Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I said it was impractical. It's a penis enlarger on the part of the telco.

Your point falls down as it begs the obvious question of asking why HK has extensive FTTP while our cities' CBDs and the MDUs within them do not?

The answer is of course that we have a bit of a socialist edge around our broadband, where cities subsidise rural areas and everyone should get the same products. This applies to VM as well - Comcast, Time Warner, etc, offer different tiers in different areas which would be frowned upon here. People bemoan the digital divide and would protest if their £5,000 to pass home didn't have the same services as a £400 to pass MDU.

It is at least being addressed now, thanks in no small part to Hyperoptic's FTTB with small contributions from Openreach and others :)

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Well if you want to get really pernickety about "why our broadband sucks", yes some part of it is caused by social and political factors, but comparing our urban MDUs with that of Hong Kong would still be entirely apples to oranges even if we ignore politics simply because of the geographical economics.

But the matter is somewhat obfuscated by you using the term "MDU". Why do our MDUs have less FTTP? Sure, we have MDUs. Sure, HK has MDUs. Except that evades the difference of their MDUs being five times bigger and three times more densely populated.

How many obscenely high density housing estates like this do you see in Britain? In Hong Kong, practically the entire population lives in them. A third of Bromley, the biggest borough in London, would fit in a single housing estate in HK.

As for our CBDs, I wouldn't call them lacking either, given the prevalence of business fibre products and willy-waving 450Mbps 4G mobile services fed by 10Gbps backhauled masts. Sure, these aren't consumer FTTH services but why on earth would you be bothered about consumer FTTH services in a CBD?

---------- Post added at 18:50 ---------- Previous post was at 18:49 ----------

Could say the same of 300Mbps to 1Gbps services here.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

As with many things in life, I'd rather have Quality over Quantity.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Had an engineer out the other day, he said all of Belfast is already ready for the new upgrades, and they have even pulled some engineers from here to Scotland to work. We are normally one of the last to get upgrades, but we might be one of the first to get it as he said it goes by who upgrades the areas first ?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I wonder if Virgin is using a different tact this time. They seem like they're getting ready to just flick a switch and roll the upgrade out over a few weeks or even days, rather than months.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

LOL

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

maybe hes on about the first upgrade wave :P lol

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Maybe Igni was right and the last wave of major upgrades included a little bit of future-proofing after all.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I thank an announcement will come this week. because we will have Q1 2015 Results from Liberty Global, Good time to announce speed upgrade ?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

The wave that's in progress does indeed - note that the upgrades are additional downstream channels rather than resegmentation on its own.

12 downstreams requires replacement on line cards on one CMTS platform and requires additional SPAs on others. The new tiers won't run so well on 8 downstreams, need 12 as a minimum.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Are we talking Cisco and/or Motorola? With further 3G60 infusion on Cisco and upgrades from 1Gbe to 10Gbe SPA on some Cisco?
I'm still seeking enlightenment as to how this maps to channel plans on node/cable segment in terms of load balancing when you potentially have 15 mac domains on each 3G60 card but Cisco min license (used to be) 16 x 16 blocks?

As a crude example you could perhaps have 16 x 8mhz =128Mhz somewhere between 200MHz and 330MHz below the TV SD+HD spectrum and balance 2 x 8channel domains with higher tier across 16 channels?
Clearly I'm confused as to how D3 load balancing works as well on 12 channels overlaid on legacy 8 channel? Are we looking at 2 mac domains and 20 d/s channels ( 8 + 12) on a cable segment to cover legacy SHubs + SH3?
Perhaps trying to correlate with Cisco licensing is an unnecessary complication but just seems 12 channels is an odd interim stage if 3G60 can accommodate 24?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

The Motorola kit needs new line cards. The original ones can't do more than 8 channels per MAC domain.

The Cisco and Arris platforms move towards CCAP.

The SPA installs would be these 3Gb cards.

You would be using the upstream ports on the card. The downstream dealt with by the SPAs.

Unsure what you are referring to with regard to the rest. The frequencies used are simply working downwards from the existing 323MHz range. Single MAC domain, modems load balanced within that domain.

CMTS load balances within a single MAC domain by changing the MDD modems receive when they come online. With 16 channels simply send some 8 channel modems to the lower 8, some to the upper 8, 16+ channel devices get the whole lot. With 12 channels some get the lower 8, some get the upper 8, and load balancing across the channels takes care of the rest even though 4 of the channels have all modems on them.

They may also try out these bad boys.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

I have no real idea what I'm looking at but it looks snazzy. How much does one of them cost, then?

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Probably well into six digits including licenses and optional features. Just a set of wireless modules for a run-of-the-mill 6500-series costs as much as a small house.

Re: 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)
 

Cool. Yeah, Cisco equipment is very overpriced depending on which market you're in. My company is just a little SMB, we recently purchased some Ubiquiti switches and honestly couldn't be happier - half the price and super easy to manage.

I'm sure the equivalent Cisco is much more capable in some way, but there's no doubt this is simple.