With the advent of FTTP on Virgin's network I was wondering if there's any chance we can nominate to have a stand alone ONT installed rather than a Hub5x. I realise the hub 5X has the ONT built in (sort of). But it would be great not to have to put the 5x into modem mode, when modem mode is finally supported as I a standalone ONT coupled with end user's own router would surely use less energy than two routers, albeit one in modem mode. Anyway, maybe I'm being too logical about this, I realise having two separate install models would potentially cause greater cost to VM, as in having to have two sets of inventory. That said, if, once the FTTP upgrade of their DOCSIS network is complete and they do start offering wholesale across both Nexfibre and the upgraded legacy network, surely they will end up having to go down the ONT route anyway to allow for wholesale customers' routers, I am making an assumption that wholesale customers will want to, as far as possible, use the same consumer units on Virgin's wholesale network as they do on Openreach et. al.
Apologies for the rambling stream of consciousness I hope you can follow my logic. Also, I realise I am talking in open ended timescales but, one would hope VM have at least some of the business planning team thinking about these things.
Interesting point. I'm not familiar with how VM do this so, on their FTTP network do they perform rate limiting at the customer end of things / edge, or, in the core? If they do rate limiting at the core then, surely a stand alone ONT wouldn't have any impact on this as I assume OpenReach and other FTTP providers who do use ONTs will use rate limiting so either, the ONT can perform this at the edge, or, they perform it at the core? Thoughts?
No shade at all, this is just a steam of consciousness as genuinely curious. 🙂
Thanks @IPFreely, I did think it must be possible to do it on an ONT/OLT, otherwise, how would other FTTP providers rate limit.
It will be interesting to watch the Nexfibre portion of the network as I suspect that will be the first to offer wholesale to other ISPs. I can't see many other ISPs Sky etc. wanting to take a wholesale product which means they have to train their support staff on a whole different system or be required to let VM do their tech support whilst anything account related it's their team (essentially a white label service). I theorise, opening the network up to wholesale forms a large part of the ROI for the CAPEX involved in the FTTP upgrade. I can't see VM wanting to scare off potential wholesale customers by insisting on custom firmware on their hubs. My guess, and this is only a guess, is that once they open up the network to other ISPs (a la OpenReach) they will move to standalone ONTs for wholesale tenants, in other words, if you order from Sky et. al. on the VM FTTP network, you'll get an ONT. I don't see them then sending an engineer out to move you back to a hub5x or whatever if you move back to VM. Therefore eventually I suspect we will see the VM hubs becoming standard routers with a RJ45 WAN port as opposed to an SPF WAN port rather than the Hub with SPF port we currently have. There, if they do open up to wholesale in stages, they may have a period where they have to put you back on a Hub until the DOCSIS network and the RFoG network have been fully replaced with FTTP. Once it's complete they don't NEED the hub 5x and I suspect everyone will eventually have an ONT to provide network access with MAC based white/black list, or, do what (from memory BT do, or used to) with their FTTP lines and use a PPPoE connection for authentication. Which, is ghastly but surely they won't be as daft as BT!
Ultimately only time will tell and I'm purely speculating, maybe they will never open up to wholesale, who the heck knows. But if they do open up to wholesale, I think we will see a more standard approach to attract all those lovely ISPs.
Totally get you @legacy1 and agree whilst VM are the only ISP on their network this makes total sense. However in a world where they have opened up their network to other ISPs, they are going to want to attract as many ISPs as possible and most won't want a white label service, they will want to offer the same kit as they do on OpenReach or CityFibre et. al. So I suspect ONTs will be the way forward, one day. Of course, any router can be built with Truespeed functionality, plus with an ONT the network provider can test the line speed to the ONT, so they will still be able to blame our kit if we chose not to use their router.
When nexfibre and VM wholesale their networks the ISPs will be free to install whatever ONTs and routers they want in premises.
Totally agree, this is what I suspect it will look like in the future. One hopes VM will then drop their integrated hub/ONT and just deliver routers with a 10G RJ45 WAN port.... That said, I'll likely be very long in the tooth by the time they even get round to opening up the network fully! But hopefully I'll still have enough of my marbles left to bother switching to see what it's like and if the grass is greener... That said, I may not even be on the VM/Nexfibre network by the time all of this happens so it could all be a moot point. hahaha 🙂
