May be fair but not sure consumers comparing UK providers would care about US usage.
However I don't think we have enough data at this stage to really make a fair comparison

At 30p/kWh every extra 5W would take £13/yr (3.6p/day) more in terms of power if I just did the maths right..

In reply to a post by seb:

At 30p/kWh every extra 5W would take £13/yr (3.6p/day) more in terms of power if I just did the maths right..

You did. Although unit prices are closer to 35p at the moment.

The reason for the comparison is as they utilise the same technology standard as Virginmedia cable, we don’t have a comparison in the UK with the same technology.

In my experience, the more equipment eg splitters, switches, cabinets, ventilation of said equipment, the more power hungry the end device seems to be. I’m not sure why that is the case as the end device is not powering the whole set of equipment in the stack. What we can say is that full fibre has very little in terms of excess equipment so the whole cost is much lower and it seems the end user devices are too.

In terms of making the public broadly aware of the costs to run a Virgin router. You enter murky water, as the general public will have no understanding of underlying network types, the technology stack, and how that factors in. It risks upsetting the reputation of Virgin who heavily invest in the public interest, and in my view, unfairly leaving consumers feeling that virgin are so wasteful compared to peer internet providers which are viewed as apples to apples (in this case internet vs internet).

If we find that docsis 3.0 and 3.1 is widely deployed to mass market in the world with dual band gateways / modem combos, and the power usage aligns to VDSL2+ / full fibre, the points more valid. I do not suspect Virgin are producing devices that are wasteful by design. Arris for example is not a budget basic company. They are decades into developing this. The hub 5 is Sagemcom, same vendor used by peer uk ISPs. If there is no real solution that’s readily available to mass market (eg a hub they can get today for free that’s available and supported by their isp) we just instil panic, frustration and more concern over bills, and leave consumers stuck. We run the risk of consumers turning devices off and falling foul to security patching not being applied in a timely manner.

I do wish the device was more efficient and honestly I was surprised by the usage. However, sometimes creating a path of resistance by isps who face technical barriers and lack available remedies, is in my mind, a road we should avoid.

I dont think TBB should be concerned about upsetting VM, if VM get upset they could make a more power efficient device. Its good to provide the power usage data, as it will be important to some people.

My maths for the device using 20w is £5 a month so 5w would be £1.25 a month?

Edited by Chrysalis (Tue 31-Jan-23 15:18:47)

In reply to a post by candlerb:

In reply to a post by seb:

At 30p/kWh every extra 5W would take £13/yr (3.6p/day) more in terms of power if I just did the maths right..

You did. Although unit prices are closer to 35p at the moment.

Close enough to show there's a difference

My point is public isn't looking at how efficient Virgin is or what tech they use - they will compare Virgin vs some non-Virgin solution. If it adds £15 a year to the bill it may affect some people's decision.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I dont think TBB should be concerned about upsetting VM, if VM get upset they could make a more power efficient device. Its good to provide the power usage data, as it will be important to some people.
My maths for the device using 20w is £5 a month so 5w would be £1.25 a month?

I was thinking more about what the difference might be.. We don't have accurate figures for actual usage under various conditions to really judge it yet.

In reply to a post by seb:

My point is public isn't looking at how efficient Virgin is or what tech they use - they will compare Virgin vs some non-Virgin solution. If it adds £15 a year to the bill it may affect some people's decision.

That is very valid. I suspect in practice it might be more than we realise, eg on sky setting various settings and logs off I was getting 8 watts at times of downloading (hard to compare fairly as that’s 80 meg speed). SR203.

In reply to a post by ukhardy07:

In reply to a post by seb:

My point is public isn't looking at how efficient Virgin is or what tech they use - they will compare Virgin vs some non-Virgin solution. If it adds £15 a year to the bill it may affect some people's decision.

That is very valid. I suspect in practice it might be more than we realise, eg on sky setting various settings and logs off I was getting 8 watts at times of downloading (hard to compare fairly as that’s 80 meg speed). SR203.

I do think it's a fairly complex area demanding some dedicated time .. not considered logs etc..

I'd like to see real-world photos of this

https://www.businessdirect.bt.com/products/cyberpowe...

BT seem to be claiming on that page that it powers the ONT and a Smart Hub 2 and they have a non-FTTP version of the UPS so I assume there's a difference.