In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Can't see anything other than G.fast being close to adequate given Virgin's capabilities alongside what we hope will be a considerable FTTP deployment from alternative operators.

I haven't commented on this aspect before, but you are being very confident that VM will be upgrading sufficient hardware to make the shared channel capacity high enough to withstand demand for these "ultrafast" speeds.

Previous empirical results show that can be something of a "hopeful" position. What have you seen to suggest that future performance will not be a repeat of past performance?

If you're right that VM are approaching the upgrade of HFC "right", then I agree that Openreach may well be forced to upgrade their side "right" too.

I note Eircom deploying FTTP en masse despite previously committing themselves to enhanced copper thanks to competition and hope we see the same in the UK.

We need to see that competition ... from someone of the scale of a Vodafone or a Sky. Something that appears to be a real threat.

I wonder if we'll ever see it. IMO, it will only start to happen once BT lose the requirement to provide copper for LLU, which might be one of the negotiated outcomes from either the USO, or the ongoing strategy review.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Once get through some other stuff on to-do list should have a short blog item with the odd photo.

Looking forward to that.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

I haven't commented on this aspect before, but you are being very confident that VM will be upgrading sufficient hardware to make the shared channel capacity high enough to withstand demand for these "ultrafast" speeds.

Previous empirical results show that can be something of a "hopeful" position. What have you seen to suggest that future performance will not be a repeat of past performance?

If you're right that VM are approaching the upgrade of HFC "right", then I agree that Openreach may well be forced to upgrade their side "right" too.

This is perhaps a conversation best held in private.

Edited by deleted (Wed 20-Apr-16 16:18:31)

can I be shared upon this as well? since I have the same mindset that VM tend to upgrade the access network side more than their side to handle the speeds.

History of Virgin Media speeds seems to be upgrades and a peak, with a tailing off and then next round of upgrades that improve capacity and speed. Pattern has gone on for a few years now.

Modelled speeds i.e. Ofcom tend not to reflect this, helped by only publishing figures once or twice a year.

the ofcom figures get skewed anyway because they over provision speeds. So e.g 120mbit is actually 132mbit.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

the ofcom figures get skewed anyway because they over provision speeds. So e.g 120mbit is actually 132mbit.

Ofcom and the ASA's rules and regulations are bsaed on throughput not sync or provisioned rate. Adding fluff is essential to abide by the rules.

There's no skewing that's unique to Ofcom as all tests measure throughput.

There's 10% on all the tiers on the downstream and 5+% on upstream.

I know hence why they do it

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The UK faced three main calls:

1. We want faster broadband
2. We want it to be available to as many as possible
3. This needs to be done yesterday

There was and still is a vocal lobby element calling for

1. We want Point to Point FTTH for 100% of homes and businesses

Given those requirements any roll-out that was slower than what we have now would just be seeing more criticism. The roll-out is not perfect and will mean more to done in a few years, but a lot of the groundwork for deeper fibre is there now.

Have to agree with you, I've finally been able to order fibre within the last week or so. This will be my first speed increase in something like a decade as I'm on a 20CN exchange. And even with the pace of the rollout in the UK one of the biggest complaints have been about the speed of it, but I suspect that is more down to the fact that a decision was made to go for coverage first rather than speed. So many with the slowest speeds were left towards the end of the various rollouts. If you are an a ADSL2+ 12Mbps connection you might not be inclined to upgrade to fibre if ou are on a 4Mbps ADSLMax/ADSL2+ connection you might be more likely to upgrade.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

This is perhaps a conversation best held in private.

One with sufficient beer that memories are wiped by the next morning