Cable My Street - "We're on our way" - estimated time?

Hi all. I know you might get asked this a lot. Is there any estimate at all?

I have lived in a new housing estate for a year, and the internet available is the standard packages. <5mb and it is almost unusable at times for modern day activities!

I have seen that they have planned my area - Walsall / WS2 7BF.

Is there any way I can find out more information, or do you know a rough timescale?

Thanks all!

Welcome to the forum.

Let's hope it's faster than some of the area faults they are supposed to be sorting, The record so far is 4 years and 3 months according to people on their forums.

Mind you, they have a habit of cramming as many people on as they can no matter what the effect, so based on the fact it's going to generate the shareholders xmas party funds I would imagine it might be quick.

Really glad to see you are on under 5mbps - as that's what many many customers in bad areas experience in the evening, EVERY evening.

Before I am accused of being a VM hater etc, have a look at their own customers on their own forums, and most importantly see if there is anyone there from your area.

http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Broadband/ct-p/B...

This one is particularly fun to read.
http://community.virginmedia.com/t5/Speed/Virgin-Med...

Edited to say welcome

Edited by deleted (Thu 15-Dec-16 16:01:50)

VM are a hell of rubbish service. Glad I left VM in 2014 switched over to FTTC and never go back to VM ever again.

Indeed, But you should be telling the ajc1989, not me

Have you checked what you can get from an Openreach reseller?

The other side of Northumberlamd way can get FTTC.

Hi there. Thanks for checking.

I cannot receive fibre from OpenReach. I assume because it is a new housing estate / relatively new road (2 years).

My exchange is fibre enabled but my cabinet isn't. I believe this is because the exchange is full? However there are not any plans when I check on OpenReach, so this is why I'm hoping Virgin can arrive soon

In reply to a post by ajc1989:

Hi there. Thanks for checking.

I cannot receive fibre from OpenReach. I assume because it is a new housing estate / relatively new road (2 years).

My exchange is fibre enabled but my cabinet isn't. I believe this is because the exchange is full? However there are not any plans when I check on OpenReach, so this is why I'm hoping Virgin can arrive soon

Totally get that and I (and I am sure everyone else) hopes that it will be good for you - but some of us who had it wish we could have got FTTC, and the ones who could, did.

This is a bit disingenuous.

Yes, there are people with massive contention issues. These issues are down to single cable segments though, which can be as few as 20 or so houses.

Many more of us are fine. I get 300mbit any time day or night. FTTC would be about 30mbit for me, so there is never a time I'd get better FTTC performance.

Until I moved here 6 months ago, I had two FTTC lines, 80/20 at ~70 Mbit sync each, and load balanced. The Virgin connection is a better experience in every way.

The company is not without issues, but the issues are for a minority of users only.

And anyway, if virgin roll out to his area via cable my street, it's highly likely to be RFoG, and pure fibre. The contention issues won't be there for him.

Well it's nice to see you get 300 all the time and would be nice to hear that his street is also fine. But that brings no comfort to the rest of us.

I do have 2 80/20 lines so I know what you mean. However for me, in my area to say VM was better in ANY way would be a bit over the top.

I had major congestion in London at 2 properties on virginmedia, the bill was halved and eventually I was allowed to leave in both cases.

Twice bitten, will not try it again.

Contrast this to my experience on BT lines:
I have had AOL (1 property), Sky (at 3 properties), BT (2 properties), Talktalk (1 property).

Out of the above I had congestion on Sky for a couple of months, in the other 10+ years I never had a single slowdown ever on BT based connection.

Virginmedia was below 2Mbps some evenings for me... I could not even do 480P Netflix.

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Before I am accused of being a VM hater etc

What is it they say? "If the cap fits ..."
It really is amazing how a company can upset an employee so much they head to forums and actually achieve a rating of 'experienced' just by posting vitriol.

Piece of string I'm afraid. Until it appears on http://roadworks.org there's no real way of knowing.

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Well it's nice to see you get 300 all the time and would be nice to hear that his street is also fine. But that brings no comfort to the rest of us.

I do have 2 80/20 lines so I know what you mean. However for me, in my area to say VM was better in ANY way would be a bit over the top.

I'm not saying they shouldn't resolve those issues, or that they don't exist, but they are suffered by a minority of users, and you have a cancellation period when you sign up.

So it's usually a good idea to give them a try, because they CAN be very good.

I've never lived in London, perhaps the population density and difficulty of digging up roads there is partly to blame. I live in a suburb of Ipswich, and it's fine. Previously I lived in the Bristol area, both in the outskirts of Bristol itself where I had Virgin, and before that small towns outside Bristol, where I had Telewest (pre VM days) and never had any issues.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

the bill was halved and eventually I was allowed to leave in both cases.

I was also allowed to leave but they suckered the full amount from me for the duration. :/

In reply to a post by Daemon66:

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Before I am accused of being a VM hater etc

What is it they say? "If the cap fits ..."
It really is amazing how a company can upset an employee so much they head to forums and actually achieve a rating of 'experienced' just by posting vitriol.

It's also amazing how the only time you ever pop up to reply to me is when I post in the VM forum, Seems like you have more of a beef over the issue than I ever did.

How's your 160mbps connection that VM don't actually sell nor have ever given as an upgrade? Is your whole profile just vitriol?

you could try asking the executive team about plans...

[email protected]

You might want to have a look here: OED when you don't know what words mean.
Oh, and thanks for pointing out that my profile still referred to my old speed of 160Mbps (VM 150 product), I've updated it to my present 210Mbps speed (VM 200 product).

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Edited by deleted (Mon 19-Dec-16 14:37:32)

Post was deleted due to use of language that breaks the site rules.

Sorry I will rephrase the reply.

I am glad you have 200mbps, I have nearly 500mbps - and?

Bit of a late response, but as far as I can tell, "We're on our way" just indicates that they're coming to a nearby postcode, not that your postcode is actually in their plans.

I get the exact same message for my postcode (and many nearby postcodes within a half mile radius), however the postcode directly next to mine says "Great news! We�re on our way" with a different message.

I'd imagine that those with the "great news" prefix are scheduled for 2017/18 and the ones without are planned for 2019/20 - but that's just my guess, I have no actual source.

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Sorry I will rephrase the reply.

I am glad you have 200mbps, I have nearly 500mbps - and?

Be interested to see a speed test with each of these and combined having tried load balancing and failover myself on a couple of different hardware and software platforms with varying results.

Thank you.

The surrounding area has VM already. Because I'm in a new estate I assume it would be more straight forward than to cable an entire district. This is the full message I get:

"We're on our way...
Your community has been chosen for future development. We�re working as fast as we can to get to you but right now we can�t confirm when we�ll be able to connect this address to Virgin Media services. "

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Sorry I will rephrase the reply.

I am glad you have 200mbps, I have nearly 500mbps - and?

Be interested to see a speed test with each of these and combined having tried load balancing and failover myself on a couple of different hardware and software platforms with varying results.

No problem I shall do some tonight when I get home. On a train right now.

Thanks. Please also let me know the kit you're using.

In reply to a post by thebigdolphin1:

Bit of a late response, but as far as I can tell, "We're on our way" just indicates that they're coming to a nearby postcode, not that your postcode is actually in their plans.

I get the exact same message for my postcode (and many nearby postcodes within a half mile radius), however the postcode directly next to mine says "Great news! We�re on our way" with a different message.

I'd imagine that those with the "great news" prefix are scheduled for 2017/18 and the ones without are planned for 2019/20 - but that's just my guess, I have no actual source.

Interesting! Every postcode I can think of in my borough in areas VM have indicated an interest in show the "we're on our way". I've not found one with the "great news..." message yet. So maybe our area is further down the list than parts of yours.

I will. It's a Tp-Link but I also use software too - together they produce as much as I can get

Try checking some postcodes on a nearby main road, they tend to route cables up them and connect the surrounding properties.

ajc 1989 I assume there is a green box at the entrance to your development - thats a classic case of the developer only asking for copper (and getting paid to have copper installed) and there for you cab is not part of any commercial or BDUk plans as the postcode did not exist when those deployment / intervention plans were agreed - is your developer still on site and who what is your development name / developer

Checker seems to be completely broken for this development right now. Not surprising, the deployment has been quite weird.

Was working a week ago, now providing a postcode and street address does nothing, goes back to asking for postcode.

Hopefully just an issue affecting us while they try and work out what is going on here.

@fastman2

You're right - just the green cabinet.

The 2 companies building on the estate were Taylor Wimpey and Mar City Homes. People have been living here for 2 years, but they are still building a couple of houses that were added late.

Are you saying it's unlikely the estate will get decent internet soon? As I said, all around us has cable, so I would've thought it'd be a quick and profitable job for VM, as there's a lot of houses here.

thought it'd be a quick and profitable job for VM,

Maybe however VM have repeatedly refused for the last 25 years to provide any service to the properties on the development where I live in London SW9 including 20+ properties where the VM cable is no more than 2 metres away running under the adjacent pavement. A live cable that serves older properties in the same road either side of the development. Because of this I get the feeling that frontline VM staff have little interest in acquiring new customers or connecting new properties despite VM's highly publicised Project Lightning.

In reply to a post by MCM:

thought it'd be a quick and profitable job for VM,

Maybe however VM have repeatedly refused for the last 25 years to provide any service to the properties on the development where I live in London SW9 including 20+ properties where the VM cable is no more than 2 metres away running under the adjacent pavement. A live cable that serves older properties in the same road either side of the development. Because of this I get the feeling that frontline VM staff have little interest in acquiring new customers or connecting new properties despite VM's highly publicised Project Lightning.

Based on a single street?

A million is being spent passing this estate alone. The idea that VM are spending hundreds per premises passed digging roads and pavements and are then indifferent to them is crazy.

They've spent £5 million+ in Middleton, South Leeds, followed up by sales going to each and every newly passed home to try and sell services.

Quite likely that barring a major issue the missing properties will be infilled. A major issue would be something like that side of the road not being adopted by the local authority.

There are only so many contractors available to do thel work and it's still ramping up. Your address is probably on the list, but it's a 4 million long list.

VM crazy and indifferent? Certainly true 100% in our case, or at least true for those customer facing staff who give the impression of caring little for customers and choose to refuse to enable premises where virtually no additional expenditure is required. Not millions, not thousands or even hundreds but that's VM's loss and BT's gain. Given VM's appalling reputation locally we chose not pursue the matter and instead put our money where our mouth was, some £18K or so, and gap funded an FTTC cabinet which now provides a highly respectable 100% consistent fast connection to all that require it. At least the BT cabinet still has its doors unlike a number of the VM cabinets locally.

I appreciate that as a public company VM can do exactly as it pleases but to choose to provide to half a street, the beginning and the end whilst refusing to supply to the properties in between hasn't helped them win friends. In fact the reverse.

That's a strange solution that will break some applications without a bunch of pretty dull configuration due to double-NAT, but as long as it works for your usage patterns all good.

I would recommend the dslreports tester. It allows the most threads up and down and is most amenable to a load balanced group.

Sadly I can't demonstrate this as I haven't had 2 connections since late 2014.

Thans for reminding me to do a test. I will do that at some point today. Yes it does seem to work for me. I have also found that using speedify gets decent results (always on the upstream anyway) and connectify dispatch also has a good bond.

I am now hoping I can get this 1000/220 when it comes out- the wholesale costs seems fine to me I have been speaking to an ISP near me who does FTTPoD it's not far off at wholesale level what I pay now per year. (£250) so seems worth the punt. It means I can shed both and maybe keep a basic adsl line as backup in the hope FTTP would be more reliable. I know it still comes from the same NGA.

Thanks for the tester also - I will use it later.

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

I am now hoping I can get this 1000/220 when it comes out- the wholesale costs seems fine to me I have been speaking to an ISP near me who does FTTPoD it's not far off at wholesale level what I pay now per year. (£250) so seems worth the punt. It means I can shed both and maybe keep a basic adsl line as backup in the hope FTTP would be more reliable. I know it still comes from the same NGA.

Thanks for the tester also - I will use it later.

FoD uses its own fibre path back to the exchange/headend, doesn't share fibre with cabinet or come from it. That was my major interest in it.

Might be one common point of failure at headend, a switch/OLT, but apart from that independent as long as using different wholesale providers.

Retail price will be considerably higher than wholesale on the product. ISP needs to make some money out of the deal and has bandwidth, staff costs, etc, to cover. Prices obviously both wholesale and retail don't include VAT.

Ah thanks for the info. Well I would go up to 2.5K a year for it. I am paying just under 1.4K now a year - connection would be written off anyway.

I guess come Feb? we will see!

Quite unlikely to come in at that price. Based on their current markup between 330/30 Openreach and retail price the operator I suspect you are thinking of would be delivering the 1Gb product at upwards of 3k a year exclusive of VAT - it would also require them to purchase a 10Gb Cablelink as they'll only have 1Gb right now. That would likely be folded into the cost somewhere too.

In which case it would be better to look around. When the actual prices are in play i'll look at it then.

The cost is "from £1599" install and subject to survey, £179 a month - that's a lot more than I thought it would be.

Edited by deleted (Thu 29-Dec-16 13:21:59)

Those using the BT Wholesale network pay £140 + VAT / month for 330/30 before any of their own costs.

GEA operators upgrading to a 10Gb Cablelink will be paying £10k per switch for the privilege.

The product is going to be very hard to purchase and will be expensive, as would be expected, given the other FoD products.

When the prices are out I will ring up and see. If it's stupidly expensive then the 330 option would suit. No bonding and pretty much the same results.

Well I can tell you from experience that Taylor Wimpey are absolutely useless in many respects. The last thing they will be thinking about is what broadband type will be available. The old part of my road has Virgin Media, our estate was added on to the end of the road 3 years ago and is about 50 houses, Virgin told me they were denied access by the developer. Taylor Wimpey told me they don't talk to Virgin Media and only deal with BT but just ask for copper broadband.

Edited by deleted (Thu 29-Dec-16 16:00:38)

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

Thans for reminding me to do a test. I will do that at some point today. Yes it does seem to work for me. I have also found that using speedify gets decent results (always on the upstream anyway) and connectify dispatch also has a good bond.

I am now hoping I can get this 1000/220 when it comes out- the wholesale costs seems fine to me I have been speaking to an ISP near me who does FTTPoD it's not far off at wholesale level what I pay now per year. (£250) so seems worth the punt. It means I can shed both and maybe keep a basic adsl line as backup in the hope FTTP would be more reliable. I know it still comes from the same NGA.

Thanks for the tester also - I will use it later.

Still waiting too see these fantasy speed tests you were on about lolz .. You still on that train ?

No, i'm currently in New York - and why are they funny? You might be too poor to afford enough connections to make 500mbps but I'm not - so suck up the jealousy soup some more "lolz" <-- are you 12?

Post deleted by MrSaffron

Feel free to question other posters and debate issues, but don't make personal attacks

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

No, i'm currently in New York - and why are they funny? You might be too poor to afford enough connections to make 500mbps but I'm not - so suck up the jealousy soup some more "lolz" <-- are you 12?

Think you have someone impersonating you if you've 3 connections:

http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2016/12/bt-open...

Indeed, That site does not have a login like this one does so could be anyone. That's not my name for one, Maybe it was the person above trying to cause problems. Who knows.

I don't have Virgin, Had them once for 125 and hated it. This was back in 2011/12. Virgin would have to pay me to take their 300 service from all the complaints I see.

I have 1 330 which is purely for this building, I have one 80/20 which I had added and I get around 70-80mbps all the time on 4G with my mobile - so yes actually if you count the mobile I do have 3.

I wish they cost £115 a month. I'd have 6 of that was the case!.

I spoke to an ISP today about this 1000/220 and you were nearly right - they are saying it's TBC but could be around the 4K mark PA

I am not sure if I should believe this or not. After all a 1gbps line with AA is £7.7K a month. Even 200mbps is 2K a month.

Edited to change the price to 7.7K a month.

Anyway - tonight and tomorrow are Times Square for me - so happy new year to you all!

Edited by deleted (Fri 30-Dec-16 17:50:43)

I'd consider checking your account here, too. As of the 23rd of December you were posting indicating you had 2 x FTTC lines.

Even on this thread what is apparently you was discussing FoD install charges, which is of course redundant as if you had FTTP, either FoD or native, already you'd not be paying install charges.

You also made an odd comment regarding hoping FTTP would be more reliable. If you don't have Virgin and don't have FTTP I've no idea where a 330Mb service would come from.

Regarding your real name you have a quite distinctive posting style. To the point where you stick out like a sore thumb. I know exactly who you are and I've no doubt anyone else who's been here for any length of time does too.

I've no idea whether that's you on ISPR, though I see no reason to think otherwise, but am quite sure it's you on Cableforum, Giff-Gaff community, as ZenUser27 on the main TBB site, previously ZenUser / AAISPUSer or something like that on here in two earlier guises this year and many previous ones going back a while.

If you're in New York I have no idea why you're on here as much as you are right now, so will wish you and your loved ones a happy, healthy and prosperous new year, enjoying and appreciating the life, loves and things that you have.

wow sounds like I have a real life stalker. I'd better get in touch with the Police when I get back, I am sure they won't have trouble finding you to explain yourself, Carl.

The Police won't do squat, they disbanded years ago.

In reply to a post by 23Prince:

wow sounds like I have a real life stalker. I'd better get in touch with the Police when I get back, I am sure they won't have trouble finding you to explain yourself, Carl.

I am sure they won't, although I don't rate their odds of proving my use of forums over a period of years that you also use alongside a Google search for your username while issuing exactly zero threats and carrying out exactly zero threatening behaviour stalking.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2012/9/part/7/cr...

Not really my fault if you're so trivially identifiable as your posts carry the same theme and posting style throughout. Perhaps not claiming to be a property magnate with huge wealth, repeatedly calling other people 'poor', and insisting on swearing every so often would help your new identities go unnoticed.

You might want to explain to them yourself your repeated ban evasion by creating new accounts on here. That's a breach of the Computer Misuse Act, unauthorised use of a computer system, carrying a sentence of up to 12 months. Never thought the Security Management module of my course with its heavy legalese content would be so useful.

I look forward to the discussion with them should it happen. You are more than welcome to point them to me on here and I'll provide them any details they need for me to resolve the issues with them.

I invite you to consider the various connotations of carrying out your threat though. If it comes to it my solicitor will put your reliability under the spotlight, using both publicly available information from what has been put online and things like post source IP addresses, financial records, etc, as needed to confirm the veracity of your comments and you as a complainant.

I'm sorry to say that I don't respond too well to threats of criminal prosecution as a response to pointing out that what you write is contradictory and extremely hard to believe.

Nothing else to say. We're done. As I said before I wish you and your loved ones a happy, healthy and prosperous new year, enjoying and appreciating the life, loves and things that you have.

EDIT: Typo.

Edited by deleted (Sat 31-Dec-16 19:15:50)

Some of these areas are not as small as you think they are, some areas have very large nodes as confirmed by ignition on kitz forum due to original network build, and have suffered as a result for several years.

e.g. I have tested VM in more than a dozen parts of Leicester and only one out of them had consistent good performance, and it was right on the outskirts barely in Leicester.

The issue with VM is that when an area has problems it tends to stay like that long term. If it was a short temporary thing then people would be more accepting of it.

Interestingly finally after over a decade some work actually looks like is been done in my area to shrink the node size, its still ongoing but when its done I will check with my neighbour to see if things have improved.

What was new with the vivid product launch is that some previously known good areas started seeing congestion and some kind of QoS appears to be occurring in some areas reducing single thread speeds.