Kitz Forum
Announcements => News Articles => Topic started by: niemand on April 27, 2016, 01:01:24 PM
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Virgin Media Commits to Huge UK Rollout of Ultrafast FTTP Broadband (http://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2016/04/virgin-media-commits-big-uk-rollout-ultrafast-fttp-broadband.html)
Cable operator Virgin Media (Liberty Global) has announced that their on-going £3bn “Project Lightning” network expansion will work to ensure that “at least a quarter” of the additional 4 million UK premises being reached by 2019 are to be connected using ultrafast Fibre-to-the-Premise (FTTP) technology.
Project Lightning, which was first announced in February 2015 (here), will ultimately expand Virgin Media’s network to put it within reach of 17 million premises across the United Kingdom; equating to around 60-65% coverage of all homes and businesses (up from c.45% last year). Interestingly the completion year has also been moved forward to 2019 from 2020.
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Your turn, BT.
VM Press release (http://about.virginmedia.com/press-release/9512/virgin-media-announces-largest-uk-fibre-broadband-rollout)
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so 1 million. Moderate rollout :)
Still thats a hell of a lot more than BT have done.
No FTTP in existing docsis areas?
Ignition maybe you jumped the gun on this post, you posted before ispreview made story public?
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No FTTP in existing docsis areas?
Infill is going to be HFC pretty much universally.
The ISP Review story was posted at 11:45 this morning.
EDIT: Existing areas where the network is being extended and new nodal areas built will for the most part have to put up with 1.218GHz HFC. The horror.
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your link doesnt work :)
Sorry we couldn't find the page you wanted
It seems we can’t find what you’re looking for. Perhaps searching, or returning to the homepage via the link below, might help.
http://www.ispreview.co.uk
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Ah! It does now.
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yep see you fixed, thanks.
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This will be interesting to watch, as it will bring competition for BT in new areas.
Its nice to see Virgin doing some serious expansion - some of it FTTP.
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I think this is a good move forward and should be welcomed.
Only the customer can gain when 2 rival companies start trying to outbuild each other.
I hadnt thought of VM using a hybrid technology before. But thinking about it, effectively VM's network means potentially a form of FTTP could be more rapidly deployed by connecting directly to the network.
I think depending on how successful VM is in this project it could make BT / OR take the gamble to up its own FTTP production, as well as deploy faster G.fast.
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???
Am I missing something here? Is this something to get excited about? Is this something the competition will be at all concerned about? Or feel compelled to match, or beat?
My understanding of the choices available to cable companies is that fibre is installed as a future-proofing concern only, ready for the eventual day that they are forced away from HFC/coax/DOCSIS. It will be used now identically to coax via RFoG. There will be no service that cannot be done on coax.
For the punter, there is nothing to be gained until that day. Until then, it might as well be copper - and the competition will know that.
The only question is ... When will that day be? My guess is more than a decade away.
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Largely true.
Now think of it from the political and PR angle rather than the technical one.
That's why it hurts.
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I'll add that, if I'm right, then VM are laying fibre in the ground, with a plan to use a cut-down service (DOCSIS 3.0) in the immediate future, with DOCSIS 3.1 in prospect, in the hope/expectation of being able to use it for "full native" application in a decade+, maybe.
That sounds precisely the same as BT are doing in laying the fibre spine infrastructure. Cut-down FTTC as one phase, cut-down G.Fast in the next phase, FTTP later maybe.
RFoG, essentially, brings fibre down to the level of copper! Proper FTTP services are not imminent.
Update:
Largely true.
Now think of it from the political and PR angle rather than the technical one.
That's why it hurts.
It strikes me as the cable equivalent to "fibre to the press release" - a case of "too good to be true" that's taken people hook, line & sinker. The intended effect?
It seems to have fuelled misplaced optimism that it will force BT's hand in some way too. I don't see it.
Note: don't mistake me entirely. It is great to see VM expand, and great to see them deploy more fibre in the mix. But, in the grand scheme of things, I think they'd have motivated BT more if they announced they were targeting an extra million with coax (total 5 million) rather than saying they were using fibre to get to 1 million of their existing target.
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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.
They're using FTTP partly because it's cheaper and faster to build thanks to the mini trenching and partly because it's more capable.
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 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.
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?
When G.fast becomes a commercial product VM will beat it with DOCSIS 3.0. Little point in spending the cash on capacity for fun.
I doubt this'll force BT's hand. They'll either say they don't need to deploy FTTP, which is true, or give reasons why they can't invest.
I'm more interested in the political fallout. Should be entertaining.
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doesnt FTTP avoid the capacity headache's of docsis, particularly upstream? As well as the timeslot issue? so no more high jitter. I wouldnt say this is equivalent to docsis on a technical level.
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doesnt FTTP avoid the capacity headache's of docsis, particularly upstream? As well as the timeslot issue? so no more high jitter. I wouldnt say this is equivalent to docsis on a technical level.
Once the signal is converted from fibre/RFoG back to coax/RF, the cable plugs into one of the existing hub/routers. Same routers, same STBs.
Doesn't that mean the presence of fibre must be, essentially, invisible to the layers running on top? They work as before ...
http://www.lightwaveonline.com/articles/2009/10/rfog-plus-pon--enabling-cables-all-ip-future-64581082.html
That article is interesting, in that it thinks a single (spine) fibre for 32 subscribers in a PON is wasteful, so has a WDM solution in a 'virtual hub'.
That idea is about the same as BT wiring their GPONs into the FTTC cabinet, and sharing backhaul to the exchange - perhaps WDM, perhaps 10Gb PtP.
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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.
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Regarding changes to the head-end they are already doing those (http://www.huawei.com/ilink/en/solutions/broader-smarter/HW_328529) for reasons unreleated to FTTP, and even on a GPON network it's perfectly feasible to deliver the TV via RF - this is what Verizon do, complete with coax feed into the STB.
One platform for FTTx and DOCSIS
When deploying CCAP networks with access over coaxial cables, MSOs often apply FTTP methods for newly constructed areas and commercial users, such as, passive optical network (PON), RFoverlay, DPoE/DPoG, and RFoG. PON technology, with a mature industrial chain and robust bandwidth expansion capabilities, is the standard method for future FTTx. A distributed network can converge with PON where both PON and DOCSIS can be deployed on one access platform without changing the O&M process of the DOCSIS system. Therefore distributed networks have become the primary choice for carriers implementing network convergence.
Things have moved on a bit since the old CATV headends. We're not far from seeing Remote PHY (http://www.cisco.com/c/en/us/solutions/collateral/service-provider/converged-cable-access-platform-ccap-solution/white-paper-c11-732260.html) hitting the streets. Or cabinets. Whatever.
The days where signals from a CMTS and signals from the TV QAMs were simply pushed into a splitter and then sent into some optics are long gone. The CMTS and TV multiplexers output UDP over Ethernet via fibre into switches which feed Edge QAMs so none of it goes RF until the last minute.
TL;DR the modern headend is pretty modular and, largely, delivery platform agnostic.