Can I find out when fibre will be available?

[mojo-chan]

Is there somewhere that VM lists expected dates for fibre roll out? At the moment my area only has slow DOCSIS.

[Timwilky]

As someone on the legacy Telewest network I doubt I will ever see the theoretical syncronous speeds fibre can support. But with this 30 year old technology I have to agree that the current upload speeds are rubbish. Back in the 90s  when I first signed up to Telewest I got a 10:1 download/upload ratio and two IP addresses. Reinstating both of these would be a big improvement.

[mojo-chan]

Would be good if you could ask to have more upload and less download.

I suppose all the time BT are dragging their heels on fibre there will be no real incentive for VM to upgrade to to.

[Richw1982]

Fibre or coax doesnt have anything to do with it.  Docsis 3.1 has the ability for 10gig down and 1 gig up.  The only reason fibre is now being used is because its so cheap and it runs on a mainly passive network

[mojo-chan]

Why is it so poor compared to what others are able to offer?

[Richw1982]

What others offer faster, and as already said the ones that are faster generally don't have TV as this takes up frequency's and would cost millions to upgrade for only a small amount of people that would use it

[mojo-chan]

Even in the UK you can get 1000/1000 fibre. The TV thing makes no sense, it's broadcast the same to every household compared to individual internet bandwidth.

[Roger_Gooner]

Upstream speeds are absolutely fine for the vast majority of people. They will increase after DOCSIS 3.1 is rollout out throughout the UK (which provides the platform for further network improvements).

[Richw1982]

Virgin TV doesn't use dish or aerial, It goes down the cable network.  On docsis 3 there are 24 downstream frequencies and average 600mb and ranges between 5.1000MHz.  Docsis 3.1 uses 32 downstream channels to provide at present 1000/50 and ranges between 5-1218MHz including the OFDM block.  If TV wasn't using some of the other frequencies it would free up more space for more bonded channels and increase speeds.  But this is being worked on.  But why spend the money for such a small market

[mojo-chan]

What I'm asking is why VM is so bad compared to other fibre providers. Why stick with DOCSIS if it's so limited?

Clearly whatever other companies are installing it is capable of a lot more than DOCSIS.

Surely VM will have to do something about it. Even in the UK 1000/1000 is available where you can get non-BT fibre. If VM doesn't upgrade to some better tech they will be left behind, or are they just relying on most people having no choice?

[nodrogd]

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@mojo-chan wrote:

What I'm asking is why VM is so bad compared to other fibre providers. Why stick with DOCSIS if it's so limited?

Clearly whatever other companies are installing it is capable of a lot more than DOCSIS.

Surely VM will have to do something about it. Even in the UK 1000/1000 is available where you can get non-BT fibre. If VM doesn't upgrade to some better tech they will be left behind, or are they just relying on most people having no choice?

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Because they are a DOCSIS cable operator & are licenced by OFCOM as such. The country is split up into franchises which gives them exclusive use of their infrastructure in each area, plus a number of other perks. If the setup is not for you then move to a supplier that has. Some people don’t like VMs latency, some don’t like the smaller upload. Nobody is forcing you to stay with VM. The majority of us are satisfied. In my neck of the woods there is a company putting fibre distribution at the top of the poles now & will be offering 250Mb & 1Gig FFTH packages. Doesn’t bother me at all. I pay for 350 down & 35 up & mine regularly exceeds that. I have a VoIP phone, but no problems with latency.

HFC is going to be around for some time. 1st & 2nd stage re-segmentation has taken place in most areas, with more to come. But the last leg to the modem will still be coax.