Huge network investment

Originally Posted by Chris

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

It really is so much better...

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

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

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.

[Qtx]

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.

[Ignitionnet]

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.

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

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.

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

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

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.

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.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

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.

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.

[Kushan]

Originally Posted by 1andrew1

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.

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.

[Ignitionnet]

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.

[Harryn9000]

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

[sollp]

Originally Posted by Sirius

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

trouble is this will still not appease certain people

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by sollp

trouble is this will still not appease certain people

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

[sollp]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

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

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

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by sollp

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

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

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.