FT: Virgin Media eyes sale of non-cable UK broadband arm.

[Media Boy UK]

FT is reporting that Virgin Media is set to sell Virgin Media National, would include the transfer of more than 130,000 customers across the UK who have signed up to broadband packages offering internet speeds of less than 50mb. And could raise up to £100m.

Virgin Media declined to comment.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/735be126-d...#axzz30The8Kcn

[arcimedes]

It would make sense as they have stopped selling to new customers.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by arcimedes

It would make sense as they have stopped selling to new customers.

Quite, since Liberty took over they have made it very clear that they want to focus purely on our " on -net" proposition.

They see this as what sets VM apart from all others.

They will not go down the ADSL route.

They see HFC as their USP.

I can see their logic, but I'm a bit concerned.

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by Pierre

I can see their logic, but I'm a bit concerned.

At the customer loss this deal would mean or by the HFC?

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Qtx

At the customer loss this deal would mean or by the HFC?

Whether HFC can deliver all the services required.

[1andrew1]

I guess 130,000 isn't a large number of customers. But they're people who could potentially be cross-sold mobile phone contracts and offered a fibre service if VM extended its network in the future.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Pierre

Whether HFC can deliver all the services required.

What are you worried it can't deliver? Seems to manage triple play elsewhere without any legacy POTS infrastructure and only really regulation on emergency calls in power outages stopping VM doing the same.

I'm sure VM would love to retire the POTS stuff and use eMTAs and HFC for everything.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

What are you worried it can't deliver? Seems to manage triple play elsewhere without any legacy POTS infrastructure and only really regulation on emergency calls in power outages stopping VM doing the same.

I'm sure VM would love to retire the POTS stuff and use eMTAs and HFC for everything.

They are, VM will be moving to voice over cable sometime in the near future.

[Qtx]

So broadband, all calls VOIP and 4k tv streams in the future. Hopefully advancements in technology and standards will happen quick enough to squeeze more out of the current structure.

[Kushan]

In this day and age, there really isn't much need for standard telephone lines when VOIP is much better. Obviously where DSL is concerned, it makes sense to have a phone line but I do wonder what they could do if they didn't have to filter for voice and just used the whole copper line.

Obviously there's a lot to consider, like how the phone line is pretty damn reliable compared to cable or DSL and that's important for a lot of services, but still.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Kushan

In this day and age, there really isn't much need for standard telephone lines when VOIP is much better. Obviously where DSL is concerned, it makes sense to have a phone line but I do wonder what they could do if they didn't have to filter for voice and just used the whole copper line.

Obviously there's a lot to consider, like how the phone line is pretty damn reliable compared to cable or DSL and that's important for a lot of services, but still.

Battery backup on the nodes along with the right configurations can make cable/HFC-based telco hit the 5 9s requirement.

DSL filters a fraction of the available bandwidth for voice, it's really not much at all and won't make much of a difference.

[Qtx]

Originally Posted by Kushan

In this day and age, there really isn't much need for standard telephone lines when VOIP is much better.

Except for when the network has a glitch and phone calls stop working. Even worse if the customer support helpdesk is also using VOIP on the same network, which happened to a company last year I believe. Needs some redundancy and proper planning to keep it running when a link goes down.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by Qtx

Except for when the network has a glitch and phone calls stop working. Even worse if the customer support helpdesk is also using VOIP on the same network, which happened to a company last year I believe. Needs some redundancy and proper planning to keep it running when a link goes down.

Yeah, I did mention that with the rest of my post but as others have pointed out, there are ways to ensure reliability.

Originally Posted by Kushan

Yeah, I did mention that with the rest of my post but as others have pointed out, there are ways to ensure reliability.

All of the other Liberty companies are fully boil, so the expertise is there

[Kushan]

.....fully boil?