Different types of Fibre technologies

[mda99das]

There are so many companies offering fibre broadband, I just wanted to know which of these are true fibre and which are a hybrid.

Am I right in thinking true fibre will have an optical node termination box?

BT offer this with FTTP. 

Does Virgin offer true FTTP for new installs, or are they using DOCIS 3.1

There are other companies like cityfibre and community fibre, do they piggyback onto the openreach network, or do they have their own network like Virgin.

[Client62]

Google these questions, the are dozens of in depth documents covering these topics.

[nodrogd]

At present all VM fibre installs (excluding some trials) are RFoG with an ONU on the front wall of the property converting Fibre to Coax. 95% of their network is still HFC.

VM are trialling G-PON services in a few areas & eventually this will be the delivery method to all customers by 2028.

Some of the new fibre companies are putting their own fibres down BT Openreach ducts, so are a separate network but not separate ducts. Usually this is one company in an area. With us here it's Hey! Broadband.

It also seems that VM are taking more than a passing interest in CityFibre:

https://www.datacenterdynamics.com/en/news/virgin-media-o2-eyes-up-cityfibre-takeover-bid/ 

[mda99das]

That's very interesting, now that VM have US owners, £3Bn isn't a lot. There is a lot of money sloshing around Wall Street. 

[Roger_Gooner]

There is no such thing as "true FTTP" as FTTP is just fibre to the premises. What you have is a number of architectures like GPON and RFoG (used by BT and VM respectively) for the delivery of data, video and voice services over the fibre. An ONT at the customer's premise is always required.

Openreach is looking into the migration to 25G PON or XGS-PON, VM uses DOCSIS for both the HFC and RFoG networks but is migrating the entire  networks from DOCSIS to XGS-PON.

[unisoft]

---

@Roger_Gooner wrote:

There is no such thing as "true FTTP" as FTTP is just fibre to the premises. What you have is a number of architectures like GPON and RFoG (used by BT and VM respectively) for the delivery of data, video and voice services over the fibre. An ONT at the customer's premise is always required.

Openreach is looking into the migration to 25G PON or XGS-PON, VM uses DOCSIS for both the HFC and RFoG networks but is migrating the entire  networks from DOCSIS to XGS-PON.

---

BT/Openreach are going to go XGS-PON at some point as an upgrade to existing GPON. 25G PON and other tech is trial stuff to test it out, no near future roll out for this and likely to be aggregation nodes where its split to further CBTs.

[Martyn]

I'm on the Virgin trials (when they decide to install it that is, was meant to be today, but nope) I'm sure it'll come with a new hub, (5X) no ONT, I assume its built into the hub itself.

[Yorkist]

Keep us posted Martyn.