It's nearly here!
 

After a massive wait, a whole bunch of drama, and a few months of discussion with a director at VM who pushed the project through, cable has nearly arrived, and I'm nearly able to troll the Internet at ultrafast speeds again.

VM are certainly dedicated to coverage. A team spent a week reaching 4 properties through block paving.

They are, however, now in the process of standing the cabinet that will deliver my providings. :woot:

https://www.cableforum.co.uk/images/...2017/08/12.jpg

Re: It's nearly here!
 

:D

Re: It's nearly here!
 

Good stuff! Glad to see things are moving again ;)

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Never seen anyone that desperate for a Docsis connection since the Telewest days :D

Welcome back!

Re: It's nearly here!
 

I know their plans for the next 9 months with said DOCSIS connection ;)

Thank you!

---------- Post added at 22:39 ---------- Previous post was at 22:34 ----------

Thank you, Sir. A controversial and expensive project for relatively little return on your side, but given you've blitzed the rest of the ward be rude not to finish up these last thousand premises, especially given that this project pre-dates Lightning.

I am so grateful to VM for introducing competition to the area. I'm not sure BT would be deploying G.fast here if VM hadn't committed the 7-figure sum on the deployment here.

That sum really puts things into perspective. To roll out VDSL / FTTC to the cabinet area probably cost BT, for both VDSL cabs and the copper extension, maybe 50 grand tops, with the G.fast pod coming in at another 10. To pass the premises covered by that BT cabinet VM are spending not 60 grand but closer to 500. That's serious investment, and I'm delighted to see it here.

Re: It's nearly here!
 

I may be reading this wrong but if it costs VM 500k to cover the same number of customers that BT does with 60K, they may need to revisit their business model :)

Re: It's nearly here!
 

Soon be switching your providings then ...

Re: It's nearly here!
 

That's the difference between building a new cabinet and having to dig to every home.

The difference being VM can sell TV, phone, broadband to properties. BT have to make the business case based around wholesale revenues only, and only incremental wholesale revenues on top of what they are already making from standard phone and broadband services.

---------- Post added at 10:51 ---------- Previous post was at 10:47 ----------

Kinda. Will be taking a business service and leaving a VDSL line in place as a backup.

Given I currently have 2 x VDSL lines one of them will go.

Re: It's nearly here!
 

/envy

The quango responsible for fibre rollout in Scotland is still fobbing us off with the "it's challenging to bring fibre to homes on an EO line" excuse. Our exchange's predicted upgrade date has been slowly pushed back so it's always been 6 months in the future, with all the EO lines outside the village due for upgrade an indeterminate period of time beyond that.

About 12 months ago they did something that improved my sync from about 2.5Mb to around 4.2Mb but unfortunately my B&B guests (and my kids) have developed expectations far beyond our line's ability.

Re: It's nearly here!
 

If you're as remote as I think you are the only options to serve you, other than satellite, are fibre to the premises or a fixed wireless / 4G service.

You're likely losing out due to value for money. Delivering to you costs a bomb, while they can get through a number of other premises for that same funding.

Re: It's nearly here!
 

Fair point.

With the switch to VM as your main WFH platform, does alleged latency woes of the Hub3 modem impact you at all?

So far, since switching to the Hub3, I have yet to notice any real world issues on VPN, Jabber, Zoom, VNC, RDP, etc.

Re: It's nearly here!
 

Indeed. Fortunately there's a ton of cash sloshing around the system in Scotland so I know I'll get something eventually. I'd prefer to avoid 4g if I can though, I used a 4g modem/router on holiday and it cost a fortune, plus the latency was sky high. Not unlike satellite, which is even worse ...

I'm hoping to eventually get fibre to the premises, or close to at least. We are reasonably remote but we are also in a tourist hotspot and there are hotels and other businesses crying out for fast connectivity. Many of them are even further from the exchange than us.

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It's likely you'll have FTTP before I do.

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Cabinet has been stood. There is some work to do with road crossings, etc, on the road between mine and the rest of the network, civils should be done and network being tested by the end of next week. Should be able to order shortly after.

Re: It's nearly here!
 

Toby in place; ducting back to cabinet and road crossings to connect cabinet to network in progress.

EDIT: After all this the service is going to suck, isn't it?

Re: It's nearly here!
 

It might if you go for the business service with fixed IP address - either single or routed subnet. Performance is very variable, as has been reported by a few others here. I was immune to it for ages and now have been affected. I am currently working with a senior engineer in VMB to run tests to help them. They are getting closer to getting to the cause of the issue.

It's getting a lot of attention in VMB with a dedicated team to work on it, so hopefully they will have a solution soon. This only affects downstream performance, never upstream.

If you don't need a fixed IP address and take any the business service with a dynamic address the service is great, provided your area is good. Which hopefully it will be given it's new! You've probably got much better contacts than me and will know about the issue, but if not, happy to keep you posted on the fix.

I saw mention of a login issue with the Hitron - never suffered that myself. I did with the old SH1 based business service where the SH1 suffered a memory leak which would use the Web interface to hang but the Hitron has been solid for me.

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Toby has arrived and is awaiting the last couple of metres of duct under block paving to connect to the cabinet.

The cab has a viable duct path back to the VM network now. Awaiting installation of coax.

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Dig in the street as a whole completed yesterday. Been informed that all should be live by the end of the month.

Am looking into something else as there're a few interesting things going on. Leeds have certainly cut the red tape!

Re: It's nearly here!
 

Cables deployed to a bunch of cabinets in the area. Commissioning imminent.

This has been really instructive.

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Care to give me more details?:)

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Nope.

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Just thought I'd drop by to say that I know some stuff also. I won't claim that it has anything to do with this, or even to do with anything else of interest to anyone here. It doesn't even have anything to do with Virgin Media. Nor can I claim that it has anything to do with any other provider, or even broadband at all. But anyway, it's a secret, so I can't talk about it. ;) Have a nice day :D

Re: It's nearly here!
 

Thanks for that valuable and hilarious contribution :)

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Care to give more details ?

:D

Nope.

Re: It's nearly here!
 

That other thing was a, erm, total and utter mess up. VM's contractors just put a cabinet, 4 road crossings and about 50 metres of track into pavements and roads that are private and they had no right to touch.

Ooops.

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Unusual for VM to not make sure wayleave is in place. Could be a big compo bill.

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Won't be compo but they are going to have to do full-width reinstatement if they can't cut a deal with the council and developer.

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Whatever, whichever they end up doing it is going to cost them.

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Released for service. Only for up to 200 due to issues at hubsite.

Regarding the earlier point some confusion reigned along with them getting bad information.

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....and Virgin Media Business botched my order. :rofl:

Re: It's nearly here!
 

After 2 years of battling with VM I am going to get an install in January, the main problem seems to be that the cable plans VM have, for the road which I live in, do not actually represent reality. Most of the cable runs go down the pavement and this is what VM plans show, the reality is the cables go under my land. The VM engineers did not believe me when I first told them that I had a man hole in the bushes in my front garden and the cables all went through there. The VM engineers took up the manhole cover and were able to see the cable, they then put a worm down the trunking and it came out in my manhole. Then the ownership of the land was called into question this was quickly resolved by looking at the deeds to the house.

It appears that there must have been some sort of mix up when the house and the cable infrastructure were put in place 13 years ago.

Nothing like a bit of Drama.

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I have an install date in January, a connection point has been installed and the cable pull has taken place. The ducting which runs up my drive and was installed when the house was built is well and truly blocked, VM know this and have installed the connection point next to the man hole which located on my front garden the cable connecting the Connection point to the house, as I understand it, will be buried in the earth.

On the install date will the Engineer run the cable from the connection point to the house and complete the install, cable, router, set up, etc?

Re: It's nearly here!
 

All now up and running I now have 100mbps, the install engineers took about an hour. I only have broadband from VM having decided to dispense with the house phone, the only calls we received on the house phone were spam calls, paying £20 line rental for receiving spam calls seemed like a waste of money, we both have mobiles and we will use them.

I wonder how many people have a house phone that is seldom used?????

The benefits of moving to VM are

I have faster broadband, 76 to 100mbps :)
I have saved myself £176 a year :)

Re: It's nearly here!
 

Glad to hear you are sorted Peter. :tu: Your perseverance has at long last paid off.