Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

and probally willbe for the next 25 years unless someone buys them out and pays off the debt and allow virign to start ot make profits which they would if they never had the debt (i know they make profits now but small comapred to wha they make if they never had debts~)

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Aye, that's what you get for becoming a Bangorian! ;)

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Contractors here again over the last few days pulling 20+year old cables from the ducts from the cabs to the houses.

Looks like we might have some good news in the new year (fingers crossed!)

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

That's it, your on my hit list.

You can call me anything you want, but a Bangorian:mad:

:D

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

There are a number of steps of reducing costs.

Sharing ducts with BT,Electricity companies or even sewers and underground waterways.
Cabling areas without Telephone infrustructures
Overhead Cabling

Another way is to get assistance from local authorities, as the digital switchover is coming,local authorities want people to have access to a decent range of resources, therefore it could work out like a part privatised scheme.

Other ways is to charge approximately £100 per customer per new installation, but this is not very attractive, otherways is making people sign up for contracts lasting a lot longer than 12,18 or 24 months, why not 36 or 72 months, that way churning is low and even when customers are halfway through there contracts, there is always new customers joining,so there is always money coming in.

There is an independent Cable company called Smallworld Media which operates in the North West of England and parts of Scotland and it covers approximately 48,000 potential homes, it does not currently offer On Demand but does offer cheaper Cable Broadband than Virgin Media, maybe its worth Virgin Media acquiring that to cover that big black spot.

Other areas to look at are:

City of London

Barbican (Sandwiched in between Islington and City of London)

City of Westminster (Particularly the North of the Borough and around Mayfair and Pimlico.

Aberdeen

Inverness????

Clacton-On-Sea/Harwich

Margate???

South West of England

Kingston-upon-Hull???

Then there are Digital blackspots in cities such as:

Southampton
Slough
Leicester
Bolton
Some parts of Hammersmith&Fulham

I have not included Westminster and Milton Keynes because they are completely Analogue.

It is possible for Westminster and Milton Keynes to be upgraded as back in 1993, BT sold all of its cable operations except Westminster and Milton Keynes. Barbican I think became Telewest/Cable London. BT intended on keeping those to areas to trial out new products and services such as Video on Demand,HD and other Digital TV services. Because a small part of Westminster wasn't cabled and because they then bought shares in BskyB, they had to get rid of it and as usual NTL took over it in 2000, then from 2002,everything came to a standstill and channels started disappearing bit by bit, There is a need for these two franchises but is proving very expensive for Virgin Media to upgrade, BT is the main cause and Westminster City Council is another. BT charges heavily for the use of the cable network. NTL rolled out broadband to some parts of Westminster in 2003, whatever has become of this, I'm not sure.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

ofcom would support hull to get competition maybe help finscne it from 50p tax

aberdeen needs completely relasud but ducts are there but virgin need to be debt free before expanding like tast or someonbe help fiujnance it

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Add Lowestoft to that list. We've not got it despite Gorleston 6 miles up the road having it. Disgraceful that nothing's been done. VM could get loads of customers with the ducting in the right places as the town sprawls over several miles and many places are too far from the exchange to get half-decent speeds.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

It's a shame selected spots were missed in towns that are otherwise covered rather heavily. I have been informed I have fibre running down the main road right near me but it's a link to two cable networks, one serving the main town and the other 5 minutes up the road leaving us out in the middle. Whether we will ever see cable remains to be seen, probably not.

But in any event, it would make more sense to finish off streets that were missed in those areas rather than starting a fresh somewhere else.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Incidently, I would pay £100 for installation if I had the chance to get rid of ADSL.

I know a few that would pay this fee. Although some people who are non the wiser probably wouldn't find this attractive.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Surely as BT roll out FTTC the question of VM not being present goes away.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

anybody know if east london specifically e1 is being upgraded to digital please let me know if anybody knows anything

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Hi
Does anybody have any idea if Virgin are expanding around the Burton on Trent or Uttoxeter area? I saw what I thought was a Virgin Media works sign at the side of the road (B5017) at the weekend but when I looked into it the location appeared to be in the middle of a black spot so either I'd had too much to drink or Virgin are filling in a huge black spot between Leicester, Derby, Stafford and Lichfield. This is where I saw the sign http://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&ll=52.829943,-1.755795&spn=0.018902,0.037208&z=15

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

I've not read the whole of this thread, but I should point out that cabling a whole town will be determined by how close the town is to the fiber main frame, for example there is fibre running from Ipswich to Cambridge, running past Bury St Edmunds, this means that Bury St E, could be easily cabled, Unfortunately Clacton is about 20 miles from the fiber network (Colchester being the closest) so would probably not be deemed profitable.

These are factors that determine what towns get cabled. They have also used the canal network as a cheap way of expanding the fiber network.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Fibre isn't the issue, there's fibre to most large'ish towns. If VM don't have it themselves they can lease it from other operators.

The real cost is the dig to the door.

There are various trials by various companies/ consortiums to provide fast broadband across areas that don't currently have it.

Virgin and Vtesse are undertaking a project in Cornwall

http://www.thisiscornwall.co.uk/corn...l/article.html

Kingston and Thales are undertaing a project in South Yorkshire

http://www.thalesgroup.com/Press_Rel...l_Launch_SYDR/

And GEO are undertaking a project in North Wales under the guise of FibreSpeed

http://www.fibrespeed.co.uk/en/

Although I think fibre speed is business proposition only at the moment.

In regards to Hull as per the post above, they are served by Kingston and have their own DTV and broadband offerring, as is other parts of Lincolnshire.

Also I don't see any compelling reason for VM to buy Smallworld.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

British Waterways may have some input as to the 'cheap' way of expanding the fibre network using their canal network.

Would make more sense to lease the fibre that's already there, originally owned by Ipsaris who made the deal with British Waterways, then Easynet, now BSkyB.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

well just had vm install my 10 meg what times do the speeds norm slow down at as @ 5pm i was downloading at over 1 meg and now its downloading at 300k

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

And before Ipsaris it called "Fibreway" - back in the good old days when there were about dozen or so other national carriers.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

You might have hit the throttle threshold (try saying that!).

In any case, 17:00 is the watershed hour when performance usually dives anyway.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Ah yes forgot about them. I obviously wasn't paying attention for the 'history of the network' bit of my initiation those years ago ;)

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

The question is though, will the fibre/cabinet setup being laid by BT be similar in setup to VM's. Can they just use it or will the way the services are delivered have to be altered in some way?

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

While it is possible that Virgin can use BT's infrastructure in much the same way as other ISPs (and they do on ADSL now), they will not be able to use the current Cable TV system with it. They may be able to use the next generation STBs that use the Tivo software.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

The point I was making is that when FTTC comes to the BT cabinet speeds higher than the current "up to" 24 Mbps will be available to copper fed users beyond the cabinet. By bonding two telephone lines into an ADSL2+ router 40 Mbps download and 5 Mbps upload is available. There will be little contention en route to the cabinet because each copper line is distinct. This is particularly where VM & BT part company, so to speak.

That must frighten VM.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Hmmm not yet I imagine. 40GBP or so per Mbps/month is the cost of the WBC variant of the backhaul between BT Wholesale and ISPs. Might be no contention between line and cabinet and cabinet to exchange but it'll kick in like a mule in between BT Wholesale and the ISPs at those prices. 40GBP / Mbps / month you're talking a contention ratio of 40:1 costing nearly 40GBP/month just on BT Wholesale interconnect.

It should be noted this is just the cost of the bandwidth, it ignores to the costs to operators of getting the stuff from the various national interconnects to their network, the costs from their network to the Internet, and the fixed costs of the interconnect.

There is of course the option to connect to the exchanges directly in a similar manner to existing LLU and use the same backhauls however as yet no LLU operator has made any commitment or shown any significant interest in the service in no small part because it makes part of their investments obsolete.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

BT have just announced a "unlimited" offering using FTTC (upto 40Mb down and 10Mb up) for £25 a month.

Some competition for the 50Mb Virgin offering?

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

I'm going to reserve judgement on how competative it is until I know the Fair usage policy attached to that service which they say will be released on 25th Jan.

EDIT: They've already refer to it in the existing FUP terms. It seems it has the same restrictions as Total Broadband Option 3

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Ah I though this was that thread.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Anyway going back to the original topic....

Anyone got contacts in VM who can tell me when the upgrades in LE3 (Leicester) are to be completed?

I PM'd a couple of old contacts, but got no reply.

Not much help from VM themselves, work has been done on our road, Ive actually had the upgrade works confirmed by the contractors at the cabs. But the checker says that we can only get ADSL (when we have a cable box on the house!)

Cheers

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

London areas are to be complete by july 2010 i will see if i can find out leicester think it is march/april

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Thanks, that will be appreciated!

It will be nice to know its actually happening, I can believe that there isnt the opportunity to register interest on the VM site and be emailed once its available!

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Going on the other thread by spiderplanet it will be in feburary

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Can you link to this thread?

I tried to search for the user but nothing?

Cheers

EDIT:

Just found it, it's concerning the analogue switch off, Feb 1st is mentioned.

Not sure how many users here still use it?

Saw loads of cables between the cabs and houses being pulled a few weeks ago, literally filling the back of a large van, so I suspect not many users still on analogue.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Ive just called the 0800 number given by Broadbandings in the analogue thread and it goes to the contractors who do the overbuild. They tell me that they have finished in Leicester and are now in London. Only just finished tho last week, so once Virgin check it out shoud be available.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

SHould be avaiable from next week

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

UPDATE: JUST RANG 0800 052 8164 and they have said all areas that are ex-analogue in leicester can get digital cable services!, however the nice lady I spoke to cannot see what cabinet I am connected to but says I should 100% be able to get digital services...However in the leicester store and Vm sales they both say I cant. I dont know what to do now. Been on the phone all night they said they might send a 'spotter' to check?

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Same here, we just need to wait....

I was told last year that the last round of upgrades was to be done before April.

Analogue is due to be discontinued before April, I assume the two are connected!

Weird thing is that using my postcode no address can get digital, except 2 houses halfway up that can get 20Mb. Strange!

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Yeah after a long night on the phone...and being passed around dept to dept they all said I can only get national services lol.

Oh well like you said might as well wait, I am just so eager to know if my street was done or not...as I did not see any contractors on my road and somehow have a feeling that my street was 'missed'.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Contractors have finished, they are now in London according to the person I spoke with on the 0800 number, they are the contractors.

Because we have no service (and not many around do) they cant check the actual cabs on their database. She assured me all the cabs were done, its just upto Virgin to check them an update the databases.

My sister who is on [Removed] Road got a letter from Virgin addressed to the occupier just after christmas advertising the upgrade. Im sure we will hear from them one way or another!!

Thing is, my ADSL has never been so stable!

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

My adsl has never been so UNSTABLE, used to get 4.5mb which I was happy within however over the past few months i'm lucky even to see 3.3mb...whats even worse is there are 4 other users in the house sharing this connection.

I guess we just have to wait and see, I would sign up for VM as soon as its available would probably go for the 20mb or 50mb package and ditch my full sky pack :dozey:

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

My ADSL was like that too, my ISP (AAISP) have a very big stick that they use on BT to get faults like mine fixed. The crappy phone lines here dont help though, I see BT are upgrading spinney hill exchange to FTTC, great for us!

When you do switch make sure you call Sky first to cancel, tell the how cheap VM is and that their broadband is better. When they make you an offer decline it then call Virgin and explain the offer, there is a special "sky switchers" package, so you get the V+ box free and some other discounts I think.

Also If you know another Virgin user you can both get a £30 credit.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Imagine if BT upgraded us first to FTTC :shocked: as this part of Leicester must have the worst broadband for an Urban Area. Thanks for the advice on changing I think I'll go through quidco though when the offer 160 pounds cash back :D

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Last time I looked it was only £65!

edit... still is!

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

well it was 160 at one point, anyway I just used the VM checker and its showing that the next few houses away from me can get VM cable, which is good news at least i know some of my road can get cable services. It shows 71-79 can get the service, I live very close. So there is still hope...Might give VM another call tomorrow.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

I have a feeling I know which cab i am connected to..so i checked out all the houses next to this cab and they all can get cable services, its looking good :) fingers crossed !

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

jus thought I would do a quick update, checked out all the roads next to me and all can get up to 50mb cable services..even the house on the corner that i can see from my window can get 50mb BB :(. VM contractors will contact me on Monday to explain why about 12 houses including myne are showing as not being connected to the cable network. Even though the work has been done.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Some Analogue only areas can offer broadband, broadband and TV are two different products and i'm sure Broadband needs to be rolled out before the Digital TV service is launched as Virgin TV is very dependent on the use of Broadband to run on-demand services and interactive features.

Apart from that, Analogue TV is practically no more, it has been discontinued in most areas and the only channels you get in the discontinued areas are BBC1,BBC2,ITV1,Channel 4 and Five.

The areas which still offer Analogue TV, you can get:

BBC1
BBC2
BBC News 24
BBC Parliament
ITV1
ITV2
Channel 4
4 Music
Viva(TMF)
E4
Bravo
Living
Challenge TV (Some areas only)
Channel 7 (Humber area only)
National Geographic
Hallmark
Cartoon Network
History Channel (broadcasts between 4pm and 8pm)
Eurosport
Movies 24
Motors TV????
Television X/Adult Channel (premium)

The charge for this is about £4 per month

I think Sky1 and Sky News are available in Milton Keynes and Westminster as well.

Discovery,CNN,MTV1.Comedy Central and sky sports disappeared in 2009

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

^^ thanks for the info...after having a good look at the VM packages, I think I'll just take the BB with them and stick with sky HD, its just the picture quality and EPG is so much better!

p.s. I'm pretty sure I can get all the services except the 50mb bb..can only get 20mb apparently when I put in the details for the house next door.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

I think this is a database error. There are 2 houses on my road that can get 20Mb but everyone else cant get anything. We are all on the same cab!

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

^^ agreeded
I think we are both in the same boat...i.e..we can both get full virgin media services (as the area has been fully upgraded to digita) but their system is saying we cant. I've filled in a spotter form ..so i'll update on Monday once the Contractors and VM have called me.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

okay as I said I would update here is what happened today...

Contacted VM Sales who first said only Cable Tv was available then changed their mind completely and said only national services are available.

Contacted Overbuild Team who are still looking in to this, they again confirmed the whole road has been done, and its strange why its showing 6 houses cant get the services.

Contacted Virgin Media Store Leicester - who say the road has not been done and also then said the road never had cable? when I am an ex-analogue customer.

Filled in a spotter form so just have to wait and see.
gosh this is such a mess...but If i don't keep contacting them nothing will be done. I'm glad the sales numbers are 0800.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Looks like they need to get someone out to check these problems.

I am begining to give up, we are trying to give money to Virgin, but eventhough they have spent the money upgrading they wont update their database!

There are at least 100 potential customers on Glenfield Road who are being completely ignored!

Dosen't exactly inspire confidence!!!

Anyone on here have some contacts in VM who can prod the right people?

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Great News!! got a call from a 'spotter' who confirmed I can get all CABLE services :D, he is coming around my house today to take down some details. I shall keep you updated, I am very happy that he has confirmed I can get all CABLE services.

However I do already feel let down by VM, I have literally had to beg for them to take me as a customer.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Once the spotter confirms your address as serviceable they usually update the postcode checker for any future enquiries.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

^^ yeah I asked about ordering it online, he said he had to come around and find out the services I wanted, fill in paper work. Then it will be updated online

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

All looking good though... keep us updated.. you've waited long enough :)

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

^^ lol i've been waiting nearly 5 years, I was a previous analogue customer.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Thats right, it was previously an analogue only area wasn't it... good time to get the services as things have come along way in all that time!

What services are you going for? XL everything? :D

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

LOL well I'm thinking of sticking with Sky HD. My Plan is to order L Broadband and XL telephone and see how this goes...If the Broadband is good which it should be ( as I am using VM L right now at my other property in bham and its perfect! the best broadband I have ever used) then I shall be looking to upgrade to 20mb a bit later on :)

at the min in Leicester, there are 4 of us sharing 3.5mb :( so it can be really slow at times (youtube/ iplayer / spotify). Also I have to say I am not a fan of adsl, it seems every time the phone rings, I get disconnected. The thing with ADSL is as its an intermittent fault I could call Bt out but I do not want to be faced with the huge charge. So moving to VM is really good news :).

UPDATE****
ordered L Broadband and XL telephone. 5 Weeks til its installed.

Philce if you want the service as well I rekon just fill in the spotter form and some-one will get in touch, best of luck

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Excellent :)

Might be worth getting TV M just for the VOD as it's free with VM telephone.. easy to upgrade at a later date I suppose. :)

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

^^ yeah I shall see how the broadband is first :)
The Vm agent said...'We might have to pull some new cables to your house, we increased the power in the cab however we pulled out the wires to your house"
not sure what he meant by this but he then said something along the line of ...'we may have to lay a new cable from the road to the brown cable box outside' :S
Anyway the contracts all signed and it quite clearly states Cable Broadband L package.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

What the hell is happening at Virgin? They seem to be really getting their house in order this year. Constantly announcing new hd, the tivo deal and now network expansion!!

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

I filled in a spotter form 2 weeks ago, still nothing!

I saw the crews pulling the cables out of the ducts a few weeks ago, I assume that they are full with 20 year old cables, not upto scratch for digital?

5 Weeks for the install??? They must be getting loads of new signups thanks to the upgrades, I hyst hope the network can cope!

Did you get a contact for the spotter? Maybe PM me?
Cheers

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Filled in another form last night, spotter called me today and confirmed all is go.
Should be installed 1st week in March!

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

^^ thats great news.
I am however still having problems...the spotter is finding it difficult to submit the order, according to the system its still showing the property does not have cable...when i've had analogue cable for years....I Shall keep you updated.
I assume if I do not get cable, the contract will be void? as it quite cleary states i've agreeded to Cable broadband?

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Yeah, if they can't install then you have no contract... hope it gets sorted though :)

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Yes - a contract is void if not executed.

Back in January 2009, VM's quality director publicly stated that VM's processes were "fundamentally broken". He was going to tackle this with the whiz-bang Six-Sigma quality regime.

I presume he's still got his job - because clearly at least some VM's processes remain "fundamentally broken" and with regard to their customer services (offshore call centre) - totally broken.

Six-Stigma more likely.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Hmm, thats ominous!

Does the spotters name begin with SI? If so its the same chap that saw me yesterday. I will probably end up in the same boat!

Maybe I should just put the money in a jiffy bag and post it to them?

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

^^ no this spotters name begins with P... I have just checked the VM website and its now been updated and is showing my house can get digital services...still waiting for a reply from the spotter to find out whats going on...

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Have you been quoted the same prices as the website?

Ive been quoted £47.49 per month for L Broadband XL TV and M phone, the website quotes £45?

Prices increases are £1.50 for XL tv and 99p on the phone but these arent until April 1st.

Will the prices I have been quoted go up?

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

From the 1st Feb you have to be quoted the higher price - as it's a possibility you won't have the first payment taken until April

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Sick Stigma ;)

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

UPDATE---
my installation took place yesterday, VM sent two engineers to the property who completed the job sucessfully :). They had to lay a new cable to my house as the previous one was damaged.
I am now a happy VM Customer in Leicester. Cable broadband is sooo superior to ADSL, no more DLM, no more lost connections due to noise. My first speedtest gave me a result of 9.98 mb :)
whereas my ADSL gives
https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2010/02/6.png .
Due to having such a long line on Sky BB


I also got the new D link router.
I will post more details on Friday night.

Thank you to everyone on this forum...its taken more than 5 years but I am finally a digital cable customer :)

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Roll on next Friday, my install is booked!

Did they guys turn up ontime? Ive seen loads of horror stories of engineers not arriving etc!! Ive taken time off work to get this done.

It's a cheek that BT charge to disconnect the crappy ADSL they provide!

You watch Montfort Exchange named in the next raft of FTTC upgrades!!

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Well When I had VM at my place in Bham they came at 5:55pm (slot is 1-6).
In Leicester the slot was 1-6 but they rang me at 10am saying they wanted to come..which was fair enough I just wanted the job done.
Only problem I had was...I wanted the BT Master socket to be left alone so my ADSL would still function..however they ripped all my telephone wiring apart and put new sockets in upstairs and downstairs...So the only problem I have now is if I want to switch back to BT i'll need an engineer to come round :(.
Not to sure about the adsl charge, i'm with SKY LLU, So I just rang them yesterday and asked them to cancel my broadband. My Bt Line is already in the process of being canceled.

I hope montfort does not get FTTC for a long time now lol...after making the change to VM, I am still pretty sure that a lot of the area does not know they can get VM cable services as no leaflets have been posted. I only found out due to this site :).

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

When i was installed last month he came to mine at 815:)

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

okay just had a good look at the install...They had to lay a new cable from the CAB to the property...and apparently I'm the only one connected on that cab. The guy was saying something like ' all the wires have been cut in the cab so everyone needs re-wiring in the street, your the only one who has cable on this cab' and also 'cus i'm in a good mood i'll lay a new cable normally Vm would charge you £300+ for this'

just done a speedtest at peak time and its 9.85 mb :)

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Glad you got it sorted desi112 :)

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

If they try to charge me £300 they can pack up and go home!

So if I am in a house that has never had cable will they try to charge? I think not!

Most of the cables round here must be nearly 20 years old! Thats probably why it has all been cut off in the cabs.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

I seriously doubt they would charge that TBH.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Yes, sounds like an installer trying to make himself sound important!

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

There were engineers around a couple of weeks ago, I have a cabinet directly outside my house and I received a letter from Virgin saying I could now receive digital services, but their online checker & sales team say otherwise.

Anyone have any advice as to what to do next?

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Where do you live?

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Slough

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Not all areas on London West upgrade have been released yet - the letter may have been sent too early

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Would there be any way to get an idea of when it will be available if that's the case?

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

As far as I'm aware it's only Uxbridge that's been released so far. As soon as I see Slough being mentioned I'll post it

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

don't suppose anyone would know if Virgin are planning on finishing the LN6 8 area?

Most of it is done, but there's literally hundreds of new houses gone up over the last couple of years so plenty of new customers for them

Perhaps they don't realise?

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

More talk of Cable network expansion as Virgin Media completes refinancing scheme........

"According to the Financial Times, Virgin Media will now look to expand its cable network beyond the current level of 12.5m UK homes. The firm's new financial freedom will also enable it to cover the cost of reaching more un-cabled areas"

http://www.digitalspy.co.uk/digitalt...ng-scheme.html

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

1.2% looks a very impressive churn figure. I wonder what they did to achieve that. :)

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

The re-financing report is very good news indeed. VM should not be afraid of going pole-strung in new areas (although new build areas may have planning restrictions on poles) and they can have fibre pass the home if not go into the home. They can certainly go out to villages on a pole-strung strategy.

So now I expect all these problems that are "with the planning team" to be cash-flow unlocked!

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

also maybe they can provide proper capacity now to heavy areas.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Or they could continue to choose not to given it's just going to get used up and the exercise repeated again as it was in your case :)

Does happen, don't be under any allusion that they aim to make the network congestion free. Line cards and additional fibres are expensive things to provision and areas where capacity just keeps getting eaten despite being well within planning guidelines in terms of bandwidth per home connected will be left.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

it only gets eaten up when not enough is added. (drip feeding)

it also may help if they balance users a bit better, I see another port on my UBR has less congestion at 8pm on a saturday then mine does at 4am.

that is undefendable in my opinion just blatant excessive overselling. If you sell a unlimited product as an isp you have to be prepared to deal with some users using it as such.

making congestion free 24/7 you very well know is not what I am asking. Having it uncongested outside of peak hours is a reasonable expectation.

Also I would expect there to be similiar levels of quality across the entire customer base, as it stands you can have 2 customers paying the same wad of cash, one gets 0.5mbit and the other gets 20mbit. Something not right there.

VM are simply ringfencing problem areas off with what you describe.

I will repeat what I said before isp's like BE and easynet who have their own heavy users dont have customers with 50+ ms jitter downloading at dialup speeds due to congestion, they properly provision capacity, even if it means they make a operational loss. Cant fault them for that.

125kbit per customer allocated? on their guidelines? too low in 2010.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Not really, easily enough for most, the vast majority of service groups / nodes run just fine at this level of provision. Talk Talk and BT are running sub-30kbps. Talk Talk for example have over 4 million customers and use at peak about 100Gbit/s of bandwidth - 25kbps average per customer.

Be run at a loss in some cases due purely to having the largest telco in the world as a sugar daddy, prior to this they had congestion in various places on their network and are starting to show congestion again. Thanks to lighter O2 users the Be network is ok for a while, prior to this it was losing a ton of cash and had bandwidth problems. I can remember being on a group of nearly 30 exchanges that were all congested due to there not being enough bandwidth on the Be transport / core network.

Along with that oversupplying LLU backhaul is, in shorter term, simply cheaper than a node split and line card.

ISPs are businesses, they don't provision capacity if they think they'll make a loss on it longer term. Cost differential for Sky between 100Mbit, 1Gbit and 10Gbit is relatively small so as a general rule they took 1Gbit.

Check the price lists on www.openreach.co.uk for more information on why the LLU price comparison isn't a valid one. Going from 100Mbit to 10Gbit isn't a 100-fold price increase ;)

If, of course, you have some genuine data that shows that 125kbps / customer peak bandwidth isn't enough for Joe Average I'd welcome the correction. I think it can be taken as read that in some areas such as your stereotypical student areas it won't be enough due to usage patterns, 5 people sharing each CPE though only paying once, etc, though in those areas Virgin, ntl and Telewest's experience along with that of many other cable companies has shown that it just doesn't matter how much bandwidth you throw at the area it gets used up.

I can think of a VM area that was, 4 or 5 years ago, split down to less than 70 modems. Remember the tiers of service available at this time, and this area was still congested. A 10k (at the time) line card and pulling fibre to the cabinet, with the next step a brand new node construction and pulling yet more fibre. Really worth it to give two sets of 35 customers their full bandwidth to cane on newsgroups, P2P, etc?

I can also think of a foreign cableco that served university halls of residence, not large blocks I might add but fairly small apartments. They went as far as installing fibre into the basements to try and mitigate congestion and in the end gave up. Whatever capacity they added got eaten. They had areas with 500, 800 'standard' customers happily motoring along on their 10Mbit service with no capacity issues at all, while for these apartment blocks 50 - 80 customers was too many.

I have no idea how many modems are in your area, would be interesting to know.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

nice work by virgin

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

your 2 examples.

BT shape certian protocols to insanely low speeds, so it only works when you throttle users down to sub 200kbit on things like p2p.

TalkTalk also traffic shape which skews their figures but are upgrading to increase their allocation per customer 10 fold and are rumoured to remove traffic management later this year for their LLU customers.

The cable isp's in america by 2012 plan to allocate 1mbit per end user.

But the key thing here is contention works far better when the shared pool of bandwidth is larger.

so 100 users sharing 100mbit is far better than 10 users sharing 10mbit even tho both are the same contention ratio. VM's shared pool of bandwidth is split into very tiny portions so requires a lower contention ratio to handle moderate to heavy use. Entanet are a good example of this, they were able to originally share their entire BT central bandwidth across their entire national customer base on ipstream, when they moved to 21CN WBC they then had fragmented their customer base into smaller groups, this led to problem areas (sound familiar?) some of their nodes which had a good balance of light residental users vs business customers were ok, others which were no longer able to be subsidised by the non residental customers struggled with much lower performance and more congestion. When bulldog tried using small shared backhaul on datastream (only 2x the end user's burst) it was a disaster.

I think we will disagree on this point here, my judgement on VM is how it deals with its worst off customers stuck in a ring fenced node with severe congestion whilst other isp's are able to have a fairly equal congestion applied across their entire customer base so they all suffer in tandem sharing the pain. The evil variance on adsl instead is line lengths.

When you pointed out to me in another thread VM are able to mitigate congestion by going down to around 15:1 contention this said it all for me, especially when NTL were quoting 20:1 in their TOS some years back. So at one point they used to contend around that level and clearly since then corners have been cut and overselling increased. I feel you making the mistake so many isps make in that you assuming as burst speeds go up usage will not go up with it, and assume that only a tiny proportion of users use their connection moderatly, I disagree on that, the users who only browse a few websites and read email are shrinking rapidly.

But congrats to VM, by ring fencing off problem areas they also in affect hiding the weakness of their infrastructure to more parts of their customer base so the problem appears less severe than it is. The fact they wont move users of my port to another highlights this, as it would then probably create congestion for other users who dont see it now.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Responses inline:

Talk Talk prided themselves on how little bandwidth they could have their customers consuming. The upgrade is due to them offering ADSL2+ and uncapped services and will still include traffic management.

I agree that both shape - which is why Virgin budget about 4 times as much bandwidth as those guys.

I would be interested in seeing some kind of evidence of this. I find it somewhat unlikely that they'll be allocating a card for each 76 customers, or in the case of DOCSIS 3 a 4 downstream port covering 152 customers.

I keep a fairly close eye on the US cable industry along with reading industry magazines and can't find anything suggesting that they intend on going that low - it would require total elimination of all intermediate coaxial amplifiers and for all cablecos to be using a fibre deep solution.

Statistical contention. Quite agree.

Entanet's WBC experiences aren't a case of statistical contention but of load balancing. Exchanges being statically mapped caused their issues, not access speed versus backhaul speed. 22Mbit out of 1Gbit is still nothing - look at LLU.

Bulldog's disaster was in no small part due to selling 2Mbps on 2Mbps. Not clever. There were plenty of VPs that were sized at 4Mbps with 2Mbps customers on them running just fine. There were also plenty that weren't, all down to how they are used.

All nodes / service groups are ring fenced. This is the nature of cable for better or worse.

We don't disagree on anything, I'm not saying VM or anyone else is right or wrong, just that this is what they do and these are the thought processes. As you may remember I've worked for a couple of ISPs here and there ;)

Not really - still a number of people browse and email, average usage is still less than 10GB/month from Joe Average even with You Tube and iPlayer.

Contention ratio did indeed increase, why do you think STM came about? ;)

ISPs don't make 'mistakes' with regards to the bandwidth consumption of their customers they have comprehensive statistics on how much bandwidth is being consumed on their networks. They also have budgets to stick to so have a balancing act between the two. In a perfect world every ISP could go cap in hand to a sugar daddy such as Telefonica and get a few million quid to upgrade their network but in the real world the money men still hold the purse strings that the engineers need to get at.

There is no target contention ratio that any ISP has now, beyond to go as high as possible without getting too many complaints. That is really how VM / ntl / TW have always operated regardless of any advertised contention ratios that they might happen to have on the way. If a node is outside planning guidelines it gets fixed, if a node is overutilised but is within guidelines it gets thought about a little more.

As I said it's not about ring fencing. To move customers to other ports, with the exception of the DOCSIS 3 network, requires physical work to split the node. Cable is a ring fenced network, segmented by physical fibres.

If the DOCSIS 3 network is in strife there's not really much of an incentive to make that network worse by pushing people across to it - I don't know what the situation is with that.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

The above quoted passage is the important take-home for many people coming to this forum for help.

Re: VM to begin expanding its cable network
 

Yep, pretty much. Per my previous comments I'm not judging in the above just telling it like it is. There's a good reason for the 'up to' in the product descriptions and zero guarantee of performance at all for a good reason. ;)