Quote:
Originally Posted by eldoctore
So numpty question - if underground (assume wire) cabling from street cabinet around corner (a distance ) to our house wall box is over 80 metres then 1g will be unavailable? Not seen any virgin services delivered overhead but maybe I am missing obvious.
Know that was a tough job to 'pull through' from street cabinet to our house and needed a team with armoured cable (could withstand the stresses of pulling) to accomplish it. There will I assume be fibre cabling to the cabinet <>virgin network which will be much closer
|
The bit you're missing is the confusion between the different technologies the various providers use. When discussing the above, we were referring to the DSL tech that almost all providers other than Virgin use - the one that piggybacks off the phone line going into your home.
Virgin uses a completely different technology, instead using a shielded coaxial cable going to your home. This cable, being shielded, is capable of much more bandwidth over longer distances than a copper phone line (or aluminium, for some unlucky folks).
In the UK, Openreach (Formerly BT before they got split off) builds and maintains the majority of the phone network and thus providers like Sky, Vodafone, TalkTalk, etc. all piggyback off of this network. Occasionally they'll have their own equipment in cabs and that kind of thing (Known as unbundling), but the technology to get from your house to them is the same - some form of DSL.
There's ADSL, ADSL2, VDSL, etc. and while there's a lot more to it, essentially the different technologies focus on making better use of the bandwdith available in a phone line, sometimes in tandem with the line being "shorter". So ADSL has a range in terms of several KM, but max speeds are single digit's of Mbit, whereas VDSL can go up to ~80Mbit (Or ~120Mbit depending on other factors) but with a much shorter range of under 80M.
All good stuff. All utterly irrelevant to Virgin.
Virgin, using coaxial, doesn't use DSL, it uses DOCSIS which is basically trying to do the same sort of thing but in a completely different way and able to do it in an arguably more efficient way as corruption is less of an issue. You also don't need to make room for voice calls - because don't forget, a phone line's primary purpose is for voice calls, not data (though I'm sure some would argue otherwise).
Like with DSL, there's different versions of DOCSIS, from 1.0 up to 3.1 (or 4.0 depending on who you ask). Like with DSL, each newer version focuses on making more efficient room of the frequencies involved to offer higher speeds.
The whole "gig1" thing and its limited availability is purely down to Virgin having to upgrade their network to the latest DOCSIS standard. That's also why you need a new hub, because everything from your Modem all the way to Virgin's equipment has to be on the same or greater version to take advantage of it. There's more to it as well, even in areas offering gig1 there's plenty more for Virgin to do to unlock more spectrum in their cables to be able to make full use of it but that will take years.
For completion, there's 1 other kind of internet provider I haven't mentioned (ignoring mobile/wireless) - Fibre.
Despite Virgin claiming they've got a fibre optic network for years and BT very quickly following suit when they launched VDSL (Aka "Infinity"), if you've been paying attention we've been talking about copper cables this whole time. The fibre is "down the line" somewhere, a cab or a lamp post or something. There are providers that offer pure fibre connections, fibre right up to your house. Fibre is the best you can get, it goes further and has almost unlimited bandwidth depending on what you plug in either end of it - but it's expensive to roll out, which is why it's been largely reserved for businesses and people able to afford hundreds of £ a month. As Openreach pushes fibre closer to your home, eventually it gets more cost effective to just push fibre down that "last mile". Even virgin doesn't tend to build new coaxial deployments these days, instead preferring to deploy pure fibre where possible (though still using some of the same equipment in your home for...reasons). We've finally hit that tipping point, so expect more fibre options in your area over the next year or so.
Join CF
You are here: 
