Cable and altnets

In reply to a post by jchamier:

History seems to be repeating itself, with the 1990s cable networks.

Seen a similar comment several times on here. I never paid much attention to cable matters, because nowhere I have ever lived has been passed by cable. For those that can remember, how painful were all the cable networks "consolidation", mergers, takeovers etc for ordinary customers? Did many get stranded without any service or paying much higher charges?

How good is the analogy with fibre altnets now? Were cable installations reasonably standard, so that mergers between different networks could be technically fairly straightforward? The altnets seem to me all to be building networks with incompatible kit to different standards, which might hinder eventual consolidation, but maybe I'm wrong about that, I'm not an expert.

This post from @ajays presents an interesting take from Zen chairman, Richard Tang....

Decade of Full Fibre (presentation at LINX 114 in London on 11-Nov-21)

Basically the outcome of the "gamble" from the AltNet bubble /gold-rush / tulpenmanie in his view were... Get Big, Get Bought or Get Stranded!

The major difference is the overbuild. The cablecos had exclusive geographic areas.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

The altnets seem to me all to be building networks with incompatible kit to different standards, which might hinder eventual consolidation, but maybe I'm wrong about that, I'm not an expert.

I think there are still a lot of separate networks within Virgin Media, but they’ve all been adjusted so that a uniform set of products can be sold across them all. The complexity for cable was the need to sell TV as well as broadband.

Consolidation in cable was multi-step over many years, smaller companies eventually merged into either Telewest or NTL, with the big merger of C&W Cable with NTL.

In reply to a post by Thaumaturge:

The altnets seem to me all to be building networks with incompatible kit to different standards, which might hinder eventual consolidation, but maybe I'm wrong about that, I'm not an expert.

The majority are deploying using PON architecture (GPON or XGS-PON) which are so compatible they can even coexist over the same fibre at the same time. Both can usually be configured in a way that any ONT from any manufacturer can connect to pretty much any OLT.

The fibre in the ground on PON deployments is the expensive part to rollout. Swapping the kit at either end of the fibre is less trivial.

They don't really need to be compatible though. If Alt-Net A buys Alt-Net B then it's ok if they have different hardware in different areas. It may simply mean slightly different top tier offerings in different Cities for a while.
Cable has had different speeds available in different areas for years.

The only time I expect it could be an issue is if 2 consolidated Alt-Nets have overbuilt each other in an area. In such a scenario it would make very little sense to heavily mix assets. They would likely use the superior/higher spec network under those circumstances. Simply upgrade the kit of the lower spec network in areas of the City where they don't overlap.

Hyperoptic and Gigaclear do things quite different (from everyone else and each other) and wouldn't be as easy to merge assets. That could make them less appealing to potential buyers.

The Alt-Net consolidation will no doubt happen down the line.

Thanks, guys. Interesting. Encouraging that the technology diffs may not be as much of a problem as I had thought.

Probably right, VM are going to be a big player coming in late.

I can see them buying up from the likes of grain.

Interesting. Thank you for the links.

Um, i must admit I have been thinking along these lines, we are having Zzoomm installed in the city, still a while before it gets to me and I did think when I first hear of it, great, this is what we need.
My feelings have changed a bit, while fibre is still a good thing, not so sure if an alt network is a good thing, the bloke who owns this used to own another network and flogged that, he may do the same to this one and horrors. Talk Talk may buy it up.

The other thing is that there is no competition. While I am not a fan of open reach, at least on their networks we have a choice of providers.

In reply to a post by zyborg47:

...
The other thing is that there is no competition. While I am not a fan of open reach, at least on their networks we have a choice of providers.

It comes down to two different flavours of competition -

(a) Competition between distinct fibre infrastructure networks, e.g. Openreach and an altnet (or indeed multiple altnets in competition with one another

(b) Competition between ISPs on the same fibre infratstructure network, e.g. different ISPs on Openreach, or say on CityFibre.


Of course with (a) one can argue that with PIA, altnets that use Openreach physical assets aren't necessarily completely distinct infrastructure networks, as they are making use of the same ducts and/or poles.

The government of the 80's and 90's encouraged the building of new cable networks as a way of spurring on competition with BT. They also largely prevented BT from offering their own television services, to stop BT snuffing out those nascent cable networks.