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[Black Sheep]

Breaking news that VM are to invest 3 Billion into their fibre network. Competition is alive and well .............

[captainkirk]

I wish we had more competition out here in the wilds of Suffolk Black Sheep - I can't see cable getting here anytime soon which is a shame, it would be nice to have a choice.  Do you think BT will upgrade the copper lines from the fttc cabinets before long or is this something that will stay for the long run?

[Black Sheep]

This is pure and simple guesswork, as it's way above my paygrade decision-making status. I would guess with the advent of G.fast and of course vectoring technology ..... you'll have to put up with what you've got, in terms of underground cable ??

I may be way off the mark though, and there could be a network-investment programme in the offing to replace all ali cable, and/or any low poundage cables .... but I doubt it. 

Again, this is only a guess, but the word-on-the-street is that VM's recently announced investment will provide access for another 4 million EU's onto their network. My thoughts are that will only be in heavily populated area's, as was the case when their networks initial investor (NYNEX), first installed their infrastructure circa 20-odd years ago ?? It could be great news for some, but only low percentages when one takes the total BB users in the UK.

It's exciting times for BB and competition is always a good thing. It may be a catalyst for BTOR to throw even more money at future technologies/network investment ...... however it pans out (and only those at the top of the BT tree will know), it ensures we (OR) can't just sit on our laurels.

[Ronski]

This reminds me of something I was told over Christmas by a friend, he was told by a Virgin engineer that they were going to be expanding the Virgin retail network in to our area (Thanet). There is Virgin fibre in our area but only for business use, but I'm sure cables were laid around twenty years ago, but never used. So perhaps it's on the cards for us.

[WWWombat]

It is good news, competition-wise, but I suspect the majority of the new coverage will be infill near existing urban coverage. Even so, it has been such a long time since the cable networks did this level of expansion, this can only be seen as a MAJOR move.

I also don't think it will make any difference to rural areas. I saw something that reckoned VM will end up at around 60% coverage from this, whereas the BDUK-subsidised areas kicked in at the 75th percentile and we're now at the 80th percentile; all with a lot of complaints about urban infill there!

From the wording used, it seems that VM are now battling in the "ultrafast" arena. Perhaps this is something of a response to BT's announcement of G.fast trials a couple of weeks ago. Vectoring also gives BT the opportunity to work in the "ultrafast" marketplace, but only just.

[Mark07]

I may be way off the mark though, and there could be a network-investment programme in the offing to replace all ali cable, and/or any low poundage cables .... but I doubt it. 

If only! most of my line is Ali cable, apparently my line should be capable of 60Mbps going off distance if it was copper, but I'm stuck with 35 because of the ali.

Seen quite a few OR vans around my street / estate this week, either everyone is getting fibre or everyone is getting faults from the crap wiring 

[UncleUB]

There are small parts of Sheffield cable enabled,but not where I live unfortunately

The house we lived in previously was in a small area that was the first to get cable TV and telephone around 1993.At the time it was a company called Yorkshire Cable,then it was Telewest then NTL and now Virgin Media.We found it excellent and it was rarely faulty.
I hope it comes to our area but I very much doubt it,no FTTC either now so at present stuck with just under a 3mb connection for the time being.I say that as BT has now joined up with local councils and funding is in place to start the work installing FTTC some time this year.It will be ongoing right into 2017.Fingers crossed it will be sooner rather than later

[d2d4j]

Hi

I thought it was cable and wireless first, but as with yourself, very early nineties they laid cable to a DP buried on our road (private road). Unfortunately they only terminated half the houses on the road, we were not one of them and I am told every time I tried there is no fibre on our road, even sent a manager out to inspect, which I meet and showed him, he confirmed but nothing changed.

The DP is approx 2 meters from one of our walls.

Also, which I have not read on the forum is how fast ADSL could be. I understand the limits as stated, but I have seen and tested using speedtest.net, an ADSL line from demon, which should be 8mb down spin up to just over 200mb a second when demon lost some servers, and the throttle was lifted. This on a normal PSTN line. It only lasted less then 3 hours though.

Many thanks

John

[Black Sheep]

As I remember it around our way, (*which is quite vivid, seeing as the contractors were cutting our own UG cables every single day  ), is that NYNEX were the fore-runners. I think C&W or Bell came next in the take-over ??

*Granted, most of our cables were probably only a couple of inched underground anyway. 

[WWWombat]

The cable franchise setup was complex beyond belief, and the variety of mergers and acquisitions must have been fun for the lawyers.

You can get a picture looking at a list of licences

Edit: And the pentration rates as of 1995.

[Black Sheep]

Our CEO's thoughts on this recent VM announcement. TBH, it's nothing exciting or thought-provoking ..... it's basically just an acknowledgement imho. 

You may have seen today’s announcement from Virgin Media that they plan to invest £3bn in expanding their network, in areas close to their current footprint. I wanted to take this opportunity to share my perspective on the subject.
What will this mean in practice? If they achieve their aspiration, by 2020 an additional 4m homes will be able to sign up to Virgin Media’s service, that’s about 60% of the UK. Their focus will be on urban areas, which is largely where they are today. They’ll be offering speeds of up to 152Mbps.
Last week we announced our plans to deliver G.fast – our ultrafast broadband of 500 megabits per second - across the UK over the next few years.  We have more than 22m homes passed  already with superfast fibre and 2m BDUK premises so far, meaning we are also increasingly reaching the harder to reach, sometimes rural parts of our nation.
There is an important difference between us that it’s worth highlighting. Our objective is to build all of Britain’s Connected Future – to offer a super-fast experience to as much of the UK as we can, including the more remote rural areas.  We are not cherry-picking the most profitable locations, but rather seeking to provide complete coverage over time for our customers.
All of this does show though that we are operating in an increasingly competitive market, and of course that is good news for the UK. However, it does mean that we will have more competitors entering the market and we need to respond to that. Without a doubt, we will progressively find ourselves going 'head-to-head' with Virgin in more towns and cities than today.
We know that our task is not simply building networks, but also delivering the power of the internet to customers who increasingly depend on what we provide. That means we must continue to be guided by our customers and the competitive market as to how we work, so we can better meet their ever changing needs and provide the service that they are now demanding.
This is why we have been organising ourselves around our customers and why we are looking to do things in a more joined up and less fragmented way to deliver a consistently better experience. We have seen about a third more Saturday visits over the last couple of years and the fact that we are responding to that is just one example of how we must change. It becomes even more important that we respond to our customers changing needs, when we see announcements like today’s from Virgin, and I am sure other competitors will be looking at this with interest.
I wanted to share my thoughts and also to make sure you have our latest position, so you can speak with confidence when talking to our customers, colleagues, family and friends. I believe that we can say with pride that Virgin are following our lead, a few years after we started.
However, this news underlines the need for us as a business to deliver even better service for our customers and stay ahead of the competition by constantly evolving.
Many thanks
Joe
 

[mikehiow]

Yet here I am in developed London, only able to receive 10mbps ADSL because my line is EO and the developer had a deal with Sky - despite VM and Fibre boxes almost right outside.

[Black Sheep]

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