[weesteev]

Originally Posted by Chris

The network might be capable of that, but it would be up to he ISPs utilising the network to decide the speed of the products they offer.

I can't see either Virgin or TalkTalk offering gigabit speeds if at any point they need to route traffic onto core networks that aren't able to offer that speed to an individual consumer. Furthermore it might make their marketing strategies more difficult - at present VM is happily bragging that it has the fastest broadband as it can offer 50 or 100Mb on its own cable network. I can't see it wanting to upstage itself by making far faster speeds available to a small minority of effectively off-net customers.

It's important to see this week's announcement for what it is - a headline-grabbing stunt designed to try to secure as much public funding as possible for the project.

Also, if Virgin did start to use a wholesale network, its unlikely they would offer a 2 tier service where people on FTTH would get faster service. Its likely that existing service would be delivered by RFoG and all customers regardless of Docsis 3 or FTTH would get the same product.