VM looking to push a chunk of the areas above the 90% and hitting the 95% figure, thus proving no need for public money to be spent to solve the problem in the cities.

Agreed.

Useful graph - at least nearer the right, with cities & London boroughs pulled out separately. Over towards the left, it becomes a little harder to visualise the coverage of a "county" when there is probably only one or two towns covered.

What will be interesting is to see how this changes over the next 5 years. Hopefully you can keep this as a baseline, and start adding bars of a different colour on top as coverage increases...

What are the places identified with 2 letters, like LO and EE?

Yes - it sounds like they've kicked off this 4m project with a couple of "local" pre-cursor expansions - perhaps to figure out costs, perhaps to figure out take-up.

Then they've only done the full announcement when they have put together the full business plan based on some realistic numbers.

It'll be interesting to watch - and will probably spur BT on with G.fast too.

Unfortunately for the real rural areas though, it looks like this boost in competition will still happen only within the same first two-thirds of the country.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Yes - it sounds like they've kicked off this 4m project with a couple of "local" pre-cursor expansions - perhaps to figure out costs, perhaps to figure out take-up.

Then they've only done the full announcement when they have put together the full business plan based on some realistic numbers.

Yeah.
I have also seen on roadworks VM going back to some of the new installs to repair some of the installs, so maybe going fast isn't good.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

It'll be interesting to watch - and will probably spur BT on with G.fast too.

Well, funny you say that, as soon as I found out VM was coming to my area, I noticed that BT started looking at continuing fibre rollouts in my area, but yeah it would be very nice to get G.fast, though I thought G.fast was to be used on FTTC and not FTTP, so if that is the case, then no gain in G.fast for us.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Unfortunately for the real rural areas though, it looks like this boost in competition will still happen only within the same first two-thirds of the country.

Paul

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Agreed.

Useful graph - at least nearer the right, with cities & London boroughs pulled out separately. Over towards the left, it becomes a little harder to visualise the coverage of a "county" when there is probably only one or two towns covered.

What will be interesting is to see how this changes over the next 5 years. Hopefully you can keep this as a baseline, and start adding bars of a different colour on top as coverage increases...

What are the places identified with 2 letters, like LO and EE?

Seems my borough (Newham) is currently at 25% according to that graph, which seems about right.

Paul

Yes I don't through older data away, so we can look back at 2015 as the start point.

though I thought G.fast was to be used on FTTC and not FTTP, so if that is the case, then no gain in G.fast for us.

If they start selling a 500Mb/s G.Fast option then they will almost certainly do a similar option for FTTP. As it is though you already can get 330Mb/s and it is those of us on FTTC playing catch up.

In reply to a post by ian72:

though I thought G.fast was to be used on FTTC and not FTTP, so if that is the case, then no gain in G.fast for us.

If they start selling a 500Mb/s G.Fast option then they will almost certainly do a similar option for FTTP. As it is though you already can get 330Mb/s and it is those of us on FTTC playing catch up.

Yeah, just saw copper in the quote below and thought FTTC, and the thought of the 800Mbps over FTTP just didn't register

During the G.FAST trials, downstream speeds of around 800Mbps were achieved over a 19m length of copper, combined with upstream speeds of more than 200Mbps

Paul

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

The VM rollout will also force BT to look at its roll out and in particular its roll out of fibre. It has to look at bringing fibre nearer to the home or VM will run rings around BT as they can win hands down on speed

Will it? Last I heard VM didn't have market dominance in the areas that it currently does cover. If BT has been able to retain market dominance in established cable areas I can't see it losing it in new areas. Time will tell I suppose. BT is still ahead on upload speed. There's also the perennial question of downstream bandwidth contention that cable operators have to deal with.

Still, it can only be good news. A further spur to BT and continued interest in investment helps us all.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 13-Feb-15 16:36:52)

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

The VM rollout will also force BT to look at its roll out and in particular its roll out of fibre. It has to look at bringing fibre nearer to the home or VM will run rings around BT as they can win hands down on speed

Headline download speed is not our primary purchasing criterion. Minimal visible contention, low jitter, high upload speed and availability of routed IPv4 on "prosumer" products matter more to us than the availability of expensive tiers with high headline download speeds, which is why we're on Zen's FTTC service.

We are fortunate enough to have Openreach FTTC that has, so far, been completely stable at 80/20 sync speed fast path. Virgin is available here - indeed, we have Virgin TV and had a cable modem long ago in the days before there was any DSL in this area. As things stand, we are simply not interested in Virgin broadband.


I realise that there are many people who are not in such a fortunate position. This post is simply to join the other voices refuting Bob's facile reduction of the issues to "highest download speed wins". We don't currently have any application that is limited by the download speed of the FTTC we have, and by the time we outgrow that limit, Openreach's offer is likely to have moved on using technologies such as G.Fast.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Difficult to find a place where BT is not

Actually, a lot of Virgin's expansion at the moment is new build estates where they tie up with the developer and lock Openreach out.

In reply to a post by partial:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Difficult to find a place where BT is not

Actually, a lot of Virgin's expansion at the moment is new build estates where they tie up with the developer and lock Openreach out.

I'd be pretty unamused if my choice of provider was frustrated in this fashion.

Though the thread is about a company other than Virgin Media, I think this recent thread is an example of a new build developer freezing out Openreach.

I'd be surprised if there is a legal restriction on choice of provider in that case, as it would be difficult and expensive to enforce a restrictive covenant. An exclusive contract between the communications company and the developer that requires the developer does not install any Openreach infrastructure should be enough to lock out Openreach. The wayleave problems over the roads whilst they are unadopted and the huge construction costs of bringing a connection from outside the development means no Openreach based provider can offer an affordable connection charge.

Well I know all citys from Dundee upwards don't have any VM cable network

so they could expand up here.

My friend told me that they read in the newspaper that Selby is getting faster broadband soon, I asked if it said which company but they had thrown the newspaper away when I was told and they couldn't remember. Mr Saffron or anyone else do you know of any new faster broadband coming to the Selby area? Could it be Virgin Media?

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

BT is now facing a serious challenge

Now Virgin are expanding after years of stagnation, the question is not whether BT can compete with a prospective resurgent Virgin. It's whether Sky, TalkTalk and the myriad of smaller providers on the Openreach platform can.

BT have history of competing with a serious cable player. I'd expect Sky and TalkTalk to do okay. They are big boys in the big world and won't watch their customers walk without a serious fightback.

I would expect the real losers will be the smaller firms, the Zens and Entanets etc of this World. Shrinking market share on the Openreach platform which is under attack and locked out of the Virgin platform.

Cosmic timing to the launch of Virgin's Project Lightning by cloud-hopping Sir Itchy Brastrap and his LibertyMedia sugar-daddies.

This is how it panned out...

Thursday a.m. BT placed £1bn of new stock at £4.55 to part-finance the purchase of EE; those new shares offered at a 1% discount to Wednesday�s close of £4.60.

Friday a.m. the cumbersome incumbent was caught off-balance; by the jaw-dropping announcement of Virgin's £3bn plan to spread her legs, and expand her cable network by more than a third.

By the close of trade on Friday, BT's stock was at £4.39, down 2.4 per cent.

Would love to see the who, what, where and why, of the timing to Virgin's announcement!

No matter, as long as we get cable here in Little Piddlington, that's what counts.

Edited by deleted (Fri 13-Feb-15 22:15:39)

to be fair BT only did so much in rural areas due to political intervention.

VM are going to do whats most profitable which means highest population density.

If you dont like it why dont you move to a city area?

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

If you dont like it why dont you move to a city area?

What is the point of having two homes in cities? I already spend enough time close to London and getting away to Scotland is great. People where I am there would love to have a cable TV service - chance of that is nil. As I said, BT are upgrading at their cost with no subsidy - and exchange with 3-400 residential and maybe 20 business lines.

aclly that not Virgin that INFL -- INFl no broadband choice only INFL

virgin have made very little impact into new build if any

if little piddington is where i think it is near Bicester and i assume its not going to be near -VM current footprint and i assume that VM will only go where it makes commercial sense to them and its close to their exisiting cable footprint --

are you not covered under BDUK or perhaps you could investigate prviate funding -- number of villages not that far from Bicester have done that

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-Feb-15 14:22:56)

In reply to a post by Fastman2:

aclly that not Virgin that INFL -- INFl no broadband choice only INFL

virgin have made very little impact into new build if any

There are 3 Barratt / David Wilson developments I have looked at properties in around the Leeds and Wakefield area and all are VM only. These are all mid-construction so seems there is a deal here.

Excellent news. We will see what effect this has on BT's next move.

Certainly after all the noise BT made about spending about £1.6 billion to build and £0.9 billion to operate their overlay network of 18 million premises VM will milk the PR of spending £3 billion to cover less than 1/4 that.

Let's see if BT can really open the chequebook for something other than sports rights. I am not convinced less than £100 of CapEx per premises passed will cut it this time. See how deep their pockets can go given they, unlike VM, will have to wholesale.

It put VM in pole position when the greater speeds are really needed . BT has maxed out its legacy network it has no where to go without putting more fibre in

VM has been good at upselling to triple ply and cable is becoming increasingly important to delivering TV and the next generation of Ultra HD will need a greater bandwidth

VM would not be investing this sort of money without seeing a return on it

Hmm interesting - are you that the only limitation on sending data over a single fibre is the hardware both ends? There are quite a few 40Gb and 100Gb links over single fibres in the BT network.

I was a bit surprised that BT were going to shell out for G.fast, but a poster on another forum(WWWombat) has pointed out that BT already knew about the recent announcement by Sckipio -

At least, that has been the conventional view. Earlier today, BT Group plc (NYSE: BT; London: BTA) CEO Gavin Patterson told analysts that -- following technology improvements during the past six months -- BT would be able to use G.fast effectively over much longer copper loops than it had originally thought possible.

"There has been a breakthrough on G.fast in the last quarter and we now see a way to deliver it from street cabinets rather than just distribution points," he said. "That means we can build on existing investments."

http://www.lightreading.com/gigabit/dsl-vectoring-gf...

So basically it seems not that BT has suddenly become ambitious in its plans for broadband but that technological breakthroughs have presented it with a gift it probably doesn't deserve.

Edited by Spud2003 (Sun 15-Feb-15 20:47:34)

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

VM would not be investing this sort of money without seeing a return on it

So when they don't get the return, they will pull the plug. Bye Bye Richard.

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

Hmm interesting - are you that the only limitation on sending data over a single fibre is the hardware both ends? There are quite a few 40Gb and 100Gb links over single fibres in the BT network.

I guess the man is referring to pushing fibre deeper into the access network.

As BT is one of the prime movers within the R&D work on G.fast, I don't think you can say they don't deserve to make use of advances inherent in the process of taking it from a research project into live silicon, then into live service.

I don't think it is a coincidence that BT went cool on the idea of including 20% of FTTP in their rollout at about the same time as G.fast was starting to look promising at near-gigabit speeds - at least for near DP distances.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Excellent news. We will see what effect this has on BT's next move.

Haven't we already seen it?

It certainly looks like they'll go for G.fast in a big way, having told government committee that they don't see a place for full FTTH.

At first, G.fast from the cabinets as today, and later with deployments closer to, or at the DP.

Let's see if BT can really open the chequebook for something other than sports rights. I am not convinced less than £100 of CapEx per premises passed will cut it this time. See how deep their pockets can go given they, unlike VM, will have to wholesale.

I guess the capex investment is likely to be limited to what you think you can get back, while limiting the risk that you don't get enough back. Being only able to wholesale probably limits the total capex you are willing to gamble, as you have more limited returns than with full vertical provisioning.

Cioffi reckoned on a max of $300 per premises as the top end that risk will allow; I can only see BT getting close to that if it can see a £10pm premium at least.

well doing it from cabinets only is doing it a bit lazily and cheap? as it only works properly at very short distances right?

Hence my previous message.

See the two links in Spud' message - somewhere in those two, you'll detect a hint that BT see a cabinet-based solution as a viable start, at least.

Also take a look at this link, and look for the comment by Neil McRae. Unconfirmed that it really is that person, but there is someone of that name who is a network architect at BT. http://nextgenerationoptical.com/speaker/neil-mcrae/

And that would in itself bring ultra fast to 26% of UK households, and with the range doubling tricks 56% of households

Now if VM rolling out to 4 million was to mean they gained 2 million customers rather than the 1/3rd which is normal even after 15 years of roll-out then that might change BT's mind.

Remember BT is going to be busy till 2017 with the BDUK contracts

He's interesting. Prompted by a conversation I tried to find out what he actually does and no-one seems to know.

Telcos and cable companies have core IP and transmission network architecture, then access network architecture, while he seems to speak with 'authority' on everything. However none of the BT bods I spoke to seem to know what his contribution to the engineering of them is.

Maybe he's the 'face' of the architecture group who attends the high level meetings while the various specialists who are designing the solutions work in the background. That I have seen elsewhere, albeit split into core and access.

yeah well, BT have a big fat benefit cheque for the very purpose of "rural areas" so why would VM spend their money there?

the 2017 BT targets look very rosy , albeit very similar to the 2012 targets so all is well with the world?

...

In reply to a post by MHC:

And the comments from Virgin's CEO that they will not be doing any rural areas - "because that is BT's job" shows just how they want to Cherry Pick again.

Why is this post rubbish?

It is a statement of fact surely? THe BDUK process went to great lengths to ensure Openreach were the only viable solution to fund by demanding open access/wholesale as a criteria.

What commercial provider in their right mind would invest in an area knowing that their main competitor can overbuild them and have it paid for out of the public purse?

This is what happens when government interfere with an industry , it creates a monopoly whereby everybody suffers..

it is back to the 70's we go..

In reply to a post by MCM:

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

VM is a pure commercial operator BT is not. The government subsidised rollout is bring Broadband to rural areas. VM are hardly going to try to compete with a subsidised rollout

More of the usual rubbish one has come to expect from your posts.

And if the government hadn't interfered how many more complaints would there have been that areas weren't covered?

And if the suppliers didn't do wholesale then effectively it means there is a single ISP and therefore zero competition at any level. That would have been a recipe for disaster in my opinion. And what happens if that company then goes bust as happened to some of the previous wireless companies - the users then are left with no service whatsoever.

At least with a wholesale offering there is a level of competition with different offers from different ISPs.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

VM would not be investing this sort of money without seeing a return on it

Oh I don't know. That's what they did for the first ~20 years

Edited by Andrue (Mon 16-Feb-15 14:25:05)

Zero competition... so you are saying the wholesale process is truly competitive?

As i see it if the infrastructure isn't there then nobody gets the benefit of this arrangement.

If it is there but poor performing then it will be a poor performer regardless of provider.

Openreach / BT group are a highly profitable organisation who have spent Billions on sports rights alone recently, why did the tax payer have to fork out ~£2Bn , so far, to subsidise this?

The industry would of met the demand on its own, that is true competition , something the BDUK process has strived to destroy / marginalise with full EU backing.

Would you view other industries the same? a village with a single shop and/or pub , should the government subsidise competition there too? , Single track roads, should government subsidise replacing them with A roads ? After all the people in major towns have them.

As for companies going bust, take a look at how many small "wholesale" ISP's have gone to the wall over the years. The billing system for wholesale favours large organisations at the expense of the small providers.

BT retail are busy buying up sports rights and other stuff so they can provide something other wholesale providers cannot (not as cheap at least). Their monopoly on the database of all the phone lines/properties with them in the country means they can and do steal customers from other wholesale providers when people move home etc.

A typical conversation is
"I am moving house, i need to move/close my phone line.."

BT sales dept - certainly, we can set up your Broadband at your new address for you so it is ready for you. would you like us to do that?

then (insert arbritrary discount here) as incentive if the customer says they are using a different provider .

It is not a genuinely competitive process at all and once the infrastructure is entirely OR and LLU is all but a distant memory then the stranglehold will be complete.

Next you will be telling me that gas and electric is a genuine competitive marketplace

If the government had not interfered then the industry would of fed the market itself, competition would of been there and the potential of fixed wireless and Virgins cable investment for example would of encouraged BT to spend their profits, as they should, on upgrading their kit.

not OUR money from home and business tax payers.

In reply to a post by ian72:

And if the government hadn't interfered how many more complaints would there have been that areas weren't covered?

And if the suppliers didn't do wholesale then effectively it means there is a single ISP and therefore zero competition at any level. That would have been a recipe for disaster in my opinion. And what happens if that company then goes bust as happened to some of the previous wireless companies - the users then are left with no service whatsoever.

At least with a wholesale offering there is a level of competition with different offers from different ISPs.

Funny, eh - I did a similar search ... but I don't have contacts in BT to ask opinions of. He did seem to be more focussed at things running over the entire network, rather than the network itself, or even just the access network.

For the access face of the architecture group - I got the impression that was Kevin Foster.

But, taking into account small snippets of information dotted around, what Neil says does seem to fit with the direction that BT are now heading ... a way that seems to be emphatically towards G.fast and away from FTTP.

Looking back, I think the first really positive emphasis came from the evidence to government a couple of months ago...

Here are two answers given in evidence to the DEFRA committee on rural broadband...

Q36

In reference to data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedo...:

Sean Williams: "We are delivering 80 Mbps broadband from our current fibre-optic solution�fibre to the cabinet and copper from the cabinet."

[...]

"Over the next few years, as I was describing earlier to your colleague here, technology will change. We will be delivering faster speeds on this kind of architecture. We expect the speeds we are able to deliver off this infrastructure to continue to grow. Even since the time that we started this�our own fibre deployment only started in 2009, so we have been at it five years�the speed we are delivering from our solution has already doubled. It was 40 Mbps to start with, it is 80 Mbps now, and it will continue to grow.

We do not see any need or case in the foreseeable future to have a solution that says, �Fibre to the premises everywhere�. It does not cost-in; it takes far too long; it is much beyond the requirements, and there are much better lower-cost solutions to get to faster speeds.

We just do not think that the fibre-to-premises solution is the right answer. It is just too expensive and too time-consuming, and what we are delivering is already much more than what everybody needs from a broadband connection, and we will continue to improve as the years go on.

Q37

In reference to data.parliament.uk/writtenevidence/committeeevidence.svc/evidencedo...:

Emma Lewell-Buck: "So you do not envisage having to replace all the copper ones with fibre-optics?"

Sean Williams: "No, we do not."

That was a huge strategy statement. At the time, I read it as being positive about FTTdp, but looking back it seems even more emphatic.

You seem to have misread or ignored what I have written.

If there is a single, non-wholesale provider then there is no choice for the consumer at any level (well, except for something or nothing). As far as I can see your solution is not that competitive with Virgin/BT (where those are available). If you were the only provider available in my area then I would need to be paying £80 + VAT per month to even get close to what I have and my current provider is £20 per month (plus line rental at £14).

With ADSL/VDSL available I can get anything from line rental + free (Sky/Talktalk) to £100's per month for the top end providers. That seems to be competition? It may be competition based on a wholesale model from one provider but that provider is also required to do certain things to meet competition requirements - again, you can argue they aren't working but they do exist.

Allowing things to happen on their own would mean that a fair chunk of the country would most certainly not have been getting reasonable cost solutions for the next few years.

And yes, wholesaling is only generally possible for the larger companies. But, it is only those companies that seem to get the economies of scale to get costs down to what people in this country seem to want.

I don't agree with the way the EU procurement has been done and the end result but if it is a choice between that or nothing then I'll make do with the EU route.

BT Sport is separate - it isn't wholesale and there are Chinese walls between the departments - retail has to make it's own profits/business case and presumably find that Sport pays. That money could not be used for increased rollout as it would cross the Chinese wall. It is an incorrect argument.

Plus, why wouldn't BT Retail sell their products to people. It's not as if Sky, Talktalk, Virgin, etc do anything different when people move or try to leave - standard industry practice.

And Virgin's investment has only just been announced, is over the next 5 years and there was no belief or expectation that was going to happen years ago when BDUK tender was put out to EU. Question is, would Virgin have done that if not for the injection to the market that BDUK provided which has undoubtedly raised the profile of high speed broadband? And how many not-spots do you think Virgin's money will cover? Bet it is a very low percentage of their rollout that don't already get other high speed broadband.

bob more mis ./ disonfirmaion

the business has investied 2.5bn in commerial programme and cira additional 1bn in BUK as state money has to be matched -- but either your not aware / dont care of that fact

FYI VM network is not wholesle its virgin so it has a monopoly on what it charges for what

In reply to a post by ian72:

And Virgin's investment has only just been announced, is over the next 5 years and there was no belief or expectation that was going to happen years ago when BDUK tender was put out to EU. Question is, would Virgin have done that if not for the injection to the market that BDUK provided which has undoubtedly raised the profile of high speed broadband? And how many not-spots do you think Virgin's money will cover? Bet it is a very low percentage of their rollout that don't already get other high speed broadband.

Don't forget that Fujitsu's tender within the BDUK framework was partnered by Virgin. You have to assume that, at the time the partnership was put together, Virgin had some intention of offering services to the BDUK NGA intervention areas over Fujitsu's infrastructure.

Yes i agree if there is only a single provider then there is no choice. but the point is the industry like all others should have multiple providers competing with each other.

The problem is it does not as most are parasites to a single infrastructure.

And here lies the issue. there IS a single infrastructure provider for most solutions, you either get something or nothing from all of them.

I live in a county where OR refused point blank to even fit ADSL into three exchanges on the basis of viability. This meant nobody in the area had the "choice" of all the operators you refer.

This was a blatant stranglehold had it not been for a competitor who made a business model that worked in these areas and continues to do so 10 years later. All without state or other external funding.

Now BDUK has afforded the ability for OR to not only provide FTTC to these areas but in the majority of cases FTTP/FTTH as there is either 1 or no cabinets (EO lines).

The pre-existing commercial system has been deemed non existent by the process and overbuild concerns are therefore not an issue.

This is clearly state funded competition in areas that the incumbent operator refused point blank to provide to.

What we usually hear when we state this is "ah yes but blah blah provider will be cheaper". By all means provide me a list of ISP's that provide phone and Broadband from £13.99 a month inclusive .

Do not forget to include line rental and other tie in "bundles" in any comparisons of course.

This of course leads onto value for money and take up. Once people go VoIP (Over fixed wireless) and ditch the ever increasing line rental, min call charges, muffly crackly lines, charges for every little extra, their number being sold to telemarketers etc.. They are very unlikely to want to go back.

None have so far..

Where is the value to say running FTTP to a hamlet of 4 properties that have a super fast service and use VoIP already for example? It is still happening though as the money is there to spend regardless.

Other places are told the money is already spent, namely business parks where leased line revenues need protection.


State aid is not intended to fund choice.

Keyword in the last question was 'ALL'

Evidence for the cost of a FTTH roll-out is the Lightning project itself, and 5 years to roll-out to 4 million, versus the 19 million in 5 years that FTTC managed and at a lot lower cost.

The question on what is best is whether you view the current build as all that will happen for the next fifty years, or will incremental upgrades happen. For B4RN and others with no legacy footprint going FTTH from the start makes a lot more sense, particularly as most of the commercial FTTH from altnets is demand led so they can bank on good take-up.

At the end of the day even if BT went for FTTH there would be many objections and complaints about the roll-out timeframe, and the complications of dealing with new builds after the initial roll-out is complete etc etc

The moaning that the project lighning is not happening in rural areas actually worries me, as it suggests many have no concept of the economics behind both the technology and the commercial realities, but moaning does get you a few column inches in the press.

Don't forget that Fujitsu's tender within the BDUK framework was partnered by Virgin

Hmm, I didn't forget that as I never knew it Thanks, gives a little more info to the old brain structure...

There are no R&D breakthroughs to G.Fast. It's a classic BT bodge-it-on-the-cheap. With mountains of corporate spin to fool us otherwise. Announcement and re-announcement from the telco's Propaganda Dept; aimed at convincing us that they're frightfully clever. On the brink of releasing something quite magnificent.

Washed down with copious technobabble; all designed to titillate the City. One press release after another where BT speaks of its New Vision for the Fibre Future. Tediously redefining Old Technologies (like G.Fast) in its own meaningless NewSpeak ("Premium Hybrid-Superfast Fibre"; for chrissake); verbal diarrhoea to spatter ceaselessly across the City.

It's what they call City Plate-Spinning. A mesmerising trick to retain the mind-blown investors' attention - and more importantly retain their cash; arresting any capital flight to richer pastures in the sector and beyond.

At component level, the G.Fast is just a bolt-together of time-old technologies; a "Heath-Robinson" make-do-and-mend. An off-the-shelf, low-powered core with in-built DSP extensions, welded to a 30¢ optical transceiver, a DSL line driver and AFE. If there's any novelty at all - it's on the reverse-feed power-side - and even there, the innovation is minimal to non-existent.

Same old BT. Very telling that the tart-of-telcos is trialling its "glittering" G.Fast product on the Portman Road exchange, Ipswich; the red-light district. If you can't pimp out your b�tch down there, just where can you?!

Edited by deleted (Mon 16-Feb-15 17:17:16)

I don't think there should be a one size fits all approach. FTTC allows BT to provide a large number of connections at relatively low cost, and it clearly works where the cable distance from cabinet to end customer is realtively short.

It does not work where the cables from customers to the cabinets are several kilometers long. In those areas FTTP has the big advantage of not being so distance dependent as well as offering higher speeds.

Where I live I am lucky that there is a Gigaclear project. I see no reason why BT could not have had a similar project, unlike B4RN, all Gigaclear's installation work is done by sub contractors who might just as easily have been commissioned by BT. About the only advantage that Gigaclear have is that people might be a bit more willing to let them lay cables across their land. BT appear to have neglected areas such as where I live. They would far rather spend large sums of money showing football.

The one issue I now have to solve is what I do about making phone calls during power cuts. Should I just rely on my mobile phone, even if the battery is flat the phone will likely work if I connected it to my car?

yeah I am not doubting it, I read the same article. But if its going to be cabinet only then it doesnt excite me as I dont have the cabinet next to my wall. I hope they extend the fibre shortly after.

Initially cabinet only to avoid high power install costs but DC power from cab or exchange are future options

Urm BT do use sub-contractors for a fair amount of the civils work for both the C and P roll-out.

BT is also deploying some FTTP via the gap funded projects.

I think what you are actually suggesting is that BT should run a demand led scheme where people hand over cheques before construction starts?

With BT being the big slow to react/adapt firm then it does mean there is room for people like Gigaclear which is a good thing.

One of my arguements is that the installation costs for Gigaclear and BT should be similar. So if Gigaclear can have a finacially viable project then BT should be able to do the same.

The demand led bit is quite interesting. The Gigaclear approach relies on some local residents persuading others to sign up. You can imagine the frustration this causes as the target gets close and some people are reluctant to commit.

different business cases tho.

gigaclear dont have existing network as an alternative revenue source whilst BT do, as much as it sucks as long as copper makes BT enough money, they wont willingly ditch it.

BT would do better to have their own fibre network rather than lose out completely to Gigaclear. - Though that may not happen very often. The copper network takes alot of maintenance where Iive.

Time will tell whether Gigaclear's fused fibre connections are more reliable.

I have just found out that I will be connected to a sub cabinet which will live under a manhole cover, there will then be 6 fibres going to the main cabinet which is some miles away.

It takes maintenance, but its still cheaper to keep it in the short term than replacing it. Shareholders priorities are the short term.

With g.fast I dont think BT are doing any mass FTTP any time soon. They probably not too worried about gigaclear, no advertising budget, very limited rollout, not as cost competitive, no brand awareness. But if they do get worried they can probably rollout g.fast as a competing service in gigaclear areas, and then brainwash the public that its technically the same.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 18-Feb-15 04:56:19)

In reply to a post by Michael_Chare:

One of my arguements is that the installation costs for Gigaclear and BT should be similar. So if Gigaclear can have a finacially viable project then BT should be able to do the same.

Are Gigaclear also having to give away a lot of the profit in their network through a wholesale scheme as well?

And BT have to make the business case based on those wholesale costs without being able to cross subsidise at all from the retail profits.

To be honest public does not care on delivery method so long as it works and they can stream video mainly

There is a link up with another company that gives access to other ISPs. It was mentioned in this sites news last year. Personally I would prefer to deal with them directly.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

To be honest public does not care on delivery method so long as it works and they can stream video mainly

I agree almost whole-heartedly.

However, there is a fraction of the population who don't want to see their drive or garden cut up, or walls drilled, for getting fibre all the way inside the property. I've seen figures of 20%, but I'm not sure how hyped that is.

For these people, a delivery method that stops just short of the property is actually the best compromise.

which was my point.

Alot will be down to the fact tho that noone has ever mass marketed true fibre for its strength's meaning the public dont care because they dont know.

Gigaclear dont have the financial muscle to educate people via mass marketing so BT will be fine in gigaclear areas.

Give me an app that will not work on Virgin Media 152 Mbps (which will be 200 or 300 Mbps in the next year most likely) but will work on Gigabit FTTH only then happy to start adding it to the list of why FTTH is important.

many apps wont work on VM 152mbit if in a congested area

but if assume it isnt oversubbed to the moon and back then no isnt any in terms of download.

Although in upload you can argue there is but not mainstream stuff. e.g. 4k streaming.

The seller for FTTP is stability, future proofing, proper upload speeds, and filesharing potentially becoming a lot faster. We had the killer app argument before FTTC, I maintain the view the technology has to be rolled out before a killer app is invented, the otther way is illogical. Of course accountants want it your way round as they tend to not let loose on the purse strings without some form of guaranteed takeup. A big gain of FTTP in particular is it equalises things, in theory it would end postcode lotteries, so everyone's FTTP can do the same thing, not any of this distance dependent malarky. But noone really cares all about this stuff at the moment so I am agreeing with you mass FTTP from BT is a long way off. They will only spend on that when they run out of options and their existing offerings are losing them customers.

VM I expect will increase their download speeds soon based on ignition's posts, but I dont see why they need to do it, all they doing is inviting new congestion on their network. I would rather see 100/100 then something like 300/30.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 18-Feb-15 19:10:46)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Urm BT do use sub-contractors for a fair amount of the civils work for both the C and P roll-out.

BT is also deploying some FTTP via the gap funded projects.

I think what you are actually suggesting is that BT should run a demand led scheme where people hand over cheques before construction starts?

With BT being the big slow to react/adapt firm then it does mean there is room for people like Gigaclear which is a good thing.
[/quote

As far as i know no civils are done in house .

GFast from the Cabinet is pretty much a waste of timer. The benefits from it for most users are at best marginal

No normal business would put all the work with one company. You would normally spit it between two with the cheapest getting the bulk of the work and the second cheapest about a third

The fact that no other player won a single contract has to indicate the tendering process was flawed

I think the tendering process showed that only BT could provide a wholesale network at a competitive rate. Most companies would have to start from scratch which would have been cost prohibitive. Virgin would essentially be starting from scratch where they didn't already have presence.

And none of the AltNets that I know of are wholesaling their products. For ISPs to take up a wholesale option there have to be enough users supported to make it worth their while. Had a second company got 30% of the intervention area it would have been too small a customer base for other ISPs to take up the wholesale option - ie the area is generally the 66% to 90% - so 14% of the country. If a company got a 3rd of that then they would only be wholesaling a customer base of around 5% of the country - not likely to be taken up given the burdens of dealing with a second wholesale provider.

If it hadn't been for EU procurement laws the likelihood is that BT would have been given the contract from the start and we would not have spent who knows how many millions doing EU procurements followed by local authorities then having to do their own procurements that could only select either BT or nothing.

I am kind of ignoring Fujitsu here as they never really had a serious impact on any of the procurements and dropped out before a number of the procurements happened.

Edited by ian72 (Thu 19-Feb-15 09:53:36)

To be honest even if you ignore that it was BT and you had another firm that had rolled out to around 60% of country in the running, versus one who had done a small scale trial in an urban area which one would you plump for?

If the talk of the Fujitsu plan is correct it was FTTH to 80%, the easy 14% above commercial then fixed wireless and satellite for the rest.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

GFast from the Cabinet is pretty much a waste of timer. The benefits from it for most users are at best marginal

Is that a prediction like all the ones you made through 2012 about how Openreach were falling further & further behind on their upgrade plans? How'd that turn out?

On the contrary, I'd expect every cabinet to run g.fast in the end. Whether that benefits "most" users or not is immaterial - so long as it benefits *some*. I don't doubt that they'll have to add more nodes in the outer coverage areas though.

The point of the trials in Gosforth & somewhere-southern is to find out the dimensioning questions & answers.

Edit:
I just checked the properties on my cabinet. There are 351 premises listed on that cab, and I reckon the longest lines are 350m long. The best vectored VDSL2 setup should let every line get 130Mbps aggregate.

From the Sckipio-improved figures, this would get everyone above 200Mbps (aggregate), and half the lines at 500Mbps (aggregate).

Perhaps we should be careful of sweeping "waste of time" generalisation, eh? I'm not sure I'd describe this as marginal benefit.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If the talk of the Fujitsu plan is correct it was FTTH to 80%, the easy 14% above commercial then fixed wireless and satellite for the rest.

It may be a lot less than 14%, depending on what Fujitsu intended.

Because BT and VM don't entirely overlap, BT's 67% got augmented by another 9% that was VM-only. 76% commercial.

Would Fujitsu have only done 4% by FTTP, or reassessed?

I did the quick calculations 26% over 100 Meg and 56% with the Skipio stuff.

That is from adding a node to every existing cab

I am the tip of the U for my cabinet, but the tail end of the U where the properties are nearer the cabinet but actual longer cable length as it loops round are about 600m according to my last engineer.

My issue is if BT sell these g.fast connections with no price premium, it made me annoyed that basically on adsl the uk market had someone on say a half mbit sync pay the same as someone on a 20mbit sync. I hope vdsl isnt going back to that sort of practice, whilst yes is now sync speed variances, there is at least cheaper 40mbit products now. Plus a poor fttc line would be considered perhaps 20mbit which is still 25% of the max, so much better spread on vdsl than adsl was. But cabinet based g.fast will increase that spread a lot.

Also there is the argument that if many cabinets dont have long copper lengths like yours 350m max, then extending the fibre should be cheap.

The question though is if it costs exactly the same to provide a Gfast 500Mb line as it does to provide a 10Mb Gfast line then why should it cost the consumer more? Putting in different pricing structures is a false economy (except where more backhaul is used but the person on the slow line may be using more data than the person on the fast line).

If there were separate tiers of tariff then the people that happen to sync fast must be able to access the lower price tariffs (as they currently can with 40) otherwise they get financially penalised for something they may not want/need.

thats a odd argument, traditionally you charge what you can get away with and if someone is receiving more they charged more. In business revenues have no consistent margin with costs, its about supply and demand more than anything.

Plus I disagree with you anyway that there is no extra cost, this is spread on the myth that peak traffic demand doesnt cost anything.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

VM I expect will increase their download speeds soon based on ignition's posts, but I dont see why they need to do it, all they doing is inviting new congestion on their network. I would rather see 100/100 then something like 300/30.

Upstream congestion gets way uglier way more quickly than downstream congestion. After the experiences with 100Mb/10Mb VM will continue to be somewhat conservative with the upstream speeds they provision.

Downstream is still the attention grabber, too. Upstream increases will come and are a work in progress, thanks in part to work being done to increase downstream capacity but also as a programme of their own.

Relative to BT VM spend a fair chunk of change per premises passed upgrading their existing networks,

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

VM I expect will increase their download speeds soon based on ignition's posts, but I dont see why they need to do it, all they doing is inviting new congestion on their network. I would rather see 100/100 then something like 300/30.

Upstream congestion gets way uglier way more quickly than downstream congestion.

The horrors of TDMA when the originators are spread along the length of a cable certainly don't help. For those interested in the discussion see the article here ( http://arstechnica.com/business/2011/05/docsis-the-u... ) and search for 'A bandwidth timeshare ' and especially the following section 'Timing and the speed of light'.

Edited by Andrue (Sun 22-Feb-15 19:56:27)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

thats a odd argument, traditionally you charge what you can get away with and if someone is receiving more they charged more. In business revenues have no consistent margin with costs, its about supply and demand more than anything.

Plus I disagree with you anyway that there is no extra cost, this is spread on the myth that peak traffic demand doesnt cost anything.

So, if they are charging what they can get away with then it is better for them to charge everyone the same rate for Gfast. Offering people slower packages and charging less for them would go against that.

I think earlier I did say that costs are the same assuming the same usage. And as the backhaul can be contended then peak usage can be managed through contention.

My point was more about if a gfast port will cost the same as a non gfast port.
Like when adsl2+ was costing the same as adsl1.

OK, sorry, didn't pick that up.