The Great Fibre Riff-off

lee111s

Blame the ASA for allowing it, not the companies advertising it.

Suck it up, it isn't gonna change.

littleboo

AndyPK wrote: »

You can get 200Mbps over virgins coax.

Where as BT's 1940's? twisted pair infrastructure can only get 80Mbps? maximum between the house and cabinet.

If Virgin supply your area you can get it installed to your house and at a discount if you take 3 services

BT is trialling g.fast now which gives up to 300Mbps. It wasn't long ago the maximum you could get on that same twisted pair was 512k, things move on, just as Virgin haven't been able to offer 200Mbps until relatively recently.

lee111s

littleboo wrote: »

BT is trialling g.fast now which gives up to 300Mbps. It wasn't long ago the maximum you could get on that same twisted pair was 512k, things move on, just as Virgin haven't been able to offer 200Mbps until relatively recently.

G.fast is beyond trial and is now in pilot. Full roll out will begin later this year.

Gigabit is coming to both Openreach FTTP and Virgin's DOCSIS 3.1.

G.fast2 and XG.fast will also vastly improve the speed and, increase the reach of the speeds in time.

VisionMan

I've seen one user complaining he only gets 45Mbps on an 'Up to' 54Mbps package, saying hes been ripped off.

Honestly....

VisionMan

Colin_Maybe wrote: »

Are Hyperoptic available to all households?

No.

JJ_Egan wrote: »

VM originators of course stopped the rollout many years ago due to the owning companys going bust .

Indeed, even Virgin Media don't do fibre/cable to the home. Only to the CAB.

I honestly can't see what so many users hang ups are with FTTC, with them shouting ''BUT ITS NOT REAL FIBRE!!!''.

I'm quite happy with our 74Mbps. Even if it is CAB. But ultimately, who cares how it gets delivered so long as it works?

Pincher

Virgin Media is fibre?

I had 200Mbps installed in January, still same old co-ax somebody buried probably fifteen years ago from the street to the drop box.

http://www.virginmedia.com/shop/broadband/ultrafast.html

You see, most other broadband providers use copper phone line to reach your home, which drops its speed over long distances. But with us, the combination of DOCSIS 3 tech and our unique insulated cable, with a thicker copper core, retains our ultrafast signal. That means you can get more stuff done online, faster.

They make it sound like it's the DOCSIS cable that makes 200Mbps possible. Because of this DOCSIS blurb, I thought it's best to have a new cable run, and got them to drop off a length of Siamese cable. I pulled it myself, so the engineer just has to connect up the two ends, instead of tacking the damned thing all over my house.

And now I find the Siamese cable is just cheap RG59.

https://sewelldirect.com/learning-center/rg59-or-rg6

RG 59 is good for lower frequency signals (anything under about 50 MHz). That makes it a good choice for a closed circuit television (CCTV) video surveillance system. You can even make your installation easier by getting what’s called “Siamese coaxial cable.” This cable consists of a RG 59 cable merged together with a 2C power cable. By using this type of cable you can run the power and video for your security cameras simultaneously, effectively cutting your install time in half. Also some older HD TV’s still use lower frequencies (around 37 MHz), making RG 59 a better choice for them.


What is the point of this DOCSIS 3.1? Since most people will just run it using existing wall sockets, through good old cheap RG59, from before the Siamese days.

If it's just a better modem, using the same old co-ax, the Virgin Media webpage is talking non-sense.

[Deleted User]

VisionMan wrote: »

No.


Indeed, even Virgin Media don't do fibre/cable to the home. Only to the CAB.

I honestly can't see what so many users hang ups are with FTTC, with them shouting ''BUT ITS NOT REAL FIBRE!!!''.

I'm quite happy with our 74Mbps. Even if it is CAB. But ultimately, who cares how it gets delivered so long as it works?

I'm quite happy with my 20Mbps (just tested at 20.11Mbps, they've made changes at our exchange recently and the speeds gone up slightly) on good old ADSL.

The question about Hyperoptic was rhetorical btw.

AndyPK

When they installed mine 4 years ago, it was shotgun cable.


1 side coax for BB/TV
1 side 4 copper wires for phone use. (orange and blue pairs)




Now they have all this DOCSIS blurb.

lee111s

AndyPK wrote: »

When they installed mine 4 years ago, it was shotgun cable.


1 side coax for BB/TV
1 side 4 copper wires for phone use. (orange and blue pairs)




Now they have all this DOCSIS blurb.

DOCSIS is the technology they use to deliver TV and broadband over coax, as opposed to xDSL which suppliers on the Openreach network use.

RFoG is what Virgin use for their FTTP, as opposed to GPoN use by Openreach.

Pincher

AndyPK wrote: »

When they installed mine 4 years ago, it was shotgun cable.


1 side coax for BB/TV
1 side 4 copper wires for phone use. (orange and blue pairs).

I think a shotgun cable is two coax cables side by side, which is typically used for Sky dual LNB to a Sky+ set top box with two LNB F-connector sockets.

The Siamese cable Virgin Media installs has one coax, and one phone cable. The phone Master socket only needs two wires from the drop box (junction box) in front of the house. I have found that they sometimes loop back the slave/secondary extension connections to the drop box, so you can run the extension socket from that point, which makes sense, if you have an old cable run from that position to another room.

There is a variation on this. About twenty years ago, I had an 80cm satellite dish put up, and I asked the CAI qualified installer for the possibility of motorising the dish in the future. He used a much heavier duty looking cable, which had the coax for the LNB bonded to four thick wires, much thicker than BT twisted pair wires.

I subsequently worked out that the four wires are meant for a 36V DC motor, which could drive gigantic dishes, say two meters. For a 80cm dish, DiSEqC 1.2 motors work through the coax, so there was no need for the four wire 36V system at all.

I also found out that the four wire cable can be bought separately, so there was no need to use an integrated cable at all. He used it just so he can charge me extra!