Virgin Media Community

[Roger_Gooner]

You cannot look at a few installations of VM's HFC network and extrapolate the whole network design. The legacy HFC network covers about 14.3m premises and the newer FTTP network about 1.2m. Furthermore VM announced a plan less than six weeks ago to upgrade its entire HFC network to full fibre by using existing ducts by 2028.

[Harvey_H]

If its still only fibre to the cabinet then they wont advertise it as FTTP, they'd say "fibre" but thats UK laws around advertising. If its coax up to your property then its what we call HFC, hybrid fibre coax. or most refer to it as FTTC as you pointed out.

1gig over coax though vs 1gig over fibre really shouldn't make a difference to 99.9% of residential users as long as you get the speeds you pay for.

That all said as long as the signal levels are all good with MER and BER in spec on the line you'll have no issues with HFC. With the same going for FTTP from any provider as long as the light levels are in spec with no noise issues or dirty fibre then you'll have no issues with it.

As a side note, some parts of the Virgin Media O2 network will replace HFC with FTTP I have been hearing around some numbers and dates, so if you really are wishing Virgin Media O2 offered FTTP in your area, it might come to your area after all.

[Harvey_H]

Also another side note if you lot don't know, by the end of this year, 1gig will be available everywhere that VMO2 is

[Gavdaddy]

One issue on speeds on the current fake VM FTTP is the level of asynchronousity imposed which is around 20:1. Is this a hardware constraint and will this change with a move to true FTTP. I see Openreach is still 10:1 on full fibre.

[jem101]

@Gavdaddyno, the issue regarding the upstream speed is due to the DOCSIS specifications and limitations - nothing whatsoever to do with the physical medium for the connection.

[Gavdaddy]

So the this can’t be fixed until they upgrade DOCSIS or not even then?

[Gavdaddy]

So this can’t be fixed until they upgrade DOCSIS or not even then?

[jem101]

Correct, and you might want to research how DOCSIS works and see why it really isn’t an easy ‘why can’t they just…’ issue!

John

[nodrogd]

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@Gavdaddy wrote:

So this can’t be fixed until they upgrade DOCSIS or not even then?

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Virgin's current linear broadcast TV service occupies the space required for any further upgrade to the upstream capability. They would either have to:

1) Scrap the current TV system altogether & go all "OnDemand"

2) Move to a modified frequency allocation, which would involve upgrading all the RF kit on the network & in customers homes.

There is talk of the legacy HFC network being retrofitted to all RFoG by 2028, & while this will not resolve the issue, it may make option 2 more viable.

[Gavdaddy]

I would vote for option 1 as they are penalizing broadband users. 
From what you say if they even consider option 2 we should abandon them in favour of Openreach who do not have this issue at least until 2028?