Roger_Gooner: There is a miscomception that VM's coaxial cabling is on its way out.
It lasts a long time, but it is the technology of analogue cable that is on its way out, not the individual lengths of cable. Nobody would now lay a new coax network, even VM use FTTP for their network extensions, and a "last eight inches" coax setup purely for compatibility with the existing systems. Radio frequency communication is prone to noise ingress, and the system is more costly to maintain than FTTP, and requires fractious CPE and related kit. I admire the fabulous ingenuity of DOCSIS, but like the internal combustion engine and the cathode ray tube, it has reached a technological peak as other technologies supplant it.
VM is upgrading the entire network to DOCSIS 3.1 which will provide the platform for highly competitive 10Gbps download speeds on the HFC network.
Sounds like a press release from VM. Other than a very, very few individuals, where's the use case for 10 Gbps now or in a decade? I can't stretch my 200 Mbps connection at the moment, and even if I had a house with four 8K TV's all concurrently streaming 8K content, that's still less than 500 Mbps of bandwidth needed. Even then, until humans evolve higher resolution eyeballs there's no domestic need for 8K. Data use is climbing rapidly, and has done for years, but to plan on the presumption that it will just keep climbing is to project a line forward, but that's largely on the back of rising resolution and streaming, and to extrapolate that growth as fact without any supporting justification is folly.
Have a look at the comparative BQM graphs in this forum comparing Zen/Openreach 1 Gbps connections to VM D 3.1 connections, and there's no comparison - what VM need is not to raise their speed game, but to improve their line quality (and customer service). But because they've played a winning hand on speed for twenty years, that's all management can see as the way forward. I'm sure VM will soon be pushing 2.5 Gbps, and then 5, then 10. But that won't help if there's competition in the 500 Mbps -1 Gbps.
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