FTTP and Hub Questions

[minimos]

Hi,

I am considering switching to Virgin from a BT provisioned FTTC line as the full FTTP rollout from BT appears to be stalled in my area, and I'm seeing decreasing sync speeds due to a full cabinet currently hovering in the mid 50's for download.

As I want to leverage faster speeds and my current contract is up I have been looking at my options.  Virgins current offerings although a little but pricey compared to what I am paying now look good on headline speeds.

I have a number of questions, the overriding one being

1. Does Virgin implemented FTTP suffer from higher latency when in a congested area like the HFC product?

Now of course, this main headliner leads to a number of sub questions about whether I can actually get FTTP in my property and how I go about identifying that.

I believe I am in a project lightening area as Virgin was deployed into my new build estate circa 2017 after Project Lightening was announced, so I believe most installs will be Fibre to the Omibox outside the property and then terminated to Coax inside the property.  

How do I identify that FTTP is actually utilised in my area?  I am guessing a tell tale sign may be the boxes outside the property as from doing my research they appear to be bigger than previous cable boxes, however there are not enough results returned for me to categorically prove this theory.  Does any one have  recent pictures of the various boxes used throughout the years on install, or any staff members can give an indicator of what an FTTP box would look like? 

As you can probably tell knowing the underlying technology I may get is quite important to me, especially as latency and packet loss is my number 1 concern about any switch.

Secondly, what are the odds that I will get a Hub 5 if I get a new install of a 1gig provisioned line?

There appears to be comments in the forum about a shortage of Hub 5's, and some customers are being given a hub 4 with a promise to upgrade later.  Is this still the case?

Finally, if I did go ahead with an order and ended up with a Hub 4, I'd probably end up running it in modem mode and utilise my own router (I'd prefer the Hub 5 as it has a 2.5gb port that would work nicely with the corresponding port on my router).  Does the Hub 4 modem exhibit any issues that may affect latency etc when purely running as a modem?

Apologies for the many questions, and for anyone who may have nodded off as they are very dry.

Thanks in advance for any insight people can provide?

Thanks

Wayne

[Adduxi]

You can order VM and test it out.  You have 14 days to cancel . Do not leave your current ISP until you have done this thorough testing btw. 

[minimos]

Thanks for the quick response.

Its certainly an option, and maybe something I can consider if there is no other information floating about, but its  more hassle to have the install if I then decide to cancel, and I also may miss out on my current providers loyalty offer that is lower than they are currently offering to new customers.  Also, if I have it installed and it is ok latency wise initially, who is to say more subscribers won't degrade it later (hence my original question)

I feel potentially Virgin are missing a trick on this with marketing.  Latency is the number one concern returned when comparing their offering to full or partial fibre from other providers, if they started to target areas they have moved across to FTTP with the benefits they will start getting better hits in forums etc when people ask about latency (assuming of course it performs better than their core HFC product which I suspect it should with the coax only being a few meters long at most inside the property and the rest of the cabling being fibre to the backbone)

If someone has more definitive evidence it will certainly help me.

[Andrew-G]

Does Virgin implemented FTTP suffer from higher latency when in a congested area like the HFC product?

It can do.  Although VM's FTTP uses fibre optic, the communication is RFoG (Radio Frequency over Glass), so your signal is still RF, and still hits the same gear at the head end of the network (CMTS) in the same way as HFC.  The only benefit of RFoG is that it's almost immune to RF noise ingress, but the problems of DOCSIS remain, and if there were capacity problems then the outcome would be the same whether HFC or VM FTTP. 

As for what can you tell from the Omni boxes, if it's a rectangle about eight inches high by four across, that's HFC.  If you're seeing an eight inch square box, that's RFoG.  The reason they're different is that the fibre optic can't be safely bent to the radius available in the older rectangle boxes.  A Google image search for Virgin Media Omnibox will show the various different designs.

Hub 5 or Hub 4, you'll get what they have available, and any promises by sales agents won't mean a thing.  As a Gig1 customer you'd get priority for any available Hub 5s, but that means only so much.  Do you really need that speed?  There's no latency benefit in higher speeds, and unless you're really going to make use of the speeds, you may end up paying for 18 months for something which you make very low utilisation of.  

On a newer Lightning build, then you'd hope that they built with sufficient capacity, and usually that's the case.  So all I can say is give it a go, you've got a 14 day cooling off period if there are problems - and presumably you'd have a BQM setup as soon as you go live.  Also worth checking what your Openreach BQM is like - you complain about speeds, if this is for gaming then speed means nothing (as your comments suggest you already know).  Some discussion around VM customer BQMs in this thread.  Also be aware that VM's customer service is now worse than ever before - read a few pages of Trustpilot reviews to get a feel and set expectations.   

[Client62]

Virgin Media will soon end up at 3+ times what you pay for FTTC. Once the initial sign offer expires VM prices soar year on year.

Hub'5 are in short supply you may or not get one.  It is a lottery.

The more relevant question is why buy Gig 1 ? How do you intend to use all that bandwidth ?

If the answer is for console / computer games, stick with BT Openreach.

Gig 1's notorious latency and jitter issues and could well be the worst package of all to choose. 

Hub 3 are DOCSIS 3.0 devices and can cover the M125 to M600 services.

Hub 4 & Hubs 5 run a mix of DOCSIS 3.0 and 3.1 channels, this frequently gives great bandwidth in terms of file transfer rates, but at the cost of jitter and latency.   Any FTTx Openreach connection is typically lower on jitter and latency.


RFoG photos ... we have RFoG from late 2017.

Photos of RFoG items : OMNI box, an ONT inside an Omni Box, the PSU for an ONT, RFoG hatches, blown fibre tubing (maybe green / black).

If your looking at the VM system of the folks near by the PSU for an ONT is only seen in RFoG areas.

[minimos]

Thank you for the comprehensive answer Andrew-G.

You are right I need to re enable my BQM, not done it for a few years (in fact I disabled echo requests on the router).  I'll get it back up and running to see how the line currently performs, but usually on an individual speed test my ping unloaded is about 12m, I'll see what is shows in the next 48 hours.

With regards download, you are right 1gig is probably overkill, but at the moment its only 50p more than 500 on the offers so makes sense to provision that and drop down on contract renewal if needed.  I was also hoping it would guarantee me a hub 5, but this is not looking likely.  The number of 4K streams we are using in the house has jumped up recenty that's the main reason to get an increase in speeds (not withstanding my latency concerns which top it).

I may do the install then and see what the line stats look like.  I could run a split network for a a couple of weeks to compare.

How much hassle is it to invoke the 14 day cooling off period?  

[minimos]

Thank you Client62.

Those pictures are useful.

The hatches outside my property are as shown and my neighbors have the same size boxes as shown, some in grey others in brown but I assume that is based on when they were installed with the grey ones being the newer installs as they look less tarnished, so it must be a RFoG area.

Some interesting points you make re gaming and initial offers.  Can I ask why you chose VM and continue to be a customer?  I am just trying to get as many perspectives as possible before even attempting a sign up  for a trial in the 14 day cooling off period

[Andrew-G]

"How much hassle is it to invoke the 14 day cooling off period? "

Let's put it this way, VM's standard of service on all cancellation requests is massively variable.  Some people have no problem, some find themselves trapped in a Kafkaesque hell of telephone systems designed to frustrate, and offshore staff whose job appears to be to frustrate.

One other small thing to bear in mind is that a VM RFoG implementation will use about 16W running 24/7 - the hub uses about 13W average, I'd guess the net load of the ONT and PSU is about 3W.  You're probably talking about 8-10 watts more than an Openreach hub, so around £20-30 a year extra on your 'leccy bill. 

EDIT: And then there's the 2024 price rise.  Because of the way VM apply this, you'll be told there's an RPI+3.9% price increase, but if you're on a new customer package discounted by 50% (pretty normal) then the actual month on month increase you'll see is double that.  Assuming RPI of around 6% by next February, that'd mean your monthly payments for the last 5-6 months would go up by 20%, and under VM's new T&Cs you won't be able to cancel or renegotiate in response to that.

[Client62]

We are at West Bergholt, but the telephone exchange is Fordham this means a an ADSL service of 1.5/0.5Mb/s is a jolly good day. Openreach & their retail ISPs did not and still do not have FTTC or FTTP on offer for us. Openreach FTTP may come with the end of analogue phone lines, or that is my hope.

In 2017 VM deployed RFoG and initially offered services in the 50 to 200Mb/s range, we initially took a service Vivid 100 (100/6 Mb/s) it dwarfed ADSL. We later ported our BT phone lines to VOIP provider Sipgate and that unbundling of telephones from an ISP was for sure one of the best decisions & has reduced the cost of telephones to such a low level and given us ownership of the numbers.

Over the years Vivid 100 (108/6) became M100 (108/10) and now M125 (132/20).   My kids have run Play Stations on this and I never heard a single grumble, but they are long gone now and we now operate a property admin function from home, M125 effortlessly covers that + our VOIP lines and the TV streaming and catchup services.

From time to time VM tell us how much data we have used in a month, if I take that figure and split it down to usage per day vs. the M125 download rate, the answer is typically that 1 day's total usage could be delivered in 15 mins.  Now we don't use internet quite like that but it shows how much spare capacity we have even at an entry level tariff.

Being a gladiator might be easier than cancelling in the cooling off period.

PS ..

The OMNI boxes in this area are Brown, Cream & Black as best suits the building's exterior.

[Andrew-G]

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@Client62 wrote:

Being a gladiator might be easier than cancelling in the cooling off period.

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Quote of the week!