Virgin Media Start Opening FTTP Upgrade Areas to Existing UK Customers

The RFoG → XGS-PON migration is more complex than it might appear. Although both technologies use FTTP, they operate very differently, and Virgin Media must run both networks in parallel during the migration.

In the field, the XGS-PON OLT cannot fit into existing RFoG OLT cabinets, so separate XGS-PON OLT cabinets will be installed, almost certainly next to the RFoG cabinets to reuse fibre ducts and power supplies. No additional aggregation or distribution cabinets are expected; the existing RFOG ones can be reused. Customer fibres will be re-patched (most likely) or re-spliced in the aggregation cabinets from RFoG to XGS-PON as needed.

At the customer premises, the ONT, hub, and TV box(es) will be removed and replaced with a Hub 5X and Stream box(es). (Technicians generally do not remove coaxial cabling.) By this point, VoIP must be working over XGS-PON. Hub 5X devices can be pre-provisioned for VoIP, so migrating phone users is as simple as unplugging the line from the DOCSIS hub and plugging it into Hub 5X.

Once all customers on an RFoG OLT have migrated, the RFoG cabinet can be powered down, and its CMTS port disabled in software or powered down.

For RFoG to XGS-PON I was not expecting to see any more street cabinets.

RFoG is already small cabinets containing no electrics just fibres and an optical splitter / combiners i.e.  RFoG is a PON.

The OMNI box has quite a spool of spare fibre in the back of it, there would need to be about 8 to 10 meters to make it to my office replacing the current coax.

Maybe they are offering the “upgrade” to RFoG users first? Less work to be done. For the older co-ax users, leave to the end? It’s not like they can blow fibre through my conduit as there isn’t any.  The co-ax is just laid under the grass …

We know thst VM uses the word "upgrade" rather loosely, but it does sound from the statement that someone wanting to change from HFC will be out of luck unless they want to pay for a faster connection. 

A spokesperson for Virgin Media has now confirmed to ISPreview that they have “begun offering existing customers in some areas the opportunity to upgrade their services to symmetrical and gigabit packages delivered on the XGS-PON network“.

Had a quick look at my address on "bidb" and it is now showing as Project Mustang.  If I go to the VM website, it comes up as 2Gb, but for my address the max is still 1Gb. So still no movement on getting the old co-ax cables removed.  If/when it comes available, I don't know if I would have it as no modem mode on the 5X and I don't have a router with a suitable SFP+ ...

Just to clarify about Giffgaff (which is not part of Project Mustang): this is on nextfibre only, and if a VM customer is also on nexfibre then there is a standard process called One Touch Switch (OTS) whereby that customer asks the gaining provider (Giffgaff) to do the switch from the losing provider (VM). Note that it's not possible to switch to Giffgaff from Project Mustang's network as the nexfibre and VM networks do not overlap.

What should also be noted is that there is no news yet about VoIP from the hub 5X. This has to be done in order to migrate the legacy phone users over, and I expect this to go live soon as there is a cutoff date of 31 January 2027 when PSTN must be shut down forever. It's a big issue and perhaps worth its own thread.

Info below from https://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/virgin-media-o2-edging-closer-to-project-mustang-being-widely-available

Virgin Media O2 edging closer to Project Mustang being widely available
ISPreview is reporting that they believe VMO2 is now letting people who have an existing coax connection in a Project Mustang area upgrade to the XGS-PON service.

The full fibre service that Project Mustang offers means that top speeds of 2 Gbps are available and symmetric options, we presume the symmetric option carries the same £6 per month supplement as the nexfibre XGS-PON areas.

We have mapped as best as we can the Project Mustang and when combined with the old Project Lightning RFOG and the currently being built nexfibre XGS-PON footprints VMO2 has a potential full fibre footprint of over 7 million premises. It has been a few weeks since we found any new large areas, and we’ve done a bit of looking around the edges of the existing Mustang footprints in North London, Birmingham, Manchester and Liverpool.

The change as we understand it is that previously only people who had no coax running to their property could actually order and get XGS-PON installed as part of the Project Mustang rollout. The change now is that some people are said to be seeing it as an option in their My Account pages, or may need to telephone to place the order. This is the first indication outside of limited trials that Project Mustang will move from being talked about as full fibre towards actually counting towards the full fibre statistics we track.

While this is a step closer to live footprint for Project Mustang there is still a lot that needs to happen, and particularly for us to add it as an option to our Broadband API we need Virgin Media to be offering it very visibly to potential and existing customers.

The Project Mustang upgrades where people go from DOCSIS 3.1 coax to full fibre will mean older TV set top boxes will need replacing with the newer IP based streaming devices.

We presume one day there will be a big launch of XGS-PON services, offering more reliable full fibre to replace the old coax network would be a good way to retain customers especially if the pricing is reasonable, both while in and out of contract. Alas we still see people going into bill shock at the end of the minimum term for example the M125 service starts at £24.99 per month on a 24 month contract, but jumps to £68 per month thereafter.