[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by ianch99

......

I know for a fact that new customers are being added and existing customers are being upgraded who would route into the Southampton head end. I do not believe for one minute that "the Networks team release(s) capacity" for upgrades, at least not in my area they don't.
[SEPH]: They add capacity for upgrades although capacity can be won by releasing channel capacity from the legacy network, including the Upstream. There are other ways of increasing capacity by reducing capacity on the legacy network (QAM, bandwidth and so on. I've got a calculation somewhere - it surprised me but I don't remember the number; it was significant.)

They are too busy trying to resegment and add capacity to a 20+ year old fibre network original designed for pockets of Cable TV subscribers in order to address the demands of the current customer base.
[SEPH]: While I can't argue with the headline statement, the detail of it is what counts. You and I have no idea what fibre plant replacement has been during the last 20 years - but we do know that lasers get tired and fibre technology has improved in transmission terms. VM will be pulling new fibre in noisy segments and will be refreshing the optical nodes where necessary for the same reason. As you say, though, the resegmentation is where capacity can be augmented as long as the added fibres go with it.

The problem is that the fibre network topology as laid down 20+ years ago is no longer a optimal fit for the population centre now trying to use it. He said that you can get situations where you can go from one house that has chronic peak utilisation problems, walk across the road and get your headline speed 24x7.
[SEPH]: I can quite believe that. If, for example, across the road were in a different segment, their performance would not be susceptible to the other side's usage. Also there might be a degree of imprecision on the SE's part - for example his sample is 1 vs 1 and you know how the Internet various minute by minute.