How big are VM's infills?

[Ignitionnet]

Grief you guys (VM) have a shedload of duct empty around this general area. Quite an abrupt end to the build, then!

[Ignitionnet]

In other news via a 'quirk' despite being in Leeds this area appears was in a Telewest franchise along with Beeston and other bits in between Wakefield and Bradford.

Yorkshire Cable would've been building here.

So makes sense that coming off that Telewest fibre run or running with it would've been the CATV for the area, had it been built!

Looks like Middleton and Hunslet in Leeds, and Tingley in Wakefield are all over the place as far as plant goes.

[Ignitionnet]

Drawn a blank.

Answer at the moment an emphatic 'no', so an area the size of most towns has zero cable, due to Bell Cablemedia not finishing the build. The joys of franchises, this area and the 2 areas directly to our north all had their franchise owned by a different company to most of the rest of the city, the result being most of the rest of the city had cable.

We're a pretty big black hole in the cable coverage and it looks like we'll remain that way for the foreseeable.

There is core fibre running through the area, with ducts going to Wakefield, Bradford and (I think) Seacroft, at very least the ducts to Wakefield and Bradford go through served CATV areas and there seem to be spurs off that ducting.

Disappointing.

Thanks for the advice.

[Ignitionnet]

Have asked for a price to get it delivered here.

[Ignitionnet]

Anyone know if VM have ever sold ducts?

If they have no intention of doing anything with the thousands of premises passed by ducts around here, and certainly no inclination has been shown, would seem to make sense for them to liquidate the asset.

[Sirius]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Anyone know if VM have ever sold ducts?

If they have no intention of doing anything with the thousands of premises passed by ducts around here, and certainly no inclination has been shown, would seem to make sense for them to liquidate the asset.

Never heard of it happening.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Sirius

Never heard of it happening.

Ta. There is something going on at high level, we'll see what the outcome is.

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Anyone know if VM have ever sold ducts?

Are you sure that its VM that own them? Seems odd that they've done all the hard graft in digging up the roads, which is the bulk of the cost of providing services and then not providing them.

[MrIca]

Originally Posted by Horizon

Are you sure that its VM that own them? Seems odd that they've done all the hard graft in digging up the roads, which is the bulk of the cost of providing services and then not providing them.

But that happened up and down rhe UK. Here we have one road in a village that is completely ducted right up to every little house, little jointbox covers with NYNEX on them but the ducts are empty and there's no cabinets. There's also no duct to connect this road to the rest of the network which is 2 miles away.

[Horizon]

....yeah, that sounds like the old cablecos we all use to know and love....!

Must have been a Nynex manager that lived in the village and insisted that his road got "prepared" for cable, even though there would have been zero chance of a small village getting cable tv back then, let alone now. Residential streets should only have been dug up once the "trunk" fibre cable has been passed through the area. There is no point in digging up streets and pavements, until the cable tv network via the main trunk fibre cable is there. What a waste.

My road and the surrounding estate got dug up and cabled about six months after the main fibre cable went through the main road in my area.

What ignitionet is talking about is not a few houses, but many. 90% of the money was already spent in preparing his area, so seems very odd that the work wasn't finished.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Horizon

Are you sure that its VM that own them? Seems odd that they've done all the hard graft in digging up the roads, which is the bulk of the cost of providing services and then not providing them.

VM didn't do the hard graft, they acquired the companies that had, and had gotten themselves in big financial trouble doing it.

The 100,000 premises in East London are at least partially properties with empty ducts.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Horizon

....yeah, that sounds like the old cablecos we all use to know and love....!

Must have been a Nynex manager that lived in the village and insisted that his road got "prepared" for cable, even though there would have been zero chance of a small village getting cable tv back then, let alone now. Residential streets should only have been dug up once the "trunk" fibre cable has been passed through the area. There is no point in digging up streets and pavements, until the cable tv network via the main trunk fibre cable is there. What a waste.

My road and the surrounding estate got dug up and cabled about six months after the main fibre cable went through the main road in my area.

What ignitionet is talking about is not a few houses, but many. 90% of the money was already spent in preparing his area, so seems very odd that the work wasn't finished.

Have a look at the picture I put earlier in this thread. All those properties connected to nothing.

Work in some areas stopped, literally, overnight. It wasn't just one construction crew doing everything ya know, they were working in parallel and were to meet in the middle. The work in individual streets is more time consuming and it would've been crazy not doing that in parallel with the trunk build.

See attachments, all empty ducts apart from core network fibre that runs through some of it down the main road route, and some of those areas aren't connected to anything at all, in the first picture there's duct to properties which goes nowhere else.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Horizon

What ignitionet is talking about is not a few houses, but many. 90% of the money was already spent in preparing his area, so seems very odd that the work wasn't finished.

ntl, Telewest and VM's expansion budgets were, being mean, laughable. What money there was was spent on upgrading some analogue-only areas to 2-way digital and rebuilding 2-way networks to higher standards.

Remember that some analogue areas were considered too expensive to upgrade to 2-way digital so were simply ditched. Some of these East London areas among them.

Edit: It is worth mentioning though that in these areas with no cabinets but ducting and tees the most cost efficient way to deploy services to them now is FTTP. Doesn't require cabinets as no active hardware required out in the field at all beyond an ONT on each subscriber's wall.

[1andrew1]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Have a look at the picture I put earlier in this thread. All those properties connected to nothing.

Work in some areas stopped, literally, overnight. It wasn't just one construction crew doing everything ya know, they were working in parallel and were to meet in the middle. The work in individual streets is more time consuming and it would've been crazy not doing that in parallel with the trunk build.

See attachments, all empty ducts apart from core network fibre that runs through some of it down the main road route, and some of those areas aren't connected to anything at all, in the first picture there's duct to properties which goes nowhere else.

I lived in a Nynex area and the motto seemed to be to do it as quickly as possible so lots of teams working in parallel. The longer it takes to lay the cable, the longer it took for Nynex to get subscribers' money in so on paper it made sense to do it speedily. In practise this meant entire roads with poor pavements whillst cable was laid and unhappy residents. That was when it was for cable TV, I think residents will be far more forgiving these days as it is also for speedy broadband.

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

Have a look at the picture I put earlier in this thread. All those properties connected to nothing.

Work in some areas stopped, literally, overnight. It wasn't just one construction crew doing everything ya know, they were working in parallel and were to meet in the middle. The work in individual streets is more time consuming and it would've been crazy not doing that in parallel with the trunk build.

See attachments, all empty ducts apart from core network fibre that runs through some of it down the main road route, and some of those areas aren't connected to anything at all, in the first picture there's duct to properties which goes nowhere else.

Just done a bit of Googling Street View down the Middleton Ring Road and some surrounding roads. Nice area, by the way, just the kind of place that cablecos like to deal with!

Clearly there is ducting along the ring road and some streets. You can see where the ducts go up to each individual house. But as you say, its hit and miss. I personally don't think there is any cable in any of the ducts, or the ring road. There are clearly no cable street cabinets and I didn't see any BT street cabinets either. Do you have BT fibre services available in your area?

I think the street diggers "the Murphy Men", were given a whole area to dig and duct and so they started it as they saw fit, hence the ad hoc nature of it. Some roads have ducts, some don't.

I don't think the cableco ever had any oversight on the work being done or were ever involved at street level. At some point the money dried up and the work was abandoned.

If there was no oversight, it calls into question the quality of the work done and whether the ducts that were built are fit for purpose. What may have seemed a small task to begin with, could actually become something else, ie a total rebuild from scratch.

Someone from VM has got to go the area and have a look, assuming they don't already know what was done and not done. When all the cablecos started merging with one another, a lot of information was lost as people were laid off, so VM may not have accurate records for the area.

If the ducts that have been built are fine, I cannot see why VM wouldn't want to lay cable in the area and put in their street cabinets. The bulk of the work and cost is done.

Assuming a small takeup of services, say 10%, a 1000 homes paying about £40 a month, that's half a million quid a year in revenue being lost. No wonder all the old cablecos went bust. They were just crap.

Originally Posted by Ignitionnet

ntl, Telewest and VM's expansion budgets were, being mean, laughable. What money there was was spent on upgrading some analogue-only areas to 2-way digital and rebuilding 2-way networks to higher standards.

Remember that some analogue areas were considered too expensive to upgrade to 2-way digital so were simply ditched. Some of these East London areas among them.

Edit: It is worth mentioning though that in these areas with no cabinets but ducting and tees the most cost efficient way to deploy services to them now is FTTP. Doesn't require cabinets as no active hardware required out in the field at all beyond an ONT on each subscriber's wall.

But VM don't do FTTP, but you could point out that very fact to them. Not having to build a load of street cabinets is a big incentive. But I have never heard of VM even considering doing FTTP, so good luck on that one!

As for East London, a totally different situtation and its already been mentioned in the thread about the East London expansion why it wasn't done.

Basically, the area was/still is made up of a high immigrant population from Bangladesh and Pakistan. It is densely populated, the highest in the country. When the cableco started offering services in those areas it found out there was a very high number of "issues", like bills not being paid and theft of services. A very high number of issues... The cableco, Encom, never publicised this for fear of being branded racists, but those areas were abandoned for that reason. The poor quality ducting being given out as the official reason for not upgrading the areas is rubbish. By the way, although some of these areas have changed, most have not. So, VM will rediscover this is due course....