It is a bit of an odd situation though.
Mike Fries previously stated that he saw no business case to introduce docsis 3.1 at this moment. While I can appreciate that position, this recent comment at the I&TA conference is acting like he wants VM to take the lead towards 10G.
If VM tomorrow delivered 1gig speeds, solid 24-7 they would get a lot of customers
Sure Mike Fries was referring to VM? There's no rush for 3.1 in the UK. The man referred to 'entire gigacities'. Not nations, just cities. All two of them: Bochum in Germany and Warsaw in Poland.
Regardless it's his job to do some PR for the industry in general. There is little evidence that he or VM as a whole are gearing up for anything other than DOCSIS 3.1 on downstream only for the foreseeable let alone the kinds of upgrades needed for full-duplex DOCSIS.
https://cablelabs.com/news/10g-next-great-leap-broadband/ puts the level of ambition into perspective. The best Fries can do is bringing 3.1 to 'cities' and building a network that 'leverages the strategic advantage'. Compare that to what Vodafone are doing with the network they bought from Liberty Global - 6 million premises of gigabit by the end of last year in Germany alone, nearly all 13 million premises passed by end of 2020, and completion of 3.1 upgrades in Spain, 7.9 million premises passed, last year.
https://carrier.huawei.com/en/success-stories/fixed-network/vodafone-spain-achieves%20the-largest-docsis-networkExpect to see the networks in Hungary, Romania and the Czech Republic leave Liberty Global in the dust, too. Fries is blowing sunshine up investors' hindmosts while waiting for Vodafone or A N Other to acquire more of the group's operations. He's spending the bare minimum in the hope that Vodafone or A N Other will pick up most of the bills after he's received his bonus and proceeds from share sales.
As far as a huge influx of customers for gigabit goes I very much doubt it. The uptake of their top tier doesn't give any evidence for this and that's with bundling it. I mean they had to re-introduce 50Mb because so many people didn't want to pay more for 100Mb. I can't see many people paying 50,60,70GBP+ a month en masse for a robust gigabit service.
People in the UK think broadband should be free, the performance flawless.