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Is VM fibre optic all the way to the house, it seams its coax, and how it compares witjh others?

ALIEN1X
Joining in

Hi ,

I have VM M50 and it was installed when it was NTL system back in approx 2003

I was on the understanding that it was full fibre optic all the way to the door, it apears its only from the street cabinet to house which coax and not fibre optic?

How does that comapre with BT super fast fibre 2 and Sky superfast broad band  wiring, are thre any pros and cons.

Sky and BT no offer full fibre to the door and it looks very cheap, is that really full fiber or coax?

 

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12 REPLIES 12

jbrennand
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person
No the standard VM connections of old are all fibre to the street cab and coax cable from there to you. They are upgrading to full fibre and new area instals are being put in that way now.

Still much better than most Sky BT offers - but There are lots of full fibre options from OpenReach or other smaller providers in some locations - check what's available to you.

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John
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I do not work for VM. My services: HD TV on VIP (+ Sky Sports & Movies & BT sport), x3 V6 boxes (1 wired, 2 on WiFi) Hub5 in modem mode with Apple Airport Extreme Router +2 Airport Express's & TP-Link Archer C64 WAP. On Volt 350Mbps, Talk Anytime Phone, x2 Mobile SIM only iPhones.

Eeeps
Well-informed

There is still very little fibre to the premises (FTTP) in the UK.

Virgin normally provides the signal via a coaxial cable (although more recent installations provide a fibre connection).
Most other operators provide their 'fibre' connections via your standard phone line cable.

The difference is that the coaxial cable provides much higher data rates than the cable used for your telephone line.
(100Mb/s .v. 10Gb/s)

However, the problem with Virgin's high bandwidth system is that it is shared at the local level (with all your neighbours who are on VM).

For the telephone supplied BB the limited 100Mb/s is not shared locally so you typically get that rate.

Since the number of customers on a VM local network varies from area to area and week to week, the bandwidth(speed) available to you can vary a great deal.

Unfortunately, when we finally all get fibre to the premises, although the available bandwidth will be much greater, this will also be shared at the local level.

nodrogd
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

Virgin’s DOCSIS cable services are actually fibre to node cabinet. Nodes are usually placed 500m to 1km apart, & drive 10 to 20 slave cabinets over high grade coax. These systems have been tested successfully up to 10Gb download speeds, so upgrading to full fibre is unnecessary in the short term. A lot of re-segmenting of the networks has taken place over the past few years with more fibre nodes bought into action, making existing networks more robust. Full fibre is only being put in new areas as the narrow trench build is considerably cheaper than build in HFC.

VM 350BB 2xV6 & Landline. Freeview/Freesat HD, ASDA/Tesco PAYG Mobile. Cable customer since 1993

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Thanks for the feedback.
I have VM 54mps and sky are advertising 59mps fibre broadbamnd
So I can get my head round this, which one will be better as:
one is coax cable form street cabinet and the other Sky i assume is twisted coper phone line form street cabinet for thier superfast broad band ?
And EE 67mps form street cabinet?

Will the speed degrade wththe other provders compared with VM to whats been advertised?

Adduxi
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

It all depends on Openreach who install all the lines for 99% of broadband.  These are then sold wholesale to ISP's, e.g. BT, Sky etc.

If your property does not already have a copper phone line, you may end up with Fibre to your house.  This was the case with one of my relatives when getting broadband from BT. They ran a fibre cable from the pole to her house and terminated indoors with an ONT. 

As for speed, they only took the basic 40MB, but as it's FTTP, they could have had up to 900MB.

So, it all depends on the local infrastructure.

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g0akc
Problem sorter

@ALIEN1X wrote:
Thanks for the feedback.
I have VM 54mps and sky are advertising 59mps fibre broadbamnd
So I can get my head round this, which one will be better as:
one is coax cable form street cabinet and the other Sky i assume is twisted coper phone line form street cabinet for thier superfast broad band ?
And EE 67mps form street cabinet?

Will the speed degrade wththe other provders compared with VM to whats been advertised?

The speeds can degrade over time - with contention and DSL signals interfering with each other, but that is taken into account in the offering to some extent.  EE appear to be using a different estimate to Sky - they will be using the same infrastructure to your premises (Openreach) though the backhaul will be different.

Also look at what upload speed is on offer - depending on how you will use the connection - some users do more uploading - typically the upload speed is only 10% of the download speed, but some (mainly FTTP) offer higher upload speeds - good if you send a lot of emails with attachments or need to upload a lot of content.

You might want to consider customer service levels in your decision as well - look for reviews

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I know a bit about Wi-Fi, Telecoms, and TV as I used to do it for a living but I'm not perfect so don't beat me up... If you make things you make mistakes!

Thanks,
No providers in my area/road are providing full fibre only broadband fibre up to street cabinet then copper cables up tot the house, with exception for Virgin who use coax

So going by the feedback I guess theres not much diffrence in speed and quality of.signal between all mentined ISP providers for 50-70mb broadband betweem VM,BT,SKY and EE accept virgin is more expensive dispite going through rentensions.

Please correct me if i have have miss understood.


Adduxi
Very Insightful Person
Very Insightful Person

@ALIEN1X wrote:
<snip>
So going by the feedback I guess theres not much diffrence in speed and quality of.signal between all mentined ISP providers for 50-70mb broadband betweem VM,BT,SKY and EE accept virgin is more expensive dispite going through rentensions.

Please correct me if i have have miss understood.



If you are a gamer, VDSL will have less latency.  Other than that not much difference as far as supply is concerned.

However, AFAIK VM, Sky and EE use specific routers and will not allow change.  The exception is BT, they will let you use your own Router if you so wish.

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If you want a reasonable estimate of what your telephone line could provide try using the OpenReach checker..

VDSL Checker