VM Launches New Ultra fast Broadband

Virgin Media has announced an incredibly fast new broadband tier for small- and medium-sized enterprises.

Voom Fibre, which will be available from 2 May, promises download speeds of up to 350Mbps as standard.

Virgin Media says that�s four times faster than anything offered by its rivals.

usiness customers will be able to choose between three different packages, which start at £30 per month. These are:

£30 per month for 7Mbps upload
£40 per month for 15 Mbps upload
£55 per month for 20 Mbps upload

Probably worth giving the link so people people can look at the footnotes since

"Virgin Media says that�s four times faster than anything offered by its rivals."

is not factually correct, unless there some clauses defining who they think their rivals are, and are discounting services like GEA-FTTP

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Probably worth giving the link so people people can look at the footnotes since

"Virgin Media says that�s four times faster than anything offered by its rivals."

is not factually correct, unless there some clauses defining who they think their rivals are, and are discounting services like GEA-FTTP

Totally agree, and they cannot deny BT being a rival and with BTs 330Mbps service available "on-demand" Virgin are trying to redefine maths!

Time for a complaint to the ASA as soon as an advert appears.

I'd forego the Fibre on Demand, since its not a genuine competitor, but given the increasing availability of native FTTP using 'anything' is a step too far.

Maybe poster missed a * that led to a footnote mentioning 'widely available' which is how they get past the issue of Gigabit from Hyperoptic and even the business Gigabit GEA-FTTP options.

I do have some concerns about buying a 350 Mbps service with a 7 Mbps upload rate, since if downloading via TCP, the ACK's for 300 Mbps+ are going to be substantial. If their service has TCP QoS applied as an option, like some routers allow you to do then less of an issue.

FTTP On Demand is very widely available - take up due to costs may be low but that does not change the availability.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Totally agree, and they cannot deny BT being a rival and with BTs 330Mbps service available "on-demand" Virgin are trying to redefine maths!

Time for a complaint to the ASA as soon as an advert appears.

FoD is basically a leased line, and the ASA already consist neither it or GEA-FTTP to be considered for 'widely available' comparisons so they have an easy get out.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

I do have some concerns about buying a 350 Mbps service with a 7 Mbps upload rate, since if downloading via TCP, the ACK's for 300 Mbps+ are going to be substantial. If their service has TCP QoS applied as an option, like some routers allow you to do then less of an issue.

DOCSIS takes care of this with the help of some extensions.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Probably worth giving the link so people people can look at the footnotes since

Seeing as how the OP has not....

Linky Note that there is no mention of faster than anyone else....

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

FoD is basically a leased line

Last time I checked a leased line comes with a SLA (which a FoD service does not), its pricing does not drop to £49.99 pm after 3 years with a £500 pre-paid mastercard thrown in (which it does on Fod) and a 300 mbps leased line costs £1079 pm in my area whilst a 330mbps FoD service costs 'only' £300 pm. Perhaps maths wasn't your strongest subject at school?

Edited by deleted (Sat 22-Apr-17 08:44:52)

Hence why a link is important to separate PR fluff from actual product advertising

Thanks for the link. Interesting copy ...

Plus if you'd like a network of experts and like-minded people to learn from, vibe with and bounce off, you might want to join our VoomPioneers Club. There will be online and real world opportunities for all.

Sounds a bit like an old-fashioned business meeting well away from base to allow relaxed free-thinking and corporate bonding with colleagues.

(Sorry )

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 22-Apr-17 10:18:09)

Have a read of the press release and laugh! https://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/news-and-event...

350Mbps as standard � more than four times faster than the equivalent speeds offered by its rivals.

Four times an equivalent speed ... an equivalent to 350 is surely 350 so four times 350 = yes, according to VM, 350

and

�Today we are putting a huge challenge to the market to do better. Our standard speed is now more than four times faster than our competitors� fastest broadband product

Which again is WRONG. FTTP and FTTPoD are both broadband products - he said nothing about widespread availablility, just BB products.

And then the VM product will not be "widely available". Their network runs straight past my location, the small access hole to provide it to my neighbour is in front of my drive, but my garden is too long to be able to provide service.

Talk about corporate-speak!

Geo-location added to pictures is one thing, but "The community will be a UK-wide network of seekers and providers of advice, where a geo-located platform will enable entrepreneurs to share, co-create and collaborate ...." quite another.

Hopefully they will be geo-stationary platforms , preferably ground-based not on satellites. "Geo-located" indeed !

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

FoD is basically a leased line

Last time I checked a leased line comes with a SLA (which a FoD service does not), its pricing does not drop to £49.99 pm after 3 years with a £500 pre-paid mastercard thrown in (which it does on Fod) and a 300 mbps leased line costs £1079 pm in my area whilst a 330mbps FoD service costs 'only' £300 pm. Perhaps maths wasn't your strongest subject at school?

Going by the inability to understand the word 'basically' or appreciate context I'm fairly sure English wasn't yours.

That said, I'll add the words 'with regards to install costs and conditions.' to the above phrase, it being a bespoke build serving a single premises only, triggered by an order rather than being built in advance and carrying a substantial install fee. I hope that's acceptable?

EDIT: Typo.

Edited by deleted (Sat 22-Apr-17 12:16:16)

In reply to a post by MHC:

And then the VM product will not be "widely available". Their network runs straight past my location, the small access hole to provide it to my neighbour is in front of my drive, but my garden is too long to be able to provide service.

I'm reasonably sure the ASA won't consider whether MHC's house is serviceable the test for the phrase 'widely available'. They'll likely look at VM's national coverage, although going by the recent news articles that might not be too reliable either

It's all PR fluff though. This isn't the first and won't be the last PR release that's excruciating to read and factually, err, dubious.

I think whoever wrote the release had a bit too much 'Voom' in them at the time.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

FoD is basically a leased line

Last time I checked a leased line comes with a SLA (which a FoD service does not), its pricing does not drop to £49.99 pm after 3 years with a £500 pre-paid mastercard thrown in (which it does on Fod) and a 300 mbps leased line costs £1079 pm in my area whilst a 330mbps FoD service costs 'only' £300 pm. Perhaps maths wasn't your strongest subject at school?

Going by the inability to understand the word 'basically' or appreciate context I'm fairly sure English wasn't yours.

That said, I'll add the words 'with regards to install costs and conditions.' to the above phrase, it being a bespoke build serving a single premises only, triggered by an order rather than being built in advance and carrying a substantial install fee. I hope that's acceptable?

EDIT: Typo.

No, you are still comparing apples to oranges. A leased line is a dedicated data line serving a property (ie your own line direct to the exchange) and as such has no contention hence why it costs £1000s per month with an appropriate SLA. A FoD service piggy backs onto the main Openreach fibre once it joins the ag splitter node and from thereon it shares the bandwidth with other users. The high install costs of FoD & high monthly charges for the first 3 years are purely down to paying off the costs Openreach incurred in bringing fibre to your front door.

Edited by deleted (Sat 22-Apr-17 14:24:14)

Given that you can buy entry-level leased lines where the access portion is GEA-FTTC, I think you are right to hold that the real distinction is indeed the lack of contention.

In reply to a post by baby_frogmella:

A FoD service piggy backs onto the main Openreach fibre once it joins the ag node and from thereon it shares the bandwidth with other users.

Careful with terminology...

A FoD service shares bandwidth with others when it joins at the splitter node, not the ag node.

The Ag node is where the shared PON fibre is then cross-connected (spliced) into the fibre spine cable.

At first, a FoD installation might indeed have you as the only user of a fibre all the way back to the head-end exchange. It starts out bespoke. But it isn't intended to stay that way.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

Careful with terminology...

A FoD service shares bandwidth with others when it joins at the splitter node, not the ag node.

The Ag node is where the shared PON fibre is then cross-connected (spliced) into the fibre spine cable.

At first, a FoD installation might indeed have you as the only user of a fibre all the way back to the head-end exchange. It starts out bespoke. But it isn't intended to stay that way.

I stand corrected. But my original point remains valid: on a FTTP/oD service you are likely to share bandwidth with other users en route to the exchange - bespoke order or not. No such restriction on your own fibre direct to the exchange (leased line) but that is reflected on the price you pay.

Leased lines are also widely available and in some cases, cheaper than FoD. I don't think it can be used as a comparison product in cases like this.

GEA-FTTP is fine as it's increasingly available and Openreach are specifically targeting business areas with deployment.

Meh okay, fair enough, careless use of terminology, though no worse than those ISPs using GEA to supply 'leased lines', and a bunch of them have a guaranteed bandwidth allocation alongside a bunch of burst.

The key point still stands - the ASA aren't going to consider FoD in competition with free install, £66 a month broadband.

In reply to a post by AndyHCZ:

Leased lines are also widely available and in some cases, cheaper than FoD. I don't think it can be used as a comparison product in cases like this.

GEA-FTTP is fine as it's increasingly available and Openreach are specifically targeting business areas with deployment.

I presume that at some point that will be the case though for now with the pretty pedestrian pace of the Openreach deployment, alongside that still the majority of it is residential, courtesy of the taxpayer, it'll be a little while before GEA-FTTP and cable are comparable.

I suspect that a wholesale rethink of all of this stuff is due soon. 'Fibre optic' on hybrid products can't have too much more life left given the Ofcom target of ~40% FTTP by 2025. VM will have 7-8% done by 2019, and Lightning up to 2019 is just the first phase in the expansion. VM have very deep pockets thanks to their mothership's willingness to accept a long period before ROI.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

The key point still stands - the ASA aren't going to consider FoD in competition with free install, £66 a month broadband.

One thing ASA ought to learn from the recent brouhaha is that their decisions need to stand the test of time. What isn't very available right now will, in the course of time, change completely. What is expensive now will become cheaper sooner or later.

They need to make a decision that stands on its own two feet both today and in 5, 10 years time.

With FTTP, we should see a 50/50 split with residential and SME by 2020. This was in the BT presentation here http://btplc.com/Sharesandperformance/Quarterlyresul...

I think the biggest issue with BT rolling out residential FTTP (to brownfield sites) is the lack of demand for higher speed variants. If most people take 40/10 and 80/20 (or none at all), the ROI for other areas will surely be below their thresholds. It makes more sense for SME as there is likely to be demand for ultrafast broadband and I suspect most business would order faster packages than residential.

If BT hit the 2 million FTTP by 2020, then they should have around 7% of the UK covered. In terms of residential, the new additions will be mostly MDU and greenfield sites which will leave unanswered questions about deployment beyond this.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

The key point still stands - the ASA aren't going to consider FoD in competition with free install, £66 a month broadband.

One thing ASA ought to learn from the recent brouhaha is that their decisions need to stand the test of time. What isn't very available right now will, in the course of time, change completely. What is expensive now will become cheaper sooner or later.

They need to make a decision that stands on its own two feet both today and in 5, 10 years time.

As I said in my other post a wholesale change of heart on the part of the ASA is needed to reflect the changing environment.

I'm not convinced FoD should be a part of that, it's basically a cynical, clever and despicably pragmatic ploy on the part of BT to get customers to pay for extending its plant, when it doesn't want to make the investment without subsidy, one that I can't find any replication of elsewhere, however there are a bunch of things that need considering.

Then we have VM who refuse to connect properties within 3m of their existing network, this in central London. At least BT attempts to provide a service to those wanting it unlike VM who choose to look the other way and provide no explanation as to why.

I'm not convinced FoD should be a part of that, it's basically a cynical, clever and despicably pragmatic ploy on the part of BT to get customers to pay for extending its plant, when it doesn't want to make the investment without subsidy, one that I can't find any replication of elsewhere, however there are a bunch of things that need considering.

Sam thing happens with some of the other utilities - if a new house is built that wants connection then the builder pays for it. A colleague bought an old house and wanted to get gas connected to it and I believe the quote was around £40K.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Have a read of the press release and laugh! https://www.virginmediabusiness.co.uk/news-and-event...

350Mbps as standard � more than four times faster than the equivalent speeds offered by its rivals.

>>>> equivalent speeds offered by its rivals <<<< which is Openreach network (SKY BT talktalk so on) FTTP is not available normally unless you live in very specific areas (tends to be flats)

cant you just dig up the ground yourself up to your house so they can lay the cable and thin pipe, they will install it (unless your drive is like half a mile long or somthing)

or you can get the same cable and do it yourself so the cable is at your drive end so they come and connect it up

That press release is a mess...
"will be eligable" - indeed, eligable; and the link at the end doesn't actually work (wrong TLD). It all inspires so much confidence!

In reply to a post by MCM:

Then we have VM who refuse to connect properties within 3m of their existing network, this in central London. At least BT attempts to provide a service to those wanting it unlike VM who choose to look the other way and provide no explanation as to why.

VM aren't under a USO. They can refuse to connect up a property next door to their Hook HQ if they choose and are under no obligation to provide any explanation why.

They reckon they'll be delivering to millions of new properties in the next years so presumably they are attempting to provide a service to some.

USO or not VM clearly don't give damn but instead prefer to post ridiculous adverts promoting their lack of service. A service that for many is far worse than any of their competitors. VM customers deserve better and VM needs to respond to and fix their customers' problems by provisioning their service appropriately.