Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

Yes the very same Bill. Reasons for my statements are, I have friend who was an SDH planner/manager for BT. He was privvy to meetings between NTL and BT about 21C. "We" are a BT partner in the 21c program, thats why I "believe" BT own/payed for it, plenty of their circuits running over it!!

---------- Post added at 09:32 ---------- Previous post was at 09:30 ----------

I was talking the other day and was led to believe there are two schools of thought, each has their own "Big Boy"
supporting it. The director that came from cable in the states whats HFC, the one that didn't whants Telco

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

So which town was your long career history in then? I am not aware of one town which has all those employers in one place - so how did you manage to commute between them all whilst being educated at, presumably, one single education location?

Whilst I applaud your loyalty to current employer I can see no reason for your post: your facts may be mostly accurate but you are missing a few vital points about your lord and masters - their customer service is diabolical, their management structure is a disgrace, their TV platform (despite years' of promises) has never performed according to specification, ditto the phones, ditto the call-centre 'integration'.

In fact the only thing that (as an ex-customer) I can say that ntl has going for it is the ISP, which (as you say) has the capability to vastly outperform DSL. Only...it's not is it?

But don't let me curb your enthusiasm for your employer - I'm happy that you're happy there - but please don't spout of such biased garb about them to people who actually have a lot more real-world experience of the companies you mention (as customers) than you give us credit for.

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

Fair enough, but then please extend the same courtesy - not everyones experience of ntl has been as bad as yours - fact. :rolleyes:

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

I thought Metnet & 21c are 2 entirely different things?
As for choosing HFC over Telco they are both obsolete technologies. Telco is moving towards IP base technologies.

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

Your comparing different OSI levels there. HFC and Telco are both at OSI model Layer 1(and some Layer 2), IP exists at Layer 3 and does not care what topology it''s running on at the lower layer.

BTW, love the Avatar!

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

Yes, you are right of course, I'm a bit rusty on the OSI model. But even as transport layers, HFC & the Telco PCM/SDH networks are obsolete. :)

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

It is capable of delivering in certain areas, I know thats not much help to you, but i always get 10Meg 24/7 here in Herts.

So it does exactly what it says on the tin.

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

Ok here is what I know and think.

BT and all ADSL providers.
Currently ADSL is over copper on the local loop and whilst the figure for those who can get a 8mbit synch is below half I dont think it is as low as7%, 21cn network has recently been leaked to include fibre to the cabinet rollout meaning the % that can get high speed synchs will jump right up and of course includes adsl2+ rollout, the rollout is staggered between 2008 and 2011 depending on where you live and their is a checker for the voice side of upgrades here. http://switchedonuk.org/home/when/ Their is no checker for the broadband side yet.

Ntl.

Ntl for a while have had a big technological advatange over BT allowing them to offer triple play services as well as superior broadband services but have failed to capitilise on it and make the profits needed for expansion, without expansion ntl have a continously shrinking footprint, they also have the disadvantage that their services arent universal across their userbase so different billing systems and different services digital/analogue. The analogue services are typing up a lot of bandwidth and reducing the bandwidth to other services. In short they have a strangled potential with the low coverage and weak technology in some areas.

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

the reason for aquiring virgin may not have been beacuse they were itching to provide their customers with an extra service, or the board may not have thought that the mobile market was a fantastic niche market that could be expanded into to make a little bit more money for the sharholders.

ever thought that the virgin brand is one of the most recognisable brands in the UK with an excellent reputation? that alone is probably worth what they paid for it without the extra benefits of being able to offer quad play?

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

This page gives you a good idea of the prospective progress.

http://www.btplc.com/21CN/Theroadto2.../UKrollout.htm


BTW the "BT have to spend £7bn" to upgrade their network is a red herring. 21CN is costing £10bn :)

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

According to ntl's website:-

"*Price excludes £11.00 phone line rental which you must take with your TV Pack"

...although they do give you a free digital TV package with a phone line rental.


.

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

Just to set the record straight ntl are working in partnership with AOL to provide a broadband service for the AOL customers and have been for a few years. In light of the recent sale to Car Phone Warehouse how long this will continue is anyones guess but for the time being it's business as usual.....

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

So basically NTL will be a wolf in sheeps clothing :tu:

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

I made a couple of calls today to see what I could find out, it seems the HFC plan is the way they are going to go because of the cost imlications and the fact that they have a large customer base on that technology allready.

I was interested to hear again that there appears to be money to spend on the core national network but nothing at regional level even for maintenance, they are saying the regional people will be having further budget cuts. It certainly sounds like figures are being massaged and what little they can afford is being spent on the national network. I cannot see any investors putting money in and take a risk on ntl/TW, but I can see the either selling off the whole thing or perhaps offloading the poorly maintained cash starved regional networks to some unsuspecting company with less commercial/technical intelligence than ntl. (If such a company exiscts)

Anyway, it looks like they are committing to HFC because of the cost implications, the current plan is to use 4 off 8MHz 256 QAM Docsis downstreams per laser from a Dual Docsis MC28, and 4 off 1.6MHz 16 QAM upstreams.

The injection and combining sounds like a nightmare, apparently they haven't yet sorted out how the modem aquires the correct downstream, and how they are going to technically implement the proposal. The proposal has apparently been put forward by one of my favourite 'good old red neck college boy' (That may give you a clue) Unfortunately this guy is one of the survivors, in the position because his other job became redundant. (Another clue is none of the trials he was involved with running were either successful or implemented)

I had a laugh because apparently the highly qualified degree level doctor types are still unable to know how to measure the power in a digital channel, and one of the highly qualified fools seems to think 4 digital channels running 10dB down on the analogue launch levels is comparable to one analogue channel. They have managed to get closer to the answer by visiting one of the TW labs, unfortunately the characteristics of both the amplitude modulated analogue TV signal and the QAM signal means they cannot be reliably measure with a power meter without a peak reading sensor as a peak signal averaged over x number of measurement points to gain an average peak reading.

Clue ntl university boys with fancy degrees.... The 'A' in QAM stands for Amplitide, and the 'M' stands for Modulation. (No I dont know all the answers Mr 'B' but I dont ever claim to be clever)

There is of course concern from people who do have some practical experience and in depth knowledge of the HFC network, like are they going to re-align the return path to cope with all these extra signals that are now 16QAM instead of QPSK, or perhaps they are just going to let the lasers clip and run into distortion? If they are going to re-align is there enough headroom for the increased demand on signal to nopise required by 16QAM over the existing QPSK?

Also what about the 256QAM downstream signal to noise, this will require extra headroom to maintain the signal to noise performance, or perhaps you are saying the levels will be running higher than a 10dB delta on the analogues, and thats why the figure of 4 QAM256's per Analogue crept in.

I wonder what the cost will be for this lot, it sounds like a practical nightmare in many hubsites. I wonder if they have really thought about all the cabling and combining for the forward and return path this will require.

Chatting today about the plans and some of the people involved made it sound very much like a Heath Robinson set-up, run by a guy with a reputation for dropping a project and setting someone else up to take the blame just as it all goes wrong.

call me cynical, go on I'm asking for it!

Re: A little inside information by an Employee.
 

Using the ARRIS' FlexPath 100Mb technology, mega quick broadband services "can be delivered over existing cable networks using readily available home networking devices"

Need conformation on it? http://www.hdtvuk.tv/2006/02/ntl_to_trial_10.html

ARRIS and ntl, last week, announced field trials of a 100 Megabits per second (Mb/s) ultra speed data service using the ARRIS FlexPath channel bonded solution incorporated in its Cadant C4 CMTS and Touchstone Wideband Modem. Following successful Lab trials, field trials are to commence in March. The announcement was closely followed by news that ntl and BitTorrent are to team up, to test a service that will legally let users buy movies and music video downloads. Getting back to the main news here about 100Mb speed trials. A press release states that, FlexPath uses the same bonding technique as that selected by CableLabs for its DOCSIS 3.0 standard.

(source:http://www.cableforum.co.uk/article/...d-speed-trials)


As for this 21C BT are planning on launching (which supposidly will offer 100MB/s, but i'll believe it when I see it, because there is no information on their page about it), are you aware is is basically going to be one big WAN, which is essentially a national network before you even think about the internet, because it will be connected at BT's end - this would make it very easy for BT to control the information we can get from the internet, and also allow them to monitor the information we do get - This reminds me of China, who do the exact same, and I for one sure wouldn't appreciate that, would you?

As for the sales pitch, I wasn't trying to sell the products, it's not money in my pocket, I am just getting tired of people phoning up, saying they can get a better deal here, and a better deal there, when I know for a fact they are special offers which run out, which NTL.Telewest can offer you as well - I do believe people in the past have had bad Customer Services experince, but this is an issue that will be resolved before we re-brand to Virgin, and as we have just recently implemented a Quality Control system, so now no-one can get away with giving "bad" Customer Care to the people who make the business run - Without customers, there is no business, and this is currently NTL.Telewest's main priority at the moment.