I imagine that they'll be completing their build a year early will get BT's attention. This is just the first phase in the program.
Good point, and I agree. Given that the article reports coverage of 250,000 in the first year, it points to great confidence that acceleration is feasible.
Describing DOCSIS 3.0 as cut down is a little odd. It's perfectly capable of delivering 1Gb/100Mb. DOCSIS 3.1 delivers performance far in excess of GPON.
I knew I'd get a comment on that
What the fibre gets cut-down to is indeed very capable, but it is still cut down. It does no more, this decade, than a piece of coax in its place. Its invisibility means it picks up all the inherent limitations of the surrounding network: if that is deployed "on the cheap", the presence of fibre won't fix it.
Let's hope that " on the cheap" no longer applies to VM deployments...
I was tempted to respond to that with 'I know, right? It's like building a GPON network and maxing out the products at 330Mb downstream, 30Mb upstream'.
If I may say, though, equating this with BT's J-i-T approach is perhaps inaccurate. It's far more like BT selling 330Mb over FTTP when it would easily handle more.
I think the reasoning is different there - and all about being able to have future products in the pipeline that will be able to command the £5-£10-£20pm surcharge that seems to be the limit that people are willing to pay for higher-end products.
VM does the same thing, but goes about it in different ways. Their unregulated, vertically-integrated, market gives them options on that.
Both BT and VM are treading a tightrope between cost and income, and have very different technologies to help them achieve balance and growth.
Ironically, both the technology differences and the regulatory differences mean that VM roll outs can happen behind closed doors, while BT's happen very much in the public glare.
VM could certainly deliver 'proper' FTTP services but given Openreach have shown no intention of delivering 'proper' FTTP services to anyone in the very near future where's the commercial drive?
Could they? Really? Their main aim is to sell you TV - and RFoG enables them to deploy fibre in the access network without a single change in the head-end infrastructure - TV or broadband.
Would VM really be ready to make the head-end changes necessary? I suspect VM would rather wait to see whether CableLabs can take DOCSIS somewhere after 3.1.
I'm more interested in the political fallout. Should be entertaining.
It'll feed into the chattering classes, certainly. Whether it reaches anywhere close to policy is another matter.