Re: 100mbit? don't make me laugh
 

The problem with Sky's offer is you need their blooming sky TV package and Sky talk, as well.

Re: 100mbit? don't make me laugh
 

You don't 'need' Sky Talk you just have to pay a bit extra if you don't have it, kinda like how you pay more if you don't have a Virgin phone line.

Re: The TV, very true. They have to make their money somewhere because they aren't making much of it on the internet products.

VM are also somewhat perturbed by BT's announcement of fibre to at least 2.5 million homes within 2 years, these services will start at 100/15 as a maximum and are capable of 1Gbps and up. For all the 'fibre optic' waffle VM cannot match fibre to the home and they know it.

Re: 100mbit? don't make me laugh
 

Correct me if I am wrong but BT are doing fibre to the cabinet, not fibre to the home yes? Also going from the cabinet to the home, Coaxial cable is capable of much better quality of conneciton than the standard copper land line yes?

I know we are using the current standard of docsis 3 at the moment up to 200mbit, but isn't there the chance that we could get 1gbit using fibre to the cabinet and coaxial to the home in the future? Not now of course just looking ahead. I am sure someone with more technical knowledge could explain what the limits are.

Re: 100mbit? don't make me laugh
 

DOCSIS 3 goes up to as many channels as can be bonded really. 200M with 4, 400 with 8, if you can find 20 channels to bond, 160MHz on the cable network, you can do 1Gbit.

Be aware we won't be seeing this for some time and it would be remarkably difficult to get right, to the point where simply running fibre the rest of the way and doing RF over Glass then migrating to a full Passive Optical Network would probably make more sense.

Re: 100mbit? don't make me laugh
 

How many channels could be bonded on the Virgin Media network in its current state?

Re: 100mbit? don't make me laugh
 

I would much rather pay a higher premium on their broadband, than have sky tv. (I never watch TV, except when Lost is on, heh)

Re: 100mbit? don't make me laugh
 

Re: 100mbit? don't make me laugh
 

In Parts of Sweden right now they can get 100Mbit up and Down for about the same price as we have to fork out for 50mbit Down and 1.5mbit Up, I Would like at least 10Mbit Upload on the 50mbit and more for the 100mbit up coming specially as BT's Fibre Service offers 40mbit download and 10mbit upload not that you will get it anytime soon in all but a few areas for now, Why is the UK Upload speeds about half of Europe's as a whole if you look at stats on speedtest.net

Re: 100mbit? don't make me laugh
 

Some other countries have deployed fibre to the home which would support faster connections, but with us we only have fibre to the cabinet with cable going the rest of the way. Hopefully sometime in the future we will get fibre to the home.

Re: 100mbit? don't make me laugh
 

Ya, that applies to the Fibre To The Premises trials, none of which are Sky's trial areas. Fibre is going to Highams Park and Milton Keynes initially and neither is ready yet. BT are using VDSL profile 8c on their fibre to cabinet service hence my mention of approximate max speeds of 80/20.

BT have actually stated they want to serve approximately 2.5 million homes with fibre to the home by 2012 in addition to 7.5 million with fibre to the cabinet.

Re: 100mbit? don't make me laugh
 

It's a bit typical of VM to start rolling out a higher-bandwidth product when they've not even got the existing ones right. For example, I'm on 10mbps with VM and struggle to get 1mbps during peak times. Sure, I expect it to be slower but I work for an ADSL company and have known customers 4 - 5km away from their local exchange getting better speeds on Datastream. I'm on Rusholme exchange though so am keeping a sharp eye out for FTTC rollout!

Slightly off-topic, but does anybody know who's trialling or has rolled out BT's FTTC on the announced exchanges?

Re: 100mbit? don't make me laugh
 

I am actually looking forward to seeing this, VM may have some major upgrade plans, but we will see, I know there is problems but they have to be sorted or its bad news for VM.

I am actually looking forward to see the news on the upload as it has to be around 10Mb to match BT, but with the comments regarding upstream issues and work that will need to be done it will be well worth it for VM to do the major upgrades, all I say is roll on end of 2010.