Superhub : 200Mbit coming soon? (According to a survey)

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by ccarmock

Right so to move to ATDMA required a rebuild then?

Yeah, the ex-Telewest London network was for the most part really not good. Some only had upstream bandwidth of 5-30MHz and downstream maxed out at 550MHz so needed rebuild.

[Pierre]

VM's Voice over Cable project is in the works, but is still very much in its infancy - it's got a name and that's about it at the moment.

VM will have to decommission the telephony network as it's just too old. Running on System X's 20odd years old, and other equally old kit.

But it's a cash cow for VM, it's paid for itself many times over and still brings in millions each year.

Voice over cable, or some other solution, will happen but I think VM will continue to eek out every last penny from the existing voice network until it expires.

[qasdfdsaq]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

It's the cost more than the technology to be honest.

BT's FTTC has batteries in each cabinet to cope with brief outages, VM can do much the same with their nodes and with any eMTA.

Still costs a few quid nonetheless, but hopefully offset by not having to pay BT Wholesale for PSTN.

Indeed, as I say we're quite capable of it, we just need the political or commercial will to actually spend money on doing it.

I did see a few people come by to take the batteries out of the mobile mast we have on our roof the other day, boy that was a huge pile of batteries, around two pallets worth - and I have no clue how often they have to do that.

---------- Post added at 11:11 ---------- Previous post was at 11:07 ----------

Originally Posted by Kushan

That's precisely it, the cost. I believe that OFCOM come down hard if telephony services aren't kept up and fixed promptly. Particularly as there's a human life factor, quite a lot of people (elderly and disabled) rely on the phone line for lifeline serivces so a downed line could literally be the death of someone.

And yet, there's stories even on this very forum of people with medical equipment hooked up having faulty fixed-lines that took VM weeks or months to deal with.

The problem with a VoIP service is the battery backup would have to extend into the customer's property and keep their hub alive as well. I don't know if there's technology to do that.

The BT/Openreach FTTC modem already has a built-in plug for battery backup modules, most enterprise servers are equipped with battery backups on critical PCI(e) cards in addition to the grid itself - and I've run personal battery backups on telecoms equipment using just bog-standard consumer batteries and UPSes. The technology is all there - and even widespread - it's really no different to just shoving a phone battery onto the back of your modem. However 4 million+ phone batteries is going to be a bigger job to maintain than 4000 exchange backups...

There's also power-down-the-line technology (powering the connection through the broadband line itself, just like phones) but AFAIK that's not widely used.

---------- Post added at 11:17 ---------- Previous post was at 11:11 ----------

Originally Posted by Pierre

VM's Voice over Cable project is in the works, but is still very much in its infancy - it's got a name and that's about it at the moment.

VM will have to decommission the telephony network as it's just too old. Running on System X's 20odd years old, and other equally old kit.

But it's a cash cow for VM, it's paid for itself many times over and still brings in millions each year.

Voice over cable, or some other solution, will happen but I think VM will continue to eek out every last penny from the existing voice network until it expires.

Wouldn't replacing it with newer/cheaper to maintain equipment and charging the same amount be an even bigger cash cow?

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Pierre

VM's Voice over Cable project is in the works, but is still very much in its infancy - it's got a name and that's about it at the moment.

VM will have to decommission the telephony network as it's just too old. Running on System X's 20odd years old, and other equally old kit.

But it's a cash cow for VM, it's paid for itself many times over and still brings in millions each year.

Voice over cable, or some other solution, will happen but I think VM will continue to eek out every last penny from the existing voice network until it expires.

There's already a date for when retirement of the PSTN is planned, Pierre.

---------- Post added at 11:58 ---------- Previous post was at 11:56 ----------

Originally Posted by qasdfdsaq

Wouldn't replacing it with newer/cheaper to maintain equipment and charging the same amount be an even bigger cash cow?

Once the initial CapEx of the eMTAs and network resiliency upgrades has been recouped I'm sure it would. VM outsourced the PSTN network maintenance, etc, to BT Wholesale so will be glad I imagine to be rid of it.

[Pierre]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

There's already a date for when retirement of the PSTN is planned, Pierre.

That's as maybe, but if you're hooked up as I think you are, you'll know that the voice over cable project is being pushed from one angle.

But the engineering experts in Access, the real ones, hate it. They'd much rather go for using MSANS to deliver VoIP amongst other things. We could still utilise the twisted pair infrastructure and not overload the HFC.

I don't think it's a done deal yet.

I don't know anyone that really enthuses about voice over cable.

Anyway, we'll see.

[General Maximus]

I think it is a great idea

[Kushan]

I think anything is better than the old phone line, it's another cable, another box on the wall.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Pierre

That's as maybe, but if you're hooked up as I think you are, you'll know that the voice over cable project is being pushed from one angle.

But the engineering experts in Access, the real ones, hate it. They'd much rather go for using MSANS to deliver VoIP amongst other things. We could still utilise the twisted pair infrastructure and not overload the HFC.

I don't think it's a done deal yet.

I don't know anyone that really enthuses about voice over cable.

Anyway, we'll see.

Each VoIP call only needs 64kbps and relatively few punters use their landlines now so you'd hope it won't make a huge dent in the HFC.

MSANs are another active piece of powered kit in the network and one that'll need battery backup. They make perfect sense to sell business services and indeed FTTP on but unsure how good they are for residential areas passed by HFC.

The costs of installing a whole bunch of new cabinets would be non-trivial, unless VM could persuade customers to allow them to rip out the old transport network and replace it with MSANs in the same street furniture though that's perhaps a bit of a tough sell and Ofcom would be all over VM over the outage period.

It's tricky. There're not really many examples to follow as hardly anywhere else has any twisted pair at all in their cable network.

The mothership are quite enthusiastic about getting rid of the PSTN. Whether this happens via PacketCable or more active kit is I guess different. Both get rid of BT Wholesale.

The angle I heard is all geared up to PacketCable both for VoIP and future projects. It's essential in order to transfer to an all-IP network which, with DOCSIS 3.1 and whatever follows after, is where the company will end up being with video delivered by 100% IP multicast.

[Sephiroth]

The modem/router would have a port (E-MTA) as what Igni mentioned. You can plug the analogue phone into that. There would then be a QoS setting to guarantee the VOIP setting.

So end of Superhub eventually, perhaps.

EDIT: Nice noddy diagram: http://encyclopedia2.thefreedictionary.com/EMTA

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by Sephiroth

I'm guessing - but why would VM want to introduce a tier that is lower than the headline speed of BT Infinity Option 1?

That a 200 meg tier is coming seems certain to me.

Remember a lot of people out there still have adsl, the bottom tier will be for the low end of the market.

[Sephiroth]

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sephiroth
I'm guessing - but why would VM want to introduce a tier that is lower than the headline speed of BT Infinity Option 1?

That a 200 meg tier is coming seems certain to me.

Originally Posted by Chrysalis

Remember a lot of people out there still have adsl, the bottom tier will be for the low end of the market.

Hi Chrys

Surely VM are only in the big willy game. 50/100/200 would seem to me to be the mainly marketed tiers. That gives them the scope to save up for 300meg and so on.

Don't you think?

[General Maximus]

I do

[Pierre]

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/01/cab...er-second.html

[Sephiroth]

Originally Posted by Pierre

http://nextbigfuture.com/2015/01/cab...er-second.html

The writer had been well briefed!

[Taf]

A friend just moved to Hong Kong as has opted for 500Mb for £20 rather than 1000Mb for £30. Installed in days too!