Oops cross posted!

Even their project lightning (RFOG) is FTTP though.
It's a bit ridiculous for anyone to argue that it isn't (i know you aren't saying it's not).

There was someone making the point on ISPReview this week that Virgin is FTTP but it's not "full fibre". OpenReach is full fibre though?
I think that's just as ridiculous an arguement. It's both FTTP and full fibre in my opinion.

The length of coaxial from my Virgin omnibox (CSP) to the Virgin Hub is shorter than the Cat5e patch cable between my OpenReach ONT and router.

At what point does the pedantry end? Copper on the circuit board of the ONT?

Max just has a grudge against Virgin as his area is an older coax deployment and is oversubscribed.

In reply to a post by adslmax:

Virgin isn't FTTP (it copper core coaxial cable ran to your house from the street cabinet)

In your area yes.
For a few million homes it very much is FTTP.

Edited by j0hn83 (Thu 16-Sep-21 11:54:33)

I read somewhere that there’s more premises served by Virgin FTTP (RFoG) ~ c.1.2 million, than are currently connected to Openreach FTTP (c. 1 million). Although Openreach has now passed 5 million odd.

Either way the numbers aren’t insignificant, especially in context of the raw rollout and connections numbers the like of CityFibre, Hyperoptic, Community Fibre and G.network in the competing areas of VM. The benefits of having your own duct network ready to go and no PIA etc to contend with.

I guess the other takeaway is that in some respects RFoG is now a dead end tech in the eyes of senior VMo2 management - for them, beyond Lightning they need to compete and moving the same general direction as many AltNets and going to XGS-PON. A strategic pivot away from a future of DOCSIS 4

I think this may be very short sighted from the VM execs.
Their current system allows the TV and broadband to coexist without interfering with each other.
When they move are they going to deliver all their TV by IP?

Thanks
Dan

I guess so yes. They may look jealously / nervously at the meteoric rise and financially successful streaming provider competitor business (with absolutely no massive legacy delivery network to maintain) and on the other hand be eying the rise of the AltNet competition in their franchise areas with the near potential for multi gig symmetric broadband and be thinking…..hmmm why are we fashioning and maintaining a technology that is (let’s be harsh) obsolete.

We've gone thoroughly off topic here but I agree, the future is (and has been for some time) fibre, RFoG is a clever way to build infrastructure that is basically a PON while requiring little change to legacy cable headend equipment.

The projected lifetime costs of XGS-PON (or 25G/50G/100G... take your pick) are steadily decreasing and there's a long history of the price of optics falling as technology moves on. I doubt the same can be said for all the clever trickery required to make DOCSIS 3.1 and upwards keep pace.

To come back to the OP's question, as a guess I'd expect longer and more overhead copper lines to be slower in summer, as increased temperature leads to increased resistance. I'd expect lines in poor condition / more underground to slow down in winter as moisture ingress increases.

I leave this thread open to discuss over Full Fibre (true fibre optic) as I do believe Openreach use fibre optic (glass fibre) as Virgin Media might say it full fibre but it not a fibre optic in my view.

I don't know what RFoG are.

In reply to a post by j0hn83:

In your area yes.
For a few million homes it very much is FTTP.

Yes my area still on copper core coaxial cable from cable. My mate has his virgin media 1Gig but never get full speed only getting 350Meg to 550Meg as his area still on copper core coaxial cable. He has cancelled within cooling off period because it not getting 1000Mbps.

My brother got full fibre with BT (1Gig) and he getting 900/110 Meg all day. Openreach are much better than Virgin Media 1Gig.

Edited by adslmax (Thu 16-Sep-21 15:15:20)

RFoG stands for Radio Frequency over Glass.
In the areas where it is deployed by Virgin Media they run a fibre cable to your house where it gets converted to coaxial to plug the modem into.
Very similar to how most FTTP providers run the fibre to your house then convert to copper to plug the router in.

Thanks
Dan

Does VM will roll out full fibre via RFoG in my area one day but I think they probably not bother and leave as copper core coaxial cable from the street cabinet to the house. Maybe to do with too costy to replaced with full fibre RFoG.