back to article Virgin Media starts its broadband-of-the-gaps fibre rollout

Virgin Media has started work connecting customers to the fibre broadband infill it announced in February. The £3bn programme significantly larger than anything planned by BT and represents a growing trend among companies to provide higher speed broadband than available with the UK incumbent. Virgin offers a 152Mbps service, …

  1. SuccessCase

    It would be nice if they got service for their existing customers to work without continual drop-outs first. Virgin, there is this thing called network monitoring, where you can pro-actively identify when connections are developing problems before the customer even notices. Use it.

    Oh and when I phone up, don't pretend you can see I haven't rebooted my Cable Modem for ages and that I should try doing that, when it is the first thing I do before phoning if the system has developed problems. It just proves you would rather lie to your customers to save a bit of time than be honest and that often your callcentre's don't actually have a view of the status of my Cable Modem. I'm sure often that request fixes the issue, but it's really annoying when there actually is a problem and you pretend it needs to be done.

    1. Professor Clifton Shallot

      At its worst VM telephone support is the very worst I have ever encountered in any situation ever.

      The do have some very good guys - but not many and not out of normal working hours in the UK in my experience.

      If I honestly believed there was a competitor with an equivalent product and better support I'd switch but I've heard horror stories about all of them.

      1. Jon 37

        If you can get BT FTTC, then A&A (http://aaisp.net/) are very good. Their tech support is provided by real techies who know what they're talking about, in their office in the UK. They're a small company with a single office, so no buck-passing. They're a BT reseller, and they have a reputation for complaining to BT a lot to get faults fixed. I moved to them after 2 other ISPs had failed to fix a fault, and they got it fixed with 1 phone call and a BT engineer visit.

        1. Danny 14

          Up here in Cumbria virgin bought out the local cable provider. Since then ive had 2 issues. One was a lack of telephone connection, it simply wouldn't accept calls (although I could dial out). This was resolved with one telephone call (15 mins on hold on a sunday afternoon). The second was a regular drop out - happened clockwork every 45 mins for just short of 180 seconds. This time I telephoned on an evening (cant remember the day but it was midweek) about 18:00 ish. about 30 mins on hold and the issue was sorted in an hour (initial call was answered and I was transferred to Manchester, 10 mins of fault finding on the phone). Callback was promised when it was fixed (which didn't happen) but it simply stopped dropping.

          apart from these two incidents the connection has been flawless. Hub is setup in modem mode with a homebrew openWRT router on a PI. I don't actually remember ever consciously rebooting the PI.

  2. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. chris 17 Silver badge

      @ 1980s_coder

      please explain what advantage you expect to have by having IPV6?

      I think its a privacy nightmare just waiting to bite the first ISP that adopts.

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

        1. chris 17 Silver badge

          have you asked for IP addresses? maybe change your ISP to one that provides static addresses, they are still available.

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

        2. phil dude
          Thumb Up

          @1980s_coder "Some of us like to run private servers from home, if we're out and about all the time. The internet is more than just cat videos and pirated music, you know."

          + 1,000,000.

          P.

          1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        A&A provide IPv6

  3. Chris McFaul

    cable my street

    According to cable my street - my street (which admittedly was only built 22 years ago) doesn't even exist.

    If i put my postcode in, there is no list of addresses for me to choose from.

    If it doesn't even think the street exists, no wonder i don't have fibre broadband yet!

    1. Nifty Silver badge

      Re: cable my street

      Ditto with me (due to a new address-to-postcode assignment). So I emailed Virgin and badgered them. As a result they claim to be cabling my street - in this case a potentially lucrative single block of 40 flats developed 1 year ago and sitting adjacent to a Virgin junction cabinet all along - real soon now.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: cable my street

        "a potentially lucrative single block of 40 flats developed 1 year ago"

        Flats can be a PITA to retrofit with any utility service. And since VM's penetration is around 1:6 properties passed IIRC, your 40 flats may only yield 5 paying customers. Installation and connection is going to have to be really cheap if that will pay off.

        1. Nifty Silver badge

          Re: cable my street

          That's probably why all those flat-dwelling Koreans have such poor internet then

  4. AndrueC Silver badge
    WTF?

    The £3bn programme significantly larger than anything planned by BT

    Eh?

    "G.fast will help BT deliver ultrafast speeds of up to 500Mbps to most of the UK within a decade. Deployment will start in 2016/17, subject to the pilots being successful. "

    Virgin offers a 152Mbps service, and we’ve also seen high speed availability offered recently by AQL, Gigaclear and Wightfibre.

    And BT offer a 330/30 service in select areas.

    Was this an El Reg article or just a reprint of a VM press release?

    1. MrWibble

      Nowhere in that BT press release does it say the level of investment in g.fast, so £3bn is greater than "unknown"

      1. This post has been deleted by its author

      2. AndrueC Silver badge

        Nowhere in that BT press release does it say the level of investment in g.fast, so £3bn is greater than "unknown"

        If the article was in the Financial Times you might have a point but the rest of the article goes on to mention the number of properties being passed in various locations. I think it's pretty obvious that the main thrust of the article is how many more people are going to benefit from VM's network. That is after all the thing most of us are interested in - whether it costs £3b or £3 doesn't matter to most of us.

        VM are going to cover an extra 10% of the UK. BT say they are going to cover 'most' of the country. I think we can all agree that 'most' is significantly larger than 10% ;)

        Note that I'm not knocking VM's expansion plans. I thought it sounded good when I first heard about it and I still do. More competition in the retail market can only be a good thing and physical competition in the local loop is best of all. Maybe the increased VM presence will give Ofcom cause to step in and force VM to create a wholesale product.

        No my complaint here is the El Reg article itself. It smacks far too much of being a dressed up press release and I expect more from El Reg than that.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Bwahahahaha

      G.FAST requires fiber to the DP to deliver those speeds. That device is not on the market yet and that works only with over the air to DP which is surprise, surprise costlier than replacing the DP with a splitter and running fiber over the air.

      When used in a typical underground copper FTTC footprint (50m+ in a cross-talking bundle) you should be happy if G.FAST delivers 100Mbit on a good day without sacrificing a black goat with a silver knife on top of the FTTC cabinet.

      The sole reason for G.FAST existence is that moving to fiber to the home will mean immediate termination of employment for 90% of the field force. This is the reality of a fiber network - it costs practically nothing to run and it does not break. No "national minorities" stealing the precious copper and selling it at a recycling center either.

      In some companies the news of terminating 90% of the field force will be welcome. In others, it is in "not happening ever" territory.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Bwahahahaha

        The last mile will still need lots of people to maintain it. Lots of it goes overhead. Things happen to Overhead wires. For example the pole just up the road was taken out by a lost Polish HGV when he tried to do a U-turn where there was clearly no space to do it.

        All the houses needed to be re-cabled, a new pole put up and reconnected to the new cables laid from the neared BY cabinet.

        Of course BT could have taken the opportunity to put Fibre in rather than copper but that was not done.

        Then there is the programme to upgrade to FTTP. That will take years for all 22+ Million premises in the land.

        Sure over time jobs may go but not all of them by any means

        no, I don't work for BT but I did once

        1. Anonymous Coward
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Bwahahahaha

          >Of course BT could have taken the opportunity to put Fibre in rather than copper but that was not done.

          What would the fibre from pole connect to ? copper pairs to premises and the UG copper cable ?

          If you worked for BT (other than a call centre) then you would understand why fibre wasn't an option.

        2. PatientOne

          Re: Bwahahahaha

          "The last mile will still need lots of people to maintain it. Lots of it goes overhead. Things happen to Overhead wires. For example the pole just up the road was taken out by a lost Polish HGV when he tried to do a U-turn where there was clearly no space to do it.

          All the houses needed to be re-cabled, a new pole put up and reconnected to the new cables laid from the neared BY cabinet."

          As I recall, BT were supposed to be burrying all cables, and no new poles were to be erected. This dates back to the late 90's when I worked with Cable, and it was why all the cable companies were burring duct for their network. BT were supposed to have replaced all suspended cables by 2000, then 2005, then 2010... maybe they'll actually get to do this now.

      2. Gerhard Mack

        Re: Bwahahahaha

        "The sole reason for G.FAST existence is that moving to fiber to the home will mean immediate termination of employment for 90% of the field force. This is the reality of a fiber network - it costs practically nothing to run and it does not break. No "national minorities" stealing the precious copper and selling it at a recycling center either."

        Tell that to my previous employer who, had FTTH and lost internet for several days because the fiber optic cable inside his house was chewed through by a puppy.

  5. JimmyPage Silver badge
    FAIL

    Sigh ...

    20+ years ago, our street was cabled by Videotron. It was quite a comical exercise ... the sales guys were running 2 days ahead of the engineers.

    Anyway, at the same time, a friend moved into a new build house, a mile away. When I first saw him, there were no pavements, and temporary roads (apparently they do a single re-tarmac on exit).

    I asked if they were laying cables while building the development. His face fell, and he said he'd spoken to Videotron, and they had it on their 1995-2000 list.

    I asked if my friend had discussed with the housebuilder about liaising with cable companies to pre-cable new developments. He said he had, but decided to stop when the person they pointed him at said "cable TV - what's that then ?".

    My brother claimed he emigrated to the US for the weather. I never believed him.

    Obviously (I wonder if Mr. Worstall would agree) the cheapest part of providing cable is the actual digging up of the roads/pavements, since this is the part no-one has tried to minimise. I say this, because NONE of the 10 or so new build estates I looked at last year had fibre. Moreover, none of them had PLANS for fibre in the next 3 years.

    1. Steve Crook

      Re: Sigh ...

      Surprised? Oh how I wish I was. I would have chosen an icon except there wasn't an "I'm so weary of this sort of thing I can barely summon the energy to type" icon.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Indeed ...

      I think I know the real reason why the Conservatives are so keen to limit Eastern European immigration.

      It says something about the wonders of capitalism when people who grew up in East Germany marvel at the inefficiencies in UK infrastructure.

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Sigh ...

      the cheapest part of providing cable is the actual digging up of the roads/pavements, since this is the part no-one has tried to minimise

      The issue with fitting services at time of construction is that the developers usually want a cut for the privilege of installing those services. In reality the marginal cost of a cable retrofit is largely the reinstatement of the paved surface when compared to laying in partially made ground of a housing development, and that marginal cost is only a few quid a meter. If the developer's co-operative, and doesn't want to fleece the cable provider then it would make sense, but those two conditions are rarely met.

    4. Gerhard Mack

      Re: Sigh ...

      Videotron still won't pre cable cable new developments. My friend owns an apartment building in Saint-Laurent that was gutted by a fire and had cable run to a junction in the basement when they rebuilt the inside and then badgered Videotron for several months to hook up in the basement.

      When I ordered internet Bell told me I was limited to 15 mbps so I went with cable for internet. The Videtron guy showed up with a big freaking drill and drilled in through the brick wall from the outside and ran the cable and a few months later, another Videotron guy came and wired up basement and switched my cable to the one going to the basement and pulled the old cable out and covered the outside hole with some gum like substance.

      The fact that it would have been cheaper to do it in the right order would have been cheaper and more secure against illegal hookups does not matter to a company like Videotron. Their internal processes will not change for anyone.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "when virgin bought NTL"

    Nope. NTL merged with telewest*, then bought virgin mobile, and used the name. Underneath all that red shiny, they are still ntl.

    *actually telewest bought NTL, but that was really a tax dodge....

  7. Terry 6 Silver badge

    Performance and support is good for me.

    My free upgrade to 150mb gives me just that, I also have had pretty good customer support once I've battled past the first line script reading call handler in Mumbai.

    In truth VM do have a terrible tendency not to tell their front line staff what is going on, so they are running through a support script and asking us to reboot etc. unaware that the whole area is down.

    But compared to Openreach VM's service is heavenly.

    Their mobile phone service customer support is another matter. I will never use them for mobile phones ever again. I'd rather make do with two cans and a length of string.

  8. Eli...

    Elihias....

    Ha.... ha ha, hahahahahahahahaha.... *sob*....

    How about you overhaul / improve your customer services

    before you promise / do anything else, Virgin?

    September of last year, you closed my direct debit.

    Since then, every 2 months, you send me a bill for £70+,

    whicih includes a 'late payment' charge and an *ahem*

    administration fee of £10.

    I then phone you, spend 2 hours of my time explaining

    *yet again* what has happened. I end up paying by

    debit card over the phone, because thats the only

    option available. I spend a further 15 minutes setting

    up a Direct Debit with the agent on the phone, knowing

    full well, that come payment day, the new DD will screw

    up, and then we will just rinse and repeat...

    You've done this 5 times now Virgin... come on. Get the

    BASICS right first...

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