Leading the superfast broadband revolution

[weesteev]

Statement from the Q1 2011 Results found here.

"We will shortly begin a trial to test the real world application of speeds of up to 1.5Gb. This will be the fastest cable broadband connection in the world ever tested and will demonstrate the long-term potential of our superior network."

Discuss...

It's a headline-grabbing stunt.

In the nicest possible way, mind you. I don't doubt they genuinely want to see if they can do it, and one day deliver it, but what are the chances of them actually delivering a saleable, sustainable product in the next 5 years? What would the AUP or download limits, or peak time throttleing policies look like, for example? You would run over the current policies in a matter of seconds at that sort of speed, and applying wholly different policies to a gigabit service whilst retaining the current ones on other tiers would very quickly give the lie to any suggestion that somebody with a 'mere' 100Mb service could in any way be capable of congesting the network.

[weesteev]

Unless this type of service ran on an overlay network with dedicated QOS over other tiers? It is possible and these types of speeds have been lab-trialled in the US and Japan already. It will be interesting to see what comes of this, the recent 200Mb trial appears to have been a success and only time will tell if VM progress further with this option.

Your right though, its grabbing headlines while announcing their financial results, sells more broadsheets!

[Ignitionnet]

Given that there are still 7 figures homes that don't have 50/5 or any published schedule for it and more with no date for 100/10 perhaps we should not get too excited over bonding 32 downstreams.

Always good to grab headlines though.

EDIT: http://www.multichannel.com/article/...st_1_5_Gig.php
http://www.lightreading.com/blog.asp...&site=lr_cable

---------- Post added at 11:15 ---------- Previous post was at 10:39 ----------

Financial nerd as I am the really cool part of the results from the VM POV is this one:

During the quarter, all three major credit rating agencies upgraded the ratings on our Senior Secured Debt to "Investment Grade". This is the first time such a rating has been achieved in the UK cable industry. Following this, we issued approximately £957m equivalent aggregate principal amount of senior secured notes due 2021 in $500m and £650m tranches bearing interest at a rate of 5.25% and 5.5% respectively. £900m of the net proceeds were used to repay a portion of our existing senior credit facility. As a result we have no debt repayments due before 2015.

We intend to retire our $550m 9.125% 2016 notes by the first call date of August 15, 2011 using cash on our balance sheet, further reducing both total debt and future interest expense.

Investment grade dramatically lowers interest rates as it makes the company able to tap the mainstream bond market rather than relying on specialist higher risk investors as can be seen by the reduction in interest rate.

[weesteev]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Given that there are still 7 figures homes that don't have 50/5 or any published schedule for it...

??

50Mb is available across the entire digital cable network. Only the 100Mb is on a staggered rollout plan.

[BenMcr]

Originally Posted by weesteev

??

50Mb is available across the entire digital cable network. Only the 100Mb is on a staggered rollout plan.

I assume it's the /5 bit he was talking about

[weesteev]

Well spotted Ben

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by BenMcr

I assume it's the /5 bit he was talking about

Correct.

---------- Post added at 12:01 ---------- Previous post was at 12:01 ----------

Originally Posted by weesteev

Well spotted Ben

[DABhand]

Im interested in how they will deliver this sort of bandwith to non-server PC. Is there NIC's that can take over 1gb?

[pip08456]

Originally Posted by DABhand

Im interested in how they will deliver this sort of bandwith to non-server PC. Is there NIC's that can take over 1gb?

Look here!

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by DABhand

Im interested in how they will deliver this sort of bandwith to non-server PC. Is there NIC's that can take over 1gb?

This is for businesses not residential customers, it'll be going to commercial 10GbE routers and from there to commercial grade switches to be distributed among several devices within offices.

You highlight precisely why this isn't going to happen for residential customers, it's a technology trial for a potential business service

[DABhand]

Yeah im aware of the PCI-x cards, but show me a PC that has PCI-x motherboards

@Igni - yeah I understand that... but not many businesses have server boxes :P

So my original question is valid, how will they cater to a business who doesn't have a Rack server or similar?

[weesteev]

Originally Posted by DABhand

So my original question is valid, how will they cater to a business who doesn't have a Rack server or similar?

VM Business would supply the termination equipment, the same way they do at the moment.

[Chrysalis]

perhaps they should also trial peering upgrades and uncongested ubr ports

[DABhand]

Originally Posted by weesteev

VM Business would supply the termination equipment, the same way they do at the moment.

Supply a server??

Would be worth it just going for a 6 month trial and keeping the server, some of which can easily be 10k+ in cost lol