Virgin Media FTTP coming to Thanet

Well it finally looks like Virgin Media are in the process of starting the roll out of their FTTP broadband in Thanet.

There are now five of these scheduled across Thanet

Installation of Virgin Media Powered Hub Cabinets 1 x 1700mm(H) x 1800mm(W) x 650mm(D) and 1 x 985mm(H) x 535mm(W) x 330mm(D).

Namely:

On verge side of 17 Pysons Road, Broadstairs CT12 6TR 6 Jul - 17 Jul
On footway opp 48-50 Northdown Road, Maragate CT9 2RN. 5 Jun - 14 Jun
On verge opp 14 George V Avenue, Margate CT9 5PX. 5 Jun - 14 Jun
On verge O/S 6 Park Road, Birchington CT7 0AE 5 Jun - 14 Jun
On verge side of 2 Cross Road, Birchington CT7 9HN 5 Jun - 14 Jun

I'm told by Ignitionnet on Kitz forum that the cabinet sizes indicate an FTTP installation, and each of those cabinets is for up to 3,000 premises passed. Also being a completely new install and FTTP it should not suffer with congestion.

Hopefully this will bring good competition to the area, and offer a true 21st century broadband option, as I'm only aware of one cabinet in Thanet supplying FTTP, and that is NDRAM20 which serves the Eurokent Business Park on Haine Rd.

Hopefully in the coming months we will see many more signs of intended work, and hopefully the work being carried out.

I told you

They are planning to come hard and fast (within reason).

You did indeed, sounds good to me - perhaps I'll have to see how their prices compare later in the year

FYI I've signed up on the Kitz forum as well.

Confirmed that it's FTTP.

Unlike Openreach everyone else doesn't have an exchange ready to go to hold the OLT and they tend to choose to place them in cabinets, as Virgin Media are with their FTTP.

Obviously, again unlike Openreach, Virgin Media and everyone else don't have ducts and poles awaiting fibre so there will be a bunch of other civils work to build additional transport cabinets and of course the ducting to carry fibre between cabinets and homes and businesses.

Can anyone explain why FTTP means no congestion?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Can anyone explain why FTTP means no congestion?

I think they mixed up congestion with signal loss in the coax cable.

Paul

Maybe the hope was that the new "Project Lightning" areas would have a network dimensioned in a way that attempts to avoid the chronic congestion due to oversubscription affecting some (many?) legacy Virgin areas.

No we haven't, I think you've got copper/aluminium telephone lines confused with coax cable

Exactly, I'm no expert, I'm sure that I've read that the new FTTP roll out has much more backhaul bandwidth available than the old coax system, so shouldn't suffer the chronic problems some areas do.

I'm sure that Ignitionnet will be along to explain, as he's far more knowledgeable than me.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Can anyone explain why FTTP means no congestion?

FTTP and new build. RFoG nodes are easier to split, just de-combine them, take up will at least initially be relatively low, and VM can relieve the DOCSIS capacity via XGPON much as on the newer build HFC networks they will have DOCSIS 3.1 available to relieve DOCSIS 3.0 by the time it becomes an 'issue'.

Obviously congestion is possible, but far less likely than on the older build HFC network.

Coax cable does have signal loss, but Virgin Media install cabinets close enough that it is not an issue.

Near where I work, when I'm not working from home that is, VM have been cabling up the area and there literally a cabinet just about every 30 - 50 metres along some roads.

That's awesome news!

I wish VM would do more FTTP rollouts.

So how does VM manage to roll out FTTP with no exchanges?

And, is there a reason why VM are rolling out FTTP now? Do they see it as an upgrade to their usual cable technology?

This is not related to what BT Openreach call "FTTP". FTTP is merely a generic term for a solution that results in fibre going to the building itself. Virgin have a totally different architecture for the network than BT do and so they can use street cabinets and similar to create their network. I would assume they do also have their own buildings where they have network equipment that would probably look similar to a BT "exchange".

Many companies around the country run fibre solutions in to premises without using BT exchanges to do it.

And FTTP has the potential for more capacity than the current DOCSIS solutions. Also, as the architecture is different then I suspect they can better manage contention than within the DOCSIS solution. Copper solutions are more prone to distance limitations than fibre and therefore you can get better throughput over longer distances.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

No we haven't, I think you've got copper/aluminium telephone lines confused with coax cable

No I didn't LOL.

What has copper telephone cables got to do with it

Jokes aside, its all down to how much VM cram down the link back to their network.
VM have a habit of cramming too many customers as they can per cabinet, especially in a built up area, I know they did round the corner from me where you would be lucky to get a 6th of your ordered speed.

At least with BT's FTTP each fibre is shared / split 32 ways so at most it will drop down to 78.125Mbps if everyone chose Infinity 4, sadly its a completely different story once it gets into BT's network.

TBH, I don't really know how VM will be rolling out pure FTTP, but I bet you each fibre will be split more than 32 ways, also it depends on how much bandwidth they send down each fibre and the quality of fibre cables used.

Also if its pure fibre from point A to Point B, why the need of the cabinets?
Maybe its being used as a form of a Fibre Node / Splitter where each fibre goes to the customer.

Paul

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Coax cable does have signal loss, but Virgin Media install cabinets close enough that it is not an issue.

Yeah, but if they are still going to use coaxial cable for these installs, then its still hybrid fibre and not FTTP.

Now if they used fibre from the cabinet to the homes, then yeah.

Paul

Project lightning is full FTTP.

In reply to a post by lee111s:

Project lightning is full FTTP.

No its not, areas around me was part of that project and they haven't got fibre going into their homes.

Paul

Some of the expansion, particularly in areas with no existing virgin media footprint is FTTP ie. glass into the home

If people want to read up, then RFOG is the key

No need for Openreach FTTP to go via an exchange, the handover to the backhaul could be done in a bigger cabinet in the street if they wanted, but when you already have exchange buildings with backup power and customers with their own backhaul to the exchange buildings it makes sense to do this.

One would hope that their new full FTTP area's, or in fact any new areas would be built with much more capacity than the existing area's have. I remember reading that they are updating and improving the back haul to existing areas, but of course it's a slow process and it's not going to happen everywhere.

I'm just glad we're getting the full FTTP flavour of VM, it's got to be better than the COAX version. I may not even move to VM, but it will be great to have the choice, and if others do it may well mean less cross talk for some FTTC users. It may also mean that OR roll out G.Fast here earlier than they would have otherwise done.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Some of the expansion, particularly in areas with no existing virgin media footprint is FTTP ie. glass into the home

Well the areas around me (but not in my road or side roads) were part of project lightning the year before last, I was also told it was part of project lightning over the phone by their planning team, but saying that, they also said we was to also get it, but that was a blatant lie, so maybe.

All I know is there was no VM anywhere near us, and the year before last (i.e. project lightning) I saw about +20 cabs being installed, and according to people I know that got VM (well a 6th of their paid speed) only have a coax and another cable, none are fibre cables.

Paul

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

One would hope that their new full FTTP area's, or in fact any new areas would be built with much more capacity than the existing area's have. I remember reading that they are updating and improving the back haul to existing areas, but of course it's a slow process and it's not going to happen everywhere.

I'm just glad we're getting the full FTTP flavour of VM, it's got to be better than the COAX version. I may not even move to VM, but it will be great to have the choice, and if others do it may well mean less cross talk for some FTTC users. It may also mean that OR roll out G.Fast here earlier than they would have otherwise done.

Well everyone near me that have VM are not happy at all, a few have gone back to ADSL for their 12Mbps due to it was more reliable than their VM they had, and the VM in their entire area was installed 2014 - 2015 which was part of project lightning, sadly due to no fibre via BT the area as whole took VM, sadly too many got it hence the slow speeds.

So if you do get FTTH with VM, lets hope its not congested.

Let us all know how it goes to-do with the installing, I find all this very interesting

Paul

I'm well aware large areas of VM have congestion, and only time will tell how things pan out around here, one can only hope they don't penny pinch too much and build in enough capacity to cope with expanding needs.

You certainly don't seem to have any issues with speed, so I'm a bit bemused that you say the area has no BT fibre

Protect Lightning will eventually cover 4 Million new properties, with half of them being full FTTP. Seems your area was unlucky and early in the rollout. Initially they were aiming for 25% FTTP but most being built now are pure fibre and will take the target to 50%

Note my choice of words, none guarantee that it will be FTTP but am seeing enough areas to support my statement.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

I'm well aware large areas of VM have congestion, and only time will tell how things pan out around here, one can only hope they don't penny pinch too much and build in enough capacity to cope with expanding needs.

You certainly don't seem to have any issues with speed, so I'm a bit bemused that you say the area has no BT fibre

I was lucky, it took me 5 years even though the hardware was already in place, the bottom of my road and side roads cannot get fibre, and the areas with VM still cannot get BT Fibre.

I did ask BT about those other areas (which was originally for FTTP) and they told me they will be getting FTTC and that they are just looking into what hardware is currently in place.

My actual area cannot get VM due to being a conservation area, I was referring to areas near me, i.e. several roads away.

Paul

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Note my choice of words, none guarantee that it will be FTTP but am seeing enough areas to support my statement.

I am not saying you are wrong, I just said those that all got VM a year or two ago as part of Project Lightning never got FTTH and where other people was saying its FTTH / FTTP, when it "might" not be, that's what I was trying to say.

They did get as close as the over side of the main road from us LOL.

But yeah, nothing is guaranteed.

Paul

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

Protect Lightning will eventually cover 4 Million new properties, with half of them being full FTTP. Seems your area was unlucky and early in the rollout. Initially they were aiming for 25% FTTP but most being built now are pure fibre and will take the target to 50%

Well it wasn't my area, but areas around my area, if you looked at their rollout areas, we are one of the domes without it, its not an issue.

But yeah those areas near me that do have VM must of been unlucky, but these areas are very built up, so the take up was fast LOL.

Lets hope the new areas they are rolling out in are lucky and get the full fibre installed.

Paul

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Note my choice of words, none guarantee that it will be FTTP but am seeing enough areas to support my statement.

I am not saying you are wrong, I just said those that all got VM a year or two ago as part of Project Lightning never got FTTH and where other people was saying its FTTH / FTTP, when it "might" not be, that's what I was trying to say.

They did get as close as the over side of the main road from us LOL.

But yeah, nothing is guaranteed.

Paul

At the time those areas in East London were built FTTP was still very much in trials.

I am not sure why anyone would claim those builds were Project Lightning. Lightning didn't exist at the time they were started, it didn't exist when the builds near me were started, however all infill projects were rolled into Lightning later on.

Lightning didn't exist until 2016.

All large new builds, such as Thanet, will use FTTP. It is future-proof, and cheaper to install than HFC.

All in-fill builds, plugging missing streets in existing areas, will use HFC unless there are specific factors at play.

All large new builds planned in 2015 / early 2016 will be HFC as FTTP wasn't yet scaled up for commercial build.

Virtually all congested areas are that way due to power, cooling or space preventing migration of the hubs feeding them to CCAP, and leaving them on legacy equipment. This is basically a non-issue for the FTTP areas, they will be fed by CCAP from the start, and RFoG can be run alongside XGPON at VM's convenience.

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

TBH, I don't really know how VM will be rolling out pure FTTP, but I bet you each fibre will be split more than 32 ways, also it depends on how much bandwidth they send down each fibre and the quality of fibre cables used.

Also if its pure fibre from point A to Point B, why the need of the cabinets?
Maybe its being used as a form of a Fibre Node / Splitter where each fibre goes to the customer.

Paul

The deployment is initially RFoG, so basically the same as the HFC areas, but using glass all the way to the home. In time there will be a move to XGPON. These can run side by side. There seem to be either 24 or 48 premises on each total split, I think 24, however as VM can move to XGPON when required, 10Gb split between the premises, either way congestion on the split won't be a major issue.

The comment on quality of the fibre cables being used is bizarre. Either they can support XGPON and RFoG or they cannot, and given unlike Openreach VM actually have to build new cabinets and dig new ducts to deploy this network, along with the relevant consultancy and deployment work there would be no real room to skimp on materials. The deployment method, at least here, is based around consultancy with Huawei, using appropriate materials. The fibre s fine to run both variations of XGPON and 40GPON simultaneously with RFoG.

Why the need of cabinets? VM and everyone else don't have a load of ready-built chambers in the ground or poles they can use to house splitter and aggregation nodes. In common with every other fibre deployment they use cabinets to house the optical equipment.

The large powered cabinets are the equivalent of an NGA headend, they house the OLTs, the cabinets house the optical splitters. The powered cabinets feed approximately 3000 premises. The smaller cabinets, depending on where they are being used in the network, serve 1024 or 512 premises if being used as what would be the equivalent of aggregation nodes, and 48 and 96 premises if being used as distribution cabinets directly feeding homes.

TL;DR these areas should be fine for congestion and are, for obvious reasons, vastly superior to anything Openreach have apart from the few hundred thousand premises of FTTP, with the added bonus that the taxpayer isn't subsidising any of this FTTP network.

Although that said, the HFC VM are building now is likewise vastly superior to anything Openreach have planned this side of 2020 too, with the exception of the FTTP areas.

It's all good. Let's hear it for competition.

Edited by deleted (Sat 15-Apr-17 14:34:44)

just a word of warning, when my street first got VM broadband (already had tv and phone), it was congested from day one, which did seem to surprise ignition when I told him. I guess what happened with my area they didnt give it it's own node and just shoved it onto a existing neighbouring node to save costs.

However in your case with it been FTTP I would assume it wont suffer from docsis type problems?

Edited by Chrysalis (Sun 16-Apr-17 18:27:51)

I agree the new areas are likely to be built better, as these are been done with modern broadband speeds in mind.

The problem is the older parts of VMs network, those areas were done in pre dialup days and were done just for analogue cable tv and analogue phone services.

If you are a VM exec, its harder to justify spending money on an area like Leicester because they will know full well they already have very high takeup in the area, on the existing infrastructure, and its a poor business case for spending just to improve quality of service to customers without any extra revenue from it.

I remember the days when cable was been laid in Leicester, I was just 13 years old, I am 38 now. Cable laid over 20 years ago just was not done with broadband in mind, hence when ignition revealed my city is pretty much all coax with very large nodes I wasnt surprised at all.

I'm not even sure I'll go with Virgin, I like a fixed IP which they only do on business connections although I could make do without a fixed IP - apparently they're quite sticky these days.

In theory being FTTP it should be much better than what I have now 47/6, but there's always that VM bugbear of congestion at the back of your mind even with it being FTTP.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

just a word of warning, when my street first got VM broadband (already had tv and phone), it was congested from day one, which did seem to surprise ignition when I told him. I guess what happened with my area they didnt give it it's own node and just shoved it onto a existing neighbouring node to save costs.

However in your case with it been FTTP I would assume it wont suffer from docsis type problems?

Yes, that is one of the issues with the early bits of Project Lightning that is being ironed out - new builds being tacked onto existing nodes when they should have had their own, or not been released until they were split.

However, sounds like you are referring to an area that was previously one-way network and was upgraded to two-way. That's a completely different story.

FTTP will initially run DOCSIS. XGPON or higher can be run simultaneously to add new tiers and capacity relief.

In reply to a post by lee111s:

Project lightning is full FTTP.

Wrong.

It still using coax cable from cabinet to the home. It's not full Fibre. Never is.

VM have just finished cabling my street as part of Project Lightning. I did very briefly get a chance to check out the cabling being laid to individual properties and I have to say it certainly didn't look or feel like any kind of coax I've ever seen.

Wrong.

Try and keep us as it is yourself that is wrong here which does seem to be becoming a habit of yours.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Wrong.

It still using coax cable from cabinet to the home. It's not full Fibre. Never is.

Wrong. Around half will be full FTTP.
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/7404-virgin-media...
You really do come out with some nonsense.

In reply to a post by bowdon:

That's awesome news!

I wish VM would do more FTTP rollouts.

So how does VM manage to roll out FTTP with no exchanges?

I think I read that as far as Openreach is concerned fibre can transport data for 40km without the need for repeaters or anything. I'm no expert in fibre so I could have somehow misunderstood that. But it does give you some idea of how far Virgin can build from one of their network hub buildings.

Poor adslmax

Thanet has no cable VM presence.

The rollout will involve cabinets (distribution cabinets) but will be for fibre to the home.

The Project Lightning name is rather an umbrella name for VM's expansion and some areas will be cable/fibre mix with other areas being 100% fibre. It's entirely down to individual projects within the umbrella rollout.

In reply to a post by Icaras:

I think I read that as far as Openreach is concerned fibre can transport data for 40km without the need for repeaters or anything. I'm no expert in fibre so I could have somehow misunderstood that. But it does give you some idea of how far Virgin can build from one of their network hub buildings.

The 'hubs' are the powered cabinets mentioned. They take the place of the exchanges here.

In reply to a post by Yaz:

Poor adslmax

Thanet has no cable VM presence.

The rollout will involve cabinets (distribution cabinets) but will be for fibre to the home.

The Project Lightning name is rather an umbrella name for VM's expansion and some areas will be cable/fibre mix with other areas being 100% fibre. It's entirely down to individual projects within the umbrella rollout.

Oh boy.

He will be onto the Virgin Media CEO, Ofcom, Jehova, Allah and whomever else demanding VM overbuild the HFC in his area with FTTP.

Not happening just in case anyone was curious. The coax is good for 3 GHz or more, with not even 860 MHz of that being used.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by Icaras:

I think I read that as far as Openreach is concerned fibre can transport data for 40km without the need for repeaters or anything. I'm no expert in fibre so I could have somehow misunderstood that. But it does give you some idea of how far Virgin can build from one of their network hub buildings.

The 'hubs' are the powered cabinets mentioned. They take the place of the exchanges here.

Yeah I know that. But it all has to connect to a VM building eventually. There's a Virgin Media building on an industrial estate near me, I've heard it referred to as both a hubsite and switch site, I don't know what it's actually called. Either way that's where everything in a 10 mile or more direction ends up and that's what I was referring to.

In reply to a post by Icaras:

Yeah I know that. But it all has to connect to a VM building eventually. There's a Virgin Media building on an industrial estate near me, I've heard it referred to as both a hubsite and switch site, I don't know what it's actually called. Either way that's where everything in a 10 mile or more direction ends up and that's what I was referring to.

Yes, 'switch site' in old lingo, carrying a telco switch. They're more accurately called hubsites. They contain the CMTS that deal with broadband and the edge QAMs that convert the digital TV to RF for transport over the fibre on the HFC network. This doesn't need to happen on the FTTP, it can go all digital to the virtual hub cabinets then be demuxed and fed out of the OLT ports.

The hubs connect to regional headends which in turn connect to one of two super headends at Langley and Knowsley for digital TV signals and hubsites go to headends which connect to a pair of other headends for broadband / IP.

This thread has been very quiet lately but looking at roadworks.org I see that around the Hartsdown area in Margate, today and tomorrow about 24 new cabinets are due to be installed.

I can confirm FULL FTTP coming to Thanet, breaking ground in Garlinge/Hartsdown area next Monday and project end in August 2018.

Once the contractors have gone past your house its usually 2 months form that point for the service to be ready to purchase.

Any other info I can reply on here.

CLOKent,

How far is this rollout extending, will it go as far as surrounding villages, such as Manston and Minster/Monkton?

Cheers

Welcome CLOKent.

Good to have somebody from VM here to help with info.

Do you know if a Thanet specific press release will be made by VM? The Kent generic one obviously doesn't mention Thanet directly:
http://www.virginmedia.com/corporate/media-centre/pr...

Edited by deleted (Mon 15-May-17 18:57:36)

Some cabinets have already been installed this week. These ones are much smaller than BT cabinets and a light grey/off-white colour.

Yup, they are smaller and will be different in size and colour to the Openreach cab's. There will be quite a few as well.

The complaints about them popping up have also started to come in. You just can't please some people by bringing them potential ultrafast broadband!!

Thats good to know, my estate apears scheduled for late July early August. My line rental saver with PN expires September.

No surprises there, some people have nothing better to do.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

No surprises there, some people have nothing better to do.

as long as they get completed before the 5 people in your area have a chance to stop it (really it is a small amount of people or land owners that have stopped or delayed BT roll outs of FTTC in some areas)

it would be nice to have FTTP virgin bb (even though its still coxa inside the house) that would remove the street level congestion with the FTTN setup (i assume that is the HFC setup?)

congestion in most cases is on the coxa side of the main FTTN cab (the one that hums and has 4 doors) that the smaller green cabs feed off, fiber feed coming into the cab is norm fine

(MrSaffron) this is why when we say congestion won't be a problem on FTTP on virgin, we are directing it at local congestion problems at the street level that virgin has in some streets, FTTP virgin would mostly remove as a problem as fiber networks are not typically congested (even if it is normally you not notice it) on ADSL/VDSL/FTTP lines (openreach) i yet to see congestion that makes it unusable or even slow down (unless its talktalk or sky on the slow down part due to not buying enough capacity in some areas in the past)

as its really Pot luck when your on normal virgin coxa network if your street is congested or not and VM refuse to fix it until next DOCSIS technology comes out (really wish they would be fined for failing to add more capacity) virgin really needs to get QOS in there FTTN nodes as they don't seem to have any at all witch results in poor service in congested areas which them makes the problem even worse as DOCSIS fails apart when its congested (streaming and gaming becomes a problem, due to packet loss and high pings)

the only reason my connection is more or less fine now is due to 3.0 upgrade which added more capacity vs 2.0 (so cheap fix as all they did was replace the cards in the cab)

Edited by leexgx (Sun 21-May-17 21:45:03)

In reply to a post by leexgx:

it would be nice to have FTTP virgin bb (even though its still coxa inside the house) that would remove the street level congestion with the FTTN setup (i assume that is the HFC setup?)

congestion in most cases is on the coxa side of the main FTTN cab (the one that hums and has 4 doors) that the smaller green cabs feed off, fiber feed coming into the cab is norm fine

the only reason my connection is more or less fine now is due to 3.0 upgrade which added more capacity vs 2.0 (so cheap fix as all they did was replace the cards in the cab)

Just a few points about this.

The cabinet with 4 doors that hums is not providing you broadband, it's for telephony.

The congestion is not on the coxa / coax / coaxial side of the nodal cabinet, it's on a line card at a Virgin Media hubsite feeding your area. There is actually plenty of bandwidth available on the fibre and, usually, the coaxial network isn't full either, but there aren't enough channels provisioned for you on the kit at the Virgin Media site and/or there are too many customers sharing those channels.

Your move from DOCSIS 2 to DOCSIS 3 was not replacement of line cards. You were moved to an entirely different router at VM. Cisco uBR 7246VXR -> Cisco uBR 10k or Motorola BSR 64k.

There are no cards in the cabinet that provides your broadband. The bit that terminates the fibre is similar to this - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wKBBzAIjPyM - but does not deliver telephony, that would require telephony to be delivered over coax which VM's is not bar a very few trial areas.

Edited by deleted (Sun 21-May-17 22:44:11)

the smaller cabs at the street level (repeaters) run off the larger cab that has phone and fiber to COXA that feeds the smaller cabs, only the larger cab has the fiber, one large FTTN node can be serving 20-30 smaller street cabs which lies the problem with not enough channels in the main cab,

unless they have changed that recently (like putting the actual FTTN node at the per street cab level, like g.fast was supposed to be on poles or just before/on each street)

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/...

you can be 2-3 streets over and be on a different large cab that is feeding that street small cab and your data speeds/packet reliability can be fine

i dont care to much about speed its more when its dropping packets enough that its affecting its use as most would not notice if your 200mb connection was doing 20-50mb as long as it can play videos they wont notice it (most of the time that the best wireless can do any way unless its using the 5ghz side)

It think they might have changed it. VM are currently putting FTTP in Lewes where I work occasionally and there is on of the small cabinets just up the road from the office. There was a guy working inside it a couple of weeks ago and it definitely had what looked like a node in the cabinet on the left hand side.

In reply to a post by leexgx:

the smaller cabs at the street level (repeaters) run off the larger cab that has phone and fiber to COXA that feeds the smaller cabs, only the larger cab has the fiber, one large FTTN node can be serving 20-30 smaller street cabs which lies the problem with not enough channels in the main cab,

unless they have changed that recently (like putting the actual FTTN node at the per street cab level, like g.fast was supposed to be on poles or just before/on each street)

http://cdn.arstechnica.net/wp-content/uploads/sites/...

you can be 2-3 streets over and be on a different large cab that is feeding that street small cab and your data speeds/packet reliability can be fine

i dont care to much about speed its more when its dropping packets enough that its affecting its use as most would not notice if your 200mb connection was doing 20-50mb as long as it can play videos they wont notice it (most of the time that the best wireless can do any way unless its using the 5ghz side)

Wow, late response.

The smaller cabinets aren't repeaters.

It's fibre to coax, short for coaxial, not COXA.

Not sure what channels have to do with number of other cabinets being served. Purely about bandwidth utilisation. There are nodes running fine passing a thousand or more homes and nodes that are struggling passing 200 homes. As previously mentioned there is no concept of channels on the 'main' cabinet. It converts optical to RF and RF to optical, it has no concept of anything else and has no line cards in it.

The diagram is simplified. Telco MSANs do not share cabinets with HFC nodes, nor do they share fibre backhaul. The telco MSAN has resilient fibre backhaul, the HFC nodes are single-homed.

Unsure what your second to last paragraph is trying to say.

2.4 GHz WiFi goes well over 20-50Mb. You can put a 1 in front of that and you're about there, that with an 802.11n 2x2 radio, such as the one in the laptop I'm typing this from, while pulling a file from a local server wirelessly at 19MB/s

In reply to a post by simon194:

It think they might have changed it. VM are currently putting FTTP in Lewes where I work occasionally and there is on of the small cabinets just up the road from the office. There was a guy working inside it a couple of weeks ago and it definitely had what looked like a node in the cabinet on the left hand side.

The architecture discussed only applies to the HFC / hybrid networks. The all-fibre ones have a powered fibre cabinet that serves about 5,000 premises, with the rest of the network optical splitters. No powered nodes as such apart from that one virtual hub cabinet, all passive

hi CLOKent im in broadstairs thanet and they have just been doing my estate but for some reason they have missed my cul de sac but done all the others do you know why they would do that i did wonder if it was just to give the area a break from the works and they will come back another time
i just thought it was weird they left one cul de sac out
cheers hornet156

On some estates the odd cul de sac is private rather than being maintained by the council.

This is more common if it's block paved.

It may also have fallen outside of their accepted costs per premises.

They haven't missed just one road, they've only done a small part of the estate, there's may be just over half to do, and it is being done, just not yet.

Tee installed outside of mine a couple of months ago now (Westbrook). Loads of activity round a portacabin like building on All Saints Industrial Estate next to the railways track that was bare for years, now seems to be covered in loads of cabling or air con pipes etc, changes every day I pass it on my commute, so I take it this is the Margate hub site? Is this serving the whole of Thanet, seems a bit small? Did a quick land registry search, looks like it was sold to NTL back in 1996 so they must have planned a roll out back then!

Yes they did plan a roll out in the nineties, I used to live in Tivoli Rd, and they installed ducting there along with various other roads, but no service was ever delivered.

Edited by R0NSKI (Sun 06-Aug-17 19:55:01)

Any guesses on when the service is going live ready to take orders now we've got the cabs and tees in?

Hey,

Sorry I have been inactive - very busy at the moment.

We are looking at around the end of Sept, start of Oct to release the first 1500 homes around Tivoli Park Avenue up to King George V Avenue areas and an area in Birchington too. After that you can expect to wait 10 - 12 weeks after the T has been put in outside your house till the service goes live.

Out hub site is by Kandoos in the industrial estate there. At the moment it can hold up to 46000 homes but we will be upgrading this (I know it looks small) and hoping by the project close next year we will be able to hold over 100,000 homes in there.

hope this helps!!

CLOKent

Any chance it might be coming to central Broadstairs?

Yes, pretty much all Thanet, exceptions might be private roads.See the link below.

http://forum.kitz.co.uk/index.php/topic,19668.msg356...

Where abouts are you?

Osborne Road, not too far from the telephone exchange.

If you keep an eye on Roadworks.org and set the date (top right) to 12 months you'll be able to see when VM are planning on doing you're road once they've applied for a works permit and its been accepted.

Heads up that it's FINALLY gone live in my area (Westbrook/Garlinge) the other day, up to 200mbps (for now I suppose) but no telephony which is fine by me! Ordering today so exciting times, will probably keep my VDSL line in situ to see how it goes though. They installed the large grey cab about 5 weeks ago, and I saw loads of fibre blowing about 3 weeks ago.

That's very quick after installation. A lot faster than if BT were doing it! I'm in Westbrook and they haven't started to cable our street yet, although Virgin Media roadworks seem to be all over the rest of Thanet. It's useful to know how quickly it can go live.

Thanks for the update, that's a lot quicker than I expected as I heard they had power supply issues at the hub site. At least they got it sorted out quickly, I'm sure BT wouldn't have been so quick.

Wonder why it's only up to 200mbps, unless they want make sure everything goes OK first, although that's ok for me as long as I have a good upload speed - currently have 47/6.

Keep us up to date on how you're order and installation goes, it'll be useful to know timescales.

I'm planning the same, no phone line and keep VDSL for a while.

I think those problems are still going on - I go past that hub site on the train every day on my commute, nothing had changed to it since they fitted all of the exterior air conditioning pipes etc (I remember when it was just a blank box!) and they had a pile driver like machine in there the other day so they must be working on fixing that now if all of the cable is sorted, they must have been using the same ducts and power supply that Eastern Group Telecoms (which became NTL) has originally perhaps? The earliest initial install date was for the 7th so they'd have to get it sorted by then I suppose.

Yeah I reckon they probably want to check they can walk before they can run, i'm only going for the 100mbps initially anyway on a 30 day rolling to see how it goes - looking forward to being one of the first customers!

Will definitely post updates/images once we're all set up - the ducting coming out of the toby box is far too small for shotgun cable though so it's 1000% FTTP - finally in Thanet we're actually getting some decent speeds!

Considering all the roadworks started in May (no idea when they started working at the main hub site), it's a gradual switch on for each of the complete sectors that they have cabled.