Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Statement from the Q1 2011 Results found here.

"We will shortly begin a trial to test the real world application of speeds of up to 1.5Gb. This will be the fastest cable broadband connection in the world ever tested and will demonstrate the long-term potential of our superior network."

Discuss...

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

It's a headline-grabbing stunt. ;)

In the nicest possible way, mind you. I don't doubt they genuinely want to see if they can do it, and one day deliver it, but what are the chances of them actually delivering a saleable, sustainable product in the next 5 years? What would the AUP or download limits, or peak time throttleing policies look like, for example? You would run over the current policies in a matter of seconds at that sort of speed, and applying wholly different policies to a gigabit service whilst retaining the current ones on other tiers would very quickly give the lie to any suggestion that somebody with a 'mere' 100Mb service could in any way be capable of congesting the network.

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Unless this type of service ran on an overlay network with dedicated QOS over other tiers? It is possible and these types of speeds have been lab-trialled in the US and Japan already. It will be interesting to see what comes of this, the recent 200Mb trial appears to have been a success and only time will tell if VM progress further with this option.

Your right though, its grabbing headlines while announcing their financial results, sells more broadsheets!

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Given that there are still 7 figures homes that don't have 50/5 or any published schedule for it and more with no date for 100/10 perhaps we should not get too excited over bonding 32 downstreams.

Always good to grab headlines though.

EDIT: http://www.multichannel.com/article/...st_1_5_Gig.php
http://www.lightreading.com/blog.asp...&site=lr_cable

---------- Post added at 11:15 ---------- Previous post was at 10:39 ----------

Financial nerd as I am the really cool part of the results from the VM POV is this one:

Investment grade dramatically lowers interest rates as it makes the company able to tap the mainstream bond market rather than relying on specialist higher risk investors as can be seen by the reduction in interest rate.

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

??

50Mb is available across the entire digital cable network. Only the 100Mb is on a staggered rollout plan.

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

I assume it's the /5 bit he was talking about ;)

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Well spotted Ben :)

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Correct.

---------- Post added at 12:01 ---------- Previous post was at 12:01 ----------

:)

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Im interested in how they will deliver this sort of bandwith to non-server PC. Is there NIC's that can take over 1gb?

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Look here!

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

This is for businesses not residential customers, it'll be going to commercial 10GbE routers and from there to commercial grade switches to be distributed among several devices within offices.

You highlight precisely why this isn't going to happen for residential customers, it's a technology trial for a potential business service ;)

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Yeah im aware of the PCI-x cards, but show me a PC that has PCI-x motherboards :)

@Igni - yeah I understand that... but not many businesses have server boxes :P

So my original question is valid, how will they cater to a business who doesn't have a Rack server or similar?

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

VM Business would supply the termination equipment, the same way they do at the moment.

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

perhaps they should also trial peering upgrades and uncongested ubr ports :)

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Supply a server??

Would be worth it just going for a 6 month trial and keeping the server, some of which can easily be 10k+ in cost lol

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

A movie in 8 seconds..... just wow

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

It wouldn't be a server they supply... just a Cisco (or similar) 10GbE capable router :) Which would then interconnect with the businesses current LAN switches and from then (probably) into a proxy etc :)

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Where did I say they would supply a server?

---------- Post added at 15:19 ---------- Previous post was at 15:17 ----------

I can see the attempt at humour but what has this to do with a technical trial? Do you believe that this type of service would be rolled out on the existing network overlay with no concern as to core upgrades?

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

I have heard no core upgrades were done for the 100mbit and upload uplifts hence the introduction of shaping. So answer is yes.

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Apart from the upgrades from 1gig to 10gig transit completed within the last 2 years to support the transition to Docsis 3.0? Just because you didn't hear doesn't mean it didn't happen

;)

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

It was a joke, hence the lol at the end of post :)

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

What they advertise and what they deliver are two completely different things. Oops, you have just checked an email and hit the stm, your up to 1.5gbit connection is now throttled to 10mbit for the rest of the day so you do not have a detrimental impact on your fellow users.

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Surely they wouldn't dare throttle a business line... that would be bad.

Especially if they are getting businesses to pay through the nose for it, I think 1GB is what £500+ at the moment? I don't think they have traffic management.

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

I think you will find it will be considerably more than £500 per month (as would all/most other suppliers)....

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

£25k per annum, so just over £2k a month.

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Ouch £2k lol

Makes it even worse if they ended up throttling them >.<

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

Huh?

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

the only thing VirginMedia is able to sustain, is the putrid nonosense they come up with month in month out..

Im still waiting on this and that. Now they go and do this..

Cool, I cant wait to see this fine mess they get into..

Or like usual, we will all forget about it, until next time.

PS, technically, over current networks... LMAO!!! what site have you been on, even of the late, that is capable of delivering that, even locally? What is the UK Backbone capable of delivering at peak times?.. Aye, exactly!

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

The UK has one of the highest capacity fibre networks in the world. Virgin's network can certainly support 1.5Gbps, not masses of them without contention but certainly some.

No-one is talking about a single website that will deliver 1.5Gbps although some content delivery networks do indeed have servers with 10GbE connectivity.

---------- Post added at 20:35 ---------- Previous post was at 20:33 ----------

If you can get 1Gbps internet access for £25k per annum please point me to this service, the last quote I got was rather closer to that level per month than per year. About £18k + VAT.

---------- Post added at 20:46 ---------- Previous post was at 20:35 ----------

The shaping hardware was installed at transit points to reduce load and try and avoid higher costs on external bandwidth when 100Mb went live.

Sky have 100Gbps to LINX alone, Talk Talk 120Gbps, VM have 80Gbps which is quite odd given the higher traffic load. Even UPC Broadband who don't even have a UK presence have 60Gbps there.

VM do skimp on transit and peering. They carry the bare minimum the result being constant manual intervention to try and make the most of the scarce resource.

How much did the total transit and peering capacity go up during that period? All well and good saying that transits went from 1Gbps to 10Gbps but you and I both know there is no way that VM increased capacity 10-fold. They had to increase it somewhat given they were breaking SLAs on some transits by allowing them to saturate :)

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

That's the cost that was widely reported for VM's Big Red Internet.

Re: Leading the superfast broadband revolution
 

That's not internet access it's a 1Gbps point to point circuit. The internet access bit is the key for cost.