Huge network investment
 

Had been hearing rumours that Liberty were going to invest huge amounts on VMs network for a couple of weeks. VMs CEO has now confirmed the news.

http://www.mirror.co.uk/money/city-n...kridge-3704765

Re: Huge network investment
 

Tom Mockbridge has made a huge arse of himself with the things said in that article. Don't think anyway will be able to take him seriously again lol.

Criticising a competitor happens but to claim a service is lousy because it's free, when they are identical to the paid broadband connections, is plain wrong. It's obvious VM are scared of losing customers but to come out with these kind of blatant lies just shows how low VM will go.

This comment made me laugh as most of VM's business has been based on fooling the public with it's advertising:

Virgin Media's customer service and support is still terrible. Customers dread having to contact VM lol. From everything I have heard it's not got any better since I left them.

Doesn't appear to have worked. Philippine call centre is just the same.

My fibre broadband while with VM spent much of it's time much much worse than an adsl connection. Says a lot when VM's fibre is worst than lousy. I would say they are far from perfect.

This article is as misleading as all of VM's adverts that get banned by the advertising standards for....being misleading ;)

Re: Huge network investment
 

It's significantly better than when I joined ntl in Customer Services almost 9 years ago. Some of the stuff I came across then was shocking, and the call queues to some areas could be literally over an hour.

Re: Huge network investment
 

I think the satisfaction surveys indicate VM's customer service has been turned around.
I'm not sure why VM needed Liberty's backing to launch a quad-play package as Virgin Media included Virgin Mobile from its launch as Virgin Media in 2007. But I agree it was not cross-sold very effectively as several friends on mine on VM said Virgin Mobile was a separate company (in the way that the gyms and airline are separate companies) and there were no discounts for VM customers.
I would be more interested to read about where and what the £bn is being spent on to boost VM's network rather than Mockridge criticising his competitors. But I appreciate the newspaper is after a story and what is reported is probably a fraction of what he said.

Re: Huge network investment
 

Had someone at Virgin mobile tell me they were a different company a few years back when I asked if a contract would be put on my other VM bill, even though they could check and give a discount for being a VM customer. So it seems they were a different company for billing and possibly tax reasons before. The quad play just put it all on one bill.

Probably find the billion will get invested in tv adverts and hiring celebs to appear in them :D

Re: Huge network investment
 

Agree, we could post numerous links to the customer service awards they have won in the last 6 months alone, however this story was about the huge investment Liberty are about to make not the views of an ex customer who has no idea about the company's service offering of today.

---------- Post added at 12:34 ---------- Previous post was at 12:29 ----------


He specifically talks about network investment. Am surprised by your comments as you have been quite well behaved over the last 3 months, just goes to show that a leopard never changes it's spots.

This is a good news story for VM customers as a significant amount of investment will be made in the network which should eradicate some of the much publicised congestion issues.

Re: Huge network investment
 

That was the reason I first joined this website. Phoning CS really was a last resort back in the day.

Re: Huge network investment
 

Have you seen any more details on this? Is there a split between growing the network and repairing/upgrading the current network? £1bn a year sounds a very healthy budget. :)

Re: Huge network investment
 

No but now it's been mentioned I assume more detail will be outlined in the common weeks. From what I can gather they completely rebuilt the network in Southern Ireland as part of investment there

Re: Huge network investment
 

Really?

He says they are investing that amount, present tense. Last quarter they spent about 65mln on network upgrades, this was down on the same period in 2013.

Scalable infrastructure
41.2 44.5
Upgrade / rebuild
23.6 23.5

Looks to me like he's including all capital expenditure, including CPE and leased property, in his numbers.

---------- Post added at 13:36 ---------- Previous post was at 13:34 ----------

They had to. A lot of it was one-way only, amps dangling off the side of houses, it looked more like the Rediffusion cable build than a modern HFC network and had no fibre in most of it at all. The business case was to be able to sell digital TV, 2-way services and telephony. There is no business case to spend as much on VM's network.

Re: Huge network investment
 

Who the hell do you think you are? :rofl: Condescending idiot.

The whole article was about attacking a competitor, nothing to do with investment except a single sentence or two. Not dissimilar to a VM employee creating a post yesterday just to attack Sky hardware with no actual real reason. Must not say a bad word about virgin eh? Educated people like to hear both sides of the coin, not just those with monetary interests in one company doing well so only post the good side... ;)

Depends if it's 'coming soon' or not, as most things VM say take that long to materialise. Reminds me, whats happening with the Sony PS4 partnership that VM made a big noise over last year and since gone quiet?

---------- Post added at 15:36 ---------- Previous post was at 15:32 ----------

If he is, that would be quite misleading, but something we have come to expect from VM.

The problem is sometimes you can spend money just to keep the network running, without actually giving a visible improvement to customers, although there is one.

Re: Huge network investment
 

Look at the headline, I was drawing attention to the fact that the CEO of Virgin Media has said that their will be significant investment in their network. Nothing more nothing less. When I posted this I thought VM customers would find this interesting.

You and only you took the thread down a completely different route with your typical diatribe about how poor VMs customer service is. If that's your view fine, I have no issue with that but why try and derail the point to my post?

Re: Huge network investment
 

I came to this thread expecting there to be an article about VM investment. There was not one, just a link to the mirror with VM slagging off Sky and a single sentence about investment with no actual information beyond the investment being one billion, which turns out may be misleading :erm:

Re: Huge network investment
 

Seems Mr Mockridge is a little rattled by the offers of BT Sport included with Broadband and free broadband with Sky Sports as he seems to be critical of both Sky and BT , he shouldn't have anything to fear with the best network and the fact he keeps telling us about everyone's hunger for super fast connections.

VM have never done this before have they ? Free HD channels anyone , later changed to included.

Hybrid fibre-coaxial , Hybrid fibre-coaxial (HFC) is a telecommunications industry term for a broadband network that combines optical fiber and coaxial cable. Copper or no copper ?

Re: Huge network investment
 

Oh, you naughty naughty boy! :D

Re: Huge network investment
 

Do you actually think Mockridge doesn't understand the difference between a twisted pair and coax?

In point of fact, that paragraph doesn't even quote his direct words, it's a paraphrase, summarised by the hack who wrote the article.

Re: Huge network investment
 

I'm sure he does , I merely quoted it because the same line is used on the website and on much of the advertising I've seen.

Even people in the industry have questioned the way its advertised.

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/10...bre-optic.html

Re: Huge network investment
 

That's because while Mockridge understands the difference, the average punter doesn't. 'copper' and 'fibre' have been acceptable shorthand for the difference between UK cable networks and BT's last mile for decades. It may be hopelessly inaccurate but neither Ofcom nor the ASA have ever raised any objection.

Re: Huge network investment
 

That may be changing, similar to when VM were told they couldn't advertise their broadband as unlimited. Where they could change the traffic management slightly to get around the issue before, they won't be able to do the same when it comes to the point that fibre means fibre to the property. It will be interesting when only BT and a few independent can advertise their fibre products.

Re: Huge network investment
 

If I remember rightly only a few years ago Sky and BT tried to stop VM advertising their cable BB product as fibre optic, but failed. Now Sky have no problem calling the same sort of hybrid product while piggybacking on BT's network as fibre optic! The other FTTC providers too.

Are these still accurate or relevant?

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2014/06/12.jpg

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2014/06/13.jpg

Re: Huge network investment
 

Are you suggesting that VM may call their hybrid network fibre but Sky and BT may not? The others followed VM's lead.

The images are wrong from the start as it says cable is a superior technology. DOCSIS has a lot of limitations and VM's network is more susceptible to things like congestion at local nodes compared to Openreach based fibre which has so many Gigabit links or something from the cabinet. Then there is upload speeds where VM is far inferior. The only thing they have is top download speed over FTTC really.

Re: Huge network investment
 

VM's organisation is still chaotic.

I cancelled my account 10 months ago due to emigrating to the States.

Today I get this e-mail:
:rolleyes:

Re: Huge network investment
 

Err... it's a phishing attempt

http://netreport.virginmedia.com/netreport/

Re: Huge network investment
 

In my recent experience it's worse than ever. I've spoken to 4 people recently about kahuna upgrades. All 4 people either didn't know what they were doing or lied. My bill has changed daily for about a week. I eventually gave up calling and wrote a letter, the person who called me to resolve the issue was rude, didn't understand the problem and came up with some convoluted billing change that I didn't understand or trust but I'd lost the will to live at this point.

Re: Huge network investment
 

That was one of the things that I found shocking while with Virgin. Never ever had a company lie to me in the way Virgin Media media did and so many times. Pretty much every department too, from the the day I signed up. Sales told me I would get something as part of the deal which I never got and when chased I was told they wouldn't tell me that as they can't offer it. When I told them to check the call they said they wouldn't have recordings of it, which is either another lie or why sales feel they can get away with lieing to gain customers. Then support lied to me many times about many things. Even one of the so called CEO department reps blatantly lied to me. Even when leaving the retentions woman lied to me. Another lie she told me was just down to not having the knowledge but when I explained that VM is fibre to the cabinet and copper to the house she insisted I was wrong and she knew better. We know VM carry this lie through most departments tough.

I highly recommend you record any calls you make with Virgin. I wish I had!

Re: Huge network investment
 

Wonder how much of a bonus he got for that?

---------- Post added at 01:51 ---------- Previous post was at 01:49 ----------

Probably not, the same way the BT CEO probably doesnt

Re: Huge network investment
 

Err no, I cant see how I suggested that. Simply pointing out the hypocrisy of said ISPs.

The images are no completely wrong. For example the distance point is a good point as VM more often than not deliver advertised speeds, while on FTTC there are always massive variations. As for congestion, it does point out that fibre deep access can be split as demand rise, which I assume as a simpleton is when they split the node. The reports of network congestion are nowhere as common as they were some years ago, even at greater speeds and no STM on downloading.

The bandwidth point is another good point of how cable can deliver HD, VOD, BB and more without affecting your internet speed. As for upload speeds, if VM return to their 10:1 ratio then their top upload speed would only be 4Mb lower than FTTC. There's also DOCSIS 3.1 around the corner with promises of greater upload speeds.

Re: Huge network investment
 

Cable networks are superior to FTTC-based VDSL 2 networks. Had Openreach prised open their vice-like buttocks and invested seriously rather than spending the bare minimum they would be competitive, as it is they will perhaps hit 100Mb if you live very close to the cabinet but no more for years.

VM laugh at the speeds Openreach offer everywhere besides 62,000 premises in Cornwall, where they received subsidies, and another 30-40,000 premises elsewhere in the rest of the country, some of that subsidised, right now.

There is no real drive for VM to do a massive network investment. The competition, broadband speeds wise, is a joke and relies on add-ons and pricing to compete, not network.

Re: Huge network investment
 

Yes, I checked the headers:

Clever one though, looked very authentic.

Re: Huge network investment
 

VM only competes in half the country so I can see a need for it to invest in this respect.

Re: Huge network investment
 

:tu:

It really is so much better...

Re: Huge network investment
 

Why?

I'm not sure what you're saying here. I understand a need to invest in new network, but I'm not sure about why upgrading the existing one massively would be needed?

Do you think that offering 3 times the speed BT do would somehow win more customers than offering twice the speed? I'm not sure there would be many people who are on 76Mb now and would jump to 250Mb but turn their noses up at 152Mb.

Re: Huge network investment
 

VM's backbone is ok, it's more local areas which tended to have issues and they let them run hot for way too many years when they should have been upgraded. Seems VM always do just enough. If investment means they do more than needed due to a bit of future planning, then that is an improvement.

As said before, most customers don't need more than 10-20Mb at this moment in time, so customers who go faster are either the ones who must have the latest and greatest stuff or fooled in to thinking they need it by advertising. Gradually more speed will be needed but there is no real need for faster by the average user.

Re: Huge network investment
 

Seems I underestimated how serious Liberty Global are about investing in Virgin Media.

They appear to have spent a ton already splitting nodes and upgrading the existing network with some serious investment in network expansion on its way I've been informed both on Facebook and indeed on here in my thread about infills.

£1 billion was mentioned as the first cheque LGI wrote.

Re: Huge network investment
 

I can tell you we have never been as busy as we are now in access planning. keeps me in a job.

Re: Huge network investment
 

They're certainly spending a lot.

Ther example I saw was for Manchester, there are currently 551K homes connectable to the VM network, but a further 112K are within 20m of the network but not ducted.

These are what are being targeted.

The budget for 2014 building these out is being doubled, and trebled for 2015.

Re: Huge network investment
 

Sorry, I worded that poorly. What I meant was that as they only cover half the country they need to invest to expand into the other half of the country...which is obviously what they're doing now. :)

Re: Huge network investment
 

I think they are still fixing up and investing in the current network to bring it up to scratch. Sounds like they're not far from where they want to be though, so expansion isn't going to be far behind.

It's a good time to be on cable, I suppose.

Re: Huge network investment
 

I have to admit LGI continue to impress me. I have for a long time hoped they would acquire Virgin Media in the hope they would do what they have done in Ireland and continental Europe - invest heavily in the network.

They seem to be doing just that. In an era when companies are too busy either borrowing money or burning cash to buy back their own shares and prop up their share price (I'm looking at IBM, Oracle, BT and others) a company that is willing to spend heavily on CapEx is an increasing rarity.

Re: Huge network investment
 

i've seen fellas putting new electrics into the cabs around my house the other day, what my engineer told me who fitted my service from moving house said certain areas are worse than other, my old area is bad due to loads of flats and only 1 connection to property getting split countless times it was effect the area for reliability where i am now should be more reliable as it just houses

Re: Huge network investment
 

trouble is this will still not appease certain people

Re: Huge network investment
 

Nor should it. What goes on behind the scenes is irrelevant to customers it's what they see as a result that's all that matters :)

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True, but there has been constant upgrading over the past few years but this should be on a bigger scale, well not sure if they are going to go into detail as to what will happen though so again will fuel the sceptics

Re: Huge network investment
 

I know most of what they're doing and it's kinda the same thing. People only worry about what the upgrades will do for their services for the most part, just us geeks that care about the how and why :)

Re: Huge network investment
 

From what I have heard it's as Pierre says, network upgrades but also a plan to build past a load of homes within x meters of existing network. Interesting times with the new Sky deals, voice over cable and now this, looks like LG are digging deep into their pockets.

Re: Huge network investment
 

I can see a ton of properties near here with empty ducts in them. Seems Yorkshire Cable literally downed tools overnight having done most of the hard and expensive stuff.

Hopefully these would be considered too.

Re: Huge network investment
 

Sorry for dragging up an old thread, but it seems a fairly appropriate place.

In Yate BS37, we had major broadband problems a couple of years back, and since whatever was done was done, it's been rock solid since. Our TivO modem (docsis-1 from what I understand) has had peak-time utilisation problems off and on since we had it installed (ex-V+) in July last year, and the current "review date" is March 2015. The past week or so, our broadband-proper has been struggling in the evenings, it turns out that now has utilisation issues, ETR is May.

I'm just curious whether this major network-project is still in "full steam ahead" mode.....

Re: Huge network investment
 

They have been and are continuously upgrading the network. Unfortunately if your in an area that is under review then it's a case of waiting out for it to happen. This year and the next few years will see some big changes witht he network and new build.

Re: Huge network investment
 

All fair enough.. but I would hope there is a certain amount of priority given to 1) Congestion remedies, 2) Congestion fixes to avoid impending congestion - before speed increases are dealt with.

I'm not sure what you mean by an area being "under review"? Is that the same "gist" as the "review date" that CS have been quoting me?

Re: Huge network investment
 

Those are business as usual not 'project' upgrades.