MSE News: Virgin Media to boost broadband speeds

The average UK broadband speed remains less than half that advertised, with regulator Ofcom pushing for new rules to ensure consumers are not misled. Therefore, you may not get exactly the speed providers claim.

This comment isn't right in this article. Speed of cable broadband is not the same as copper based ADSL (whereby speeds are average of half of advertised).

Virgin Media’s cable services, available to 48 per cent of the population (which is what the article is about), delivered average download speeds that were much closer to advertised ‘up to’ speeds than ADSL services, delivering between 90 and 96 per cent of the advertised speeds. Virgin Media’s highest speed 50Mbit/s package delivered an average download speed of around 46Mbit/s.



http://media.ofcom.org.uk/2011/03/02/average-broadband-speed-is-still-less-than-half-advertised-speed/

markk_ wrote: »

I never understood why the government didn't force Virgin to lease their fibre optic network to other companies like companies do with BT? I'm sure there's a good reason but it makes far more sense to do this than BT rolling out their own fibre optics (FTTC) - essentially meaning we have two fibre optic networks in this country. Seems a wasted opportunity and a waste of money not to use and build upon what we already have.

I think the government should force you to share your home with the homeless vagrants and junkies in your town. Seems pointless to develop shelters when the homeless can share your settee.

Do you see now why your comment is completely off-the-wall? Why should any government be able to force the owner of some privately owned property to share it? With BT it was different - part of the terms when they bought the publicly developed infrastructure was that it had to be shared with competitors to avoid a private monopoly.

So, I'm going up from 20Mb/s, where I get a fairly reliable 17-18Mb/s for most of the time, falling to 12Mb/s at peak hours. This will increase to 60Mb/s in June, and all for no additional cost? Bring it ON! So with a 300% increase in speed and none in cost, this is a no brainer. As for BT, they're touting 'Infinity' (as 10Mb/s LESS than VM's cable service) as the benefit go fibre-optic broadband. No wonder Virgin's van have a branding that states 'To Infinity... and Beyond!"

markk_ wrote: »

I never understood why the government didn't force Virgin to lease their fibre optic network to other companies like companies do with BT? I'm sure there's a good reason but it makes far more sense to do this than BT rolling out their own fibre optics (FTTC) - essentially meaning we have two fibre optic networks in this country. Seems a wasted opportunity and a waste of money not to use and build upon what we already have.

BT's network is generally only high speed to the street cabinet, the actual connection to the home is still normally via a bit of dodgy copper (or if you're really unlucky, aluminum!), that was never intended for any digital services and is completely unshielded.

VM's is pretty much built from the ground up with high data capacity and shielding, right to the home.

The reason BT has to open it's network up, is because it is the only company to service the whole country (well about 98% or so), and iirc it was a condition of it's privatisation, as before that it had been largely built out of public money, including the really time consuming and expensive part (actually getting the wiring to the houses).
IIRC BT still has some advantages in terms of where they can build/lay cabling over VM because of their public service obligations.

VM, is the result of a number of small cable companies that had local franchises, and pretty much went bust as they had to finance their growth from private funding, and gradually they merged into fewer, larger companies to try and keep going by making cost savings.

To put it simply, BT was a publicly funded virtual monopoly operation that covered the entire country, whilst the cable companies had to compete with an existing telecoms company and use their own money to do it.

There is nothing, except the costs involved to stop Sky* or another one of the companies that uses BT's equipment starting their own last mile network (IE running their own cabling to your house), it's just that they, generally don't want to do it or can't risk the money (remember Sky for example are quite happy with you using their satellite service for TV, their BB is largely to get a little bit more money from you, and to try and stop you going to VM for BB AND TV.

I'm quite looking forward to the upgrade, I practically took the arm off NTL when they cabled our area up (I remember being really excited when they started), and announced their cable modem access was starting up after about 6 months.
And that was when you had to buy your own modem from an approved dealer (£150), pay for the instal, and then pay IIRC £40 a month for 512k!
Since then they've increased our speed multiple times, and these days I'm paying about £30ish for 50mb (I'm on a bundle deal so the exact price of the broadband is a bit fluffy depending on how you look at the discounts).



*IIRC if Sky were to put their profits on hold for a couple of years, they could afford to cable up a number of large towns/cities that VM don't cover but it's risky to invest that much (VM are still paying off the debts the various companies that it emerged from built up about 10 years ago).