Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

It is indeed a big body of work. The icon right at the top on the left is also more VM and all the stuff bottom left is them too.

No doubt the gap in the north-east between Ring Road and Thorpe Road will be plugged along with the missing streets in between, and we'll see if there's any more to go in the project.

Either way this is what a VM build looks like on roadworks.org.

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/local/2015/05/5.png

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

Something is definately happening in Welwyn, Hertfordshire. The area to the bottom right is the limit of the build in Welwyn Garden City, & whatever is going in is going toward Welwyn old town, which has no cable. The descriptions on all of these are similar in format:

"...Build chambers & lay duct in footway verge and carriageway (road crossings)..."

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

Hmm.

That seems to be going to the telephone exchange which makes me wonder whether it's for cable or leased lines. Not to mention that in this build they are building outwards, not just along a main road, so that they can sell as they go.

If it is for a single leased line there's going to be one hell of an excess construction charge on it.

We'll see :)

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

It could also be a VMB install for the Police station

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

I've noticed that Virgin often seem to have ducting coming from small local BT exchanges. Even when the hubsite or switching site (I'm not sure of the terminology or difference to be honest) is in a completely different town.

I'm not sure why they need to link into the BT exchange at such a local level. Surely it would make more sense to link into BT's network at a more regional level?

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

The BT links are normally business, could be either company leasing fibre from the other.

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

I thought someone mentioned once VM have some reliance on BT's exchanges for their POTS service?

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

I've seen equipment in BT exchanges labelled as Virgin Media, the label is placed on top of another that says NTL though obviously in other areas this would be different. They aren't DSLAMs. It just seems odd that they wouldn't just take the POTS stuff back to the hubsite and then connect into BT's network from there.

One I'm thinking of in particular runs from the BT exchange (I've not seen any equipment in that exchange with a VM label on it) right down to the little council estate in the small town, nowhere near any businesses. The council estate is the only cabled part of the town. The town is linked to the rest of the VM network via a duct running along country roads a few miles to where the hubsite is.

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

Depending how old it is could it be part of VM's mobile mast backhauls? They wouldn't necessarily be sited anywhere near normal businesses.

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

Virgin do deliver a lot of leased lines with BT tails...

---------- Post added at 21:21 ---------- Previous post was at 21:20 ----------

No, you're thinking of a maintenance contract with BT on some ancient PDH kit.

VM's POTS service is delivered via in-cabinet MSANs connecting to a PDH network which then goes to the SDH network.

---------- Post added at 21:26 ---------- Previous post was at 21:21 ----------

Indeed not. They'll be edge routers/switches to take traffic onto VM's MetNet.

Must be some VM kit lurking in that exchange somewhere to take hand-off from BT. Should be buried in the OLO hostel with the LLU DSLAMs and other goodies.

EDIT: One actually quite obvious thought is that that exchange was being used by VM for BT Wholesale DataStream services and was a handover point, or there may have been some leased circuits on BT tails going in there which are now decommissioned. Makes sense to take the tail back to the nearest cabled area so that it can then use the existing ducting there rather than a brand new fibre run all the way back to the MetNet POP.

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

Makes sense. In one exchange (where VM have no presence whatsoever) there's a bit of kit with a Virgin Media sticker on. However it also has a yellow Openreach sticker on to say it's now decommissioned. This sounds like the type of thing you're talking about (decommissioned leased lines).

Near the VM hubsite in the BT exchange there's some very old equipment in the OLO area labelled as NYNEX. presumably how they route POTS calls onto the BT network.

Yeah the ducting probably isn't really old. It says CATV rather than Cable & Wireless (which is what the manholes in front of Virgin's boxes in that area say). So it must have been put in after them, probably in the last 15 years.

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

There's a story on Edgadget today about Project Lightning expansion in Manchester starting this week. 150,000 additional homes.

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

It's the local paper too - looks like they are going for it big time

http://www.manchestereveningnews.co....inging-9497983

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

No choice but to, given the coverage target they've set themselves. 20,000 in the first phase in Manchester however they will need to be building at 800k premises per year. This is just their warming up and many more projects will come online in parallel.

They're about 1/4th through the 9,000 premises expansion in South Leeds now, with I'm sure loads more to come once this initial build is done as then come the areas to our immediate north, Belle Isle and Hunslet, which will be sandwiched between cabled areas once Middleton is complete, and then to our south a few thousand premises worth of orphan plant in Tingley.

Tingley build then sandwiches uncabled and cabled bits of Wakefield, etc, etc. Without going far at all outside of existing build there's an entire West Yorkshire expansion programme to be done across Wakefield, Leeds, Bradford and surrounds.

Something I did note was that, contrary to the initial announcement, VM are open to building to entire new towns if they have existing plant in a neighbouring town. This will I'm sure get people's attention.

Re: How big are VM's infills?
 

Do they consider Dundee a "neighbouring town" to Aberdeen?