In reply to a post by PCJM40:

Answer me honestly James, would you switch from 1Gbps Openreach FTTP to 1Gbps VM Coax if you had both options?

No, as VM is about 4 times the price. But around here, as I cannot get any FTTP, I would be happy with 1Gbps VM coax, its 1130 download and 110 upload. Like the other poster, my only other option is openreach VDSL at about 40 down and 2 up. The problem is block of flats, no wayleave consent and unresponsive landlord, as there is an alt-net in the road.

Edited by jchamier (Fri 06-Mar-26 19:02:21)

In reply to a post by Taras:

Also XGS-pon allows a higher split ratio.... 64(upto 128) compared to 32(upto 64) for gpon which makes it marginally cheaper for the wholesale operator

That should help reduce costs, explains more how YouFibre can offer their expensive 8 Gbit service.

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Taras:

Also XGS-pon allows a higher split ratio.... 64(upto 128) compared to 32(upto 64) for gpon which makes it marginally cheaper for the wholesale operator

That should help reduce costs, explains more how YouFibre can offer their expensive 8 Gbit service.

it only marginally makes it cheaper but with altnets every penny counts

In reply to a post by jchamier:

In reply to a post by Taras:

Also XGS-pon allows a higher split ratio.... 64(upto 128) compared to 32(upto 64) for gpon which makes it marginally cheaper for the wholesale operator

That should help reduce costs, explains more how YouFibre can offer their expensive 8 Gbit service.

CityFibre offer 2/1 on GPON. It's about take up and usage. Most people are light users. Take up of very high tiers is pretty low. End up on a PON across the ISPs with two heavy top tier users whether YF 8000, CityFibre 2000/1000 or Openreach 1800 and fun times ahead. Main thing preventing selling higher tiers would be the Ofcom requirements on advertising. In France for example where there are no such regulations services are cheap, fast for peak speeds but it can be a very different story for quality, due both to PON and backhaul congestion.

In reply to a post by XGS_Is_On:

CityFibre offer 2/1 on GPON. It's about take up and usage. Most people are light users. Take up of very high tiers is pretty low. End up on a PON across the ISPs with two heavy top tier users whether YF 8000, CityFibre 2000/1000 or Openreach 1800 and fun times ahead. Main thing preventing selling higher tiers would be the Ofcom requirements on advertising. In France for example where there are no such regulations services are cheap, fast for peak speeds but it can be a very different story for quality, due both to PON and backhaul congestion.

That sounds like the days of DOCSIS 1.1 with over use segments in student towns... interesting the ofcom requirements on advertising are stalling faster speeds; I assumed simply the UK price. Do French telcos not charge high price for high speeds?

Not really. Firstly it's really hard to saturate a 2/8gig connection for extended periods of time. Even the most hardcore downloaders would struggle to do that, you'd be running out of space to store the files very quickly, unless you literally are just running speed tests over and over. Arguably a bit easier to do on the upstream with backups I suppose, but that's still 10TB/day to upload at 1gig sustained.

But even assuming that, the OLT has quality of service configurations. It'll depend on the exact config, but if you got eg 2 users on openreach 1800 hammering it with another 20 users, it'd throttle back those two users to allow the others a 'fair shot' at the segment. It doesn't just start dropping packets etc, it will attempt to throttle users.

I think we at the point now speeds are fast enough for 99% of consumer use. At least for downloading.

There is a few people of course who will always want more and would buy 50GPON if available, but we can see with how congestion has eased of so much on VM DOCSIS 3.1 that once gigabit speeds are there, the usage stops going up with the speed.

I have experienced VM on DOCSIS 1.1/2.0/3.0 and 3.1. All of them had congestion affecting throughput except 3.1. At 3.0 throughput did at least start to be noticeably higher, but also at peak could drop off a lot. 3.1 stopped all that, and the 18 months I was on VM DOCSIS 3.1 gig1 service it was really good.

I left it for similar reasons to what you said would make you choose PON, the end of contract pricing, and retentions basically not giving a damn.

I would have honestly chose to stay with VM over moving to CityFibre if they kept my original price.

In reply to a post by mr_mojo:

Not really. Firstly it's really hard to saturate a 2/8gig connection for extended periods of time. Even the most hardcore downloaders would struggle to do that, you'd be running out of space to store the files very quickly, unless you literally are just running speed tests over and over. Arguably a bit easier to do on the upstream with backups I suppose, but that's still 10TB/day to upload at 1gig sustained.

But even assuming that, the OLT has quality of service configurations. It'll depend on the exact config, but if you got eg 2 users on openreach 1800 hammering it with another 20 users, it'd throttle back those two users to allow the others a 'fair shot' at the segment. It doesn't just start dropping packets etc, it will attempt to throttle users.

Not sure exactly what you're disagreeing with

Seeing torrents will happily chew as much upload as it's allowed to. Usenet binaries will saturate downstream. I know of a couple of people that waste bandwidth like crazy but for sure hardly anyone maxes out a high bandwidth service but doesn't mean they can't cause congestion especially at peak times when the base load is higher.

On the OLTs they aren't that smart from the profiles I've seen. There's no concept of fairness the OLT services the unsolicited allocations for telephony, then everyone's committed information rate and usually everyone for themselves after that on best effort traffic up to their peak rate. People with many flows, for examine from a P2P app or high connection Usenet service, usually crowd out people trying to use a single or a very few flows due to higher level protocol congestion management. Openreach publish their profiles, they're basic. Business services get a higher CIR. Other operator I'm aware of the leased line replacement PON services get the same CIR and PIR so the bandwidth is there if they wish to use it.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I have experienced VM on DOCSIS 1.1/2.0/3.0 and 3.1. All of them had congestion affecting throughput except 3.1. At 3.0 throughput did at least start to be noticeably higher, but also at peak could drop off a lot. 3.1 stopped all that, and the 18 months I was on VM DOCSIS 3.1 gig1 service it was really good.

Where I live I've had 1.1, 2.0 and 3.0 but as I'm on a slower speed (cheaper) service, I still have only a 3.0 capable hub. I'm on the 350 / 30 service which is about the price the AltNet's around here charge for symmetric gigabit.

I saw Openreach in an underground chamber in the main road near me (outside a private school) fitting what looked like one of these. Maybe competition in 6 months if OR can solve the wayleave problem.
https://www.thinkbroadband.com/images/news/4440-fttp...