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Announcements => News Articles => Topic started by: Bowdon on March 16, 2020, 04:50:16 PM

Title: VM chosen by the GMCA to roll out full fibre
Post by: Bowdon on March 16, 2020, 04:50:16 PM

Virgin Media Scoop £24m Greater Manchester Full Fibre Project
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/03/virgin-media-scoop-24m-greater-manchester-full-fibre-project.html (https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/03/virgin-media-scoop-24m-greater-manchester-full-fibre-project.html)

I've been waiting for months to find out who as been given the contract to supply Greater Manchester's fibre contract and today we find out its VM.

I'm personally disappointed and don't understand why they made that decision. CityFibre owns the dark fibre route around Manchester. OR also have a big full fibre presense nationwide. Yet they chose VM, which I assume will only roll out full fibre using their new business wing to business properties. There is nothing in the contract to roll it eventually out to customers. If it had been a full fibre company then they would have had the natural incentive, VM won't. I suspect consumers will eventually be moved to docsis 3.1 when that comes around.

I can't help but feel disappointed by this. Hopefully OR/Cityfibre might move in to the area anyway.

I'll have to keep an eye on what happens now in the area before I make some move.

Title: Re: VM chosen by the GMCA to roll out full fibre
Post by: niemand on March 16, 2020, 06:01:02 PM

There is nothing in any of the contracts requiring deployment to anything other than local authority properties. This is a local authority procurement.

Title: Re: VM chosen by the GMCA to roll out full fibre
Post by: j0hn on March 16, 2020, 06:18:34 PM

Quote from: Bowdon on March 16, 2020, 04:50:16 PM

There is nothing in the contract to roll it eventually out to customers.

LFFN contracts are for schools, council offices, etc.
Nothing residential.

A new player in the area winning the contract might increase the likelihood of a future residential rollout but not necessarily so.

OpenReach already have Aggregation Nodes all over the place so it wouldn't have made much difference to them doing a future rollout of FTTP.

Cityfibre have dark fibre in Manchester anyway so winning this contract would be unlikely to suddenly trigger a residential rollout.

Quote

If it had been a full fibre company then they would have had the natural incentive, VM won't. I suspect consumers will eventually be moved to docsis 3.1 when that comes around.

If Virgin aren't a full fibre company then I'm curious to know what that glass string with light inside is that I'm using right now for internet access.  ::)

Virgin have already upgraded Manchester to DOCSIS 3.1 and the 1gig packages are available to consumers.