Virgin Media already looking to 400Mbps broadband

[Turkey Machine]

Ooh wow, 400Mbit downstream. That's like, wow.


/sarcasm

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

You'll be waiting a long time. Historically, demand for high speed has always outstripped supply, and the fix has always been just around the corner.

That only 70,000 people have signed up for 50Mbit makes me wonder about this. We're far too stingy with how much we are prepared to pay for extremely high speeds to be seriously in demand.

The applications aren't really there for 50Mbit yet and there is zero demand or use with the exception of downloading the usual interesting content for 100Mbit.

Purely e-peen flexing in response to BT's wider deployment of 40/10.

I think Virgin may be wiser to ensure the bandwidth is available to customers on demand and services of a reasonable quality in terms of speed, variation at peak and off-peak periods, jitter and latency. If this is done at the same time as their e-peen exercising then all good but for me even though it isn't cool quality should be taken care of as well as headline speed.

[Gavin78]

Thats what I mean. There isn't anything out there really that can give you full 6mb second download. infact I've never come across anything that fast so far. the most I have had is about 5.5mb

So why increase to 100mb is stupid there isn't anything out there for it.

[weesteev]

Newsgroups give me 6.6Mbps download on 50Mb.

The infrastructure is there if you have a need for it, it just depends what you use your connection for. I still find it amazing though that some people get faster broadband because they think it will make web pages open quicker...



The reason to introduce 100Mb is obvious, it will help push demand for applications that CAN utilise that kind of bandwidth. If we dont have it then we dont know what we can do with such a fast pipe into the home. The possibilities for an ISP with a connection speed like that are endless, with online TV being the biggest reason.

[pip08456]

Igni is totally correct though. Get the utilisation at peak times sorted out, the ping and jitter.

If they go for quality over quantity (which is a pipe dream) they could qutie rightly say they are the best!

[Stuart]

Originally Posted by weesteev

The reason to introduce 100Mb is obvious, it will help push demand for applications that CAN utilise that kind of bandwidth. If we dont have it then we dont know what we can do with such a fast pipe into the home. The possibilities for an ISP with a connection speed like that are endless, with online TV being the biggest reason.

The thing is: That is not in VM's (or any ISP's) interest. Their ideal customer would be some who pays for 50 meg by direct debit and, at most, browses the odd web page. Not someone who canes their connection downloading stuff and watching videos.

I said earlier that Demand has always outstripped supply. If you ignore headline speeds, this is still true in some areas.

However, I can't think of a single application that the average person would need that would take advantage of even a correctly functioning 50 meg connection. Maybe once a few movie download services have started.

[jb66]

Originally Posted by Stuart C

The thing is: That is not in VM's (or any ISP's) interest. Their ideal customer would be some who pays for 50 meg by direct debit and, at most, browses the odd web page. Not someone who canes their connection downloading stuff and watching videos.

I said earlier that Demand has always outstripped supply. If you ignore headline speeds, this is still true in some areas.

However, I can't think of a single application that the average person would need that would take advantage of even a correctly functioning 50 meg connection. Maybe once a few movie download services have started.

Most houses have multiple devices, phones laptops, consoles, pc's even fridges, I think that's where 50meg may be of use.

[Ignitionnet]

Originally Posted by weesteev

Newsgroups give me 6.6Mbps download on 50Mb.

The infrastructure is there if you have a need for it, it just depends what you use your connection for. I still find it amazing though that some people get faster broadband because they think it will make web pages open quicker...



The reason to introduce 100Mb is obvious, it will help push demand for applications that CAN utilise that kind of bandwidth. If we dont have it then we dont know what we can do with such a fast pipe into the home. The possibilities for an ISP with a connection speed like that are endless, with online TV being the biggest reason.

I don't for a second believe that VM want people to give up their cable TV service and watch HD over the DOCSIS cable network, not paying VM for that privilege and tying up a ton of bandwidth on the CMTS. VM budget on the order of 100kbps per customer, more on the overlay network but certainly not enough for many people to be streaming simultaneously.

Online TV is the cable company's worst nightmare. Resource hungry, takes money in VoD and linear TV revenue away.

The reason to introduce 100Mbps is obvious. BT are doing 40Mbps and potentially 60Mbps with the rollout being more widespread and hitting over half of VM's cabled areas by Spring 2011. It's no coincidence VM suddenly took an interest in upstream speeds when BT began deploying 2 and 10Mbps

---------- Post added at 23:23 ---------- Previous post was at 23:21 ----------

Originally Posted by jb66

Most houses have multiple devices, phones laptops, consoles, pc's even fridges, I think that's where 50meg may be of use.

Yup fridges are a real bandwidth monster

[Gavin78]

Originally Posted by weesteev

Newsgroups give me 6.6Mbps download on 50Mb.

How come you get that I use astraweb and lucky if 90% of the time I only get around 2mb

[weesteev]

Originally Posted by Gavin78

How come you get that I use astraweb and lucky if 90% of the time I only get around 2mb

I use Astraweb as well, the Unlimited DSL plan for $11 per month, within 5 seconds of starting any NNTP download I will achieve 6.6Mbps (wired to gigabit router, SSL encryption).

If your only achieving 2Mbps on 50Mb while using Newsgroups thats certainly a concern.

[Horizon]

Originally Posted by Gavin78

How come you get that I use astraweb and lucky if 90% of the time I only get around 2mb

Try one of their other servers and ports.

[roughbeast]

Originally Posted by Gavin78

Thats what I mean. There isn't anything out there really that can give you full 6mb second download. infact I've never come across anything that fast so far. the most I have had is about 5.5mb

So why increase to 100mb is stupid there isn't anything out there for it.

Whilst I agree that VM's priorities need to include quality of service for their existing internet products, they also need to be aiming for the stars. I have made an argument for 100Mb plus HERE.

The typical household, let alone student residences or businesses, will want cloud applications for multiple users plus all the other stuff, and for it to feel that all the resources are on the desktop. For that you need bigger and better bandwidth.

By the way I consistently get my full 50Mb. My average is 50.40Mb, with my best only yesterday.

[Ignitionnet]

Businesses are a totally separate issue.

You seem to be confused. Cloud storage and cloud applications are two different things. The main issue with cloud applications isn't bandwidth it's latency and jitter. The apps I use as part of my work are largely web based, no real urgent need for high bandwidth, the primary problems I encounter relate to latency to the remote server and protocol based inefficiency.

You seem to have jumped on cloud applications due to VM mentioning it in a press release. The actual quote referred to cloud gaming, which according to its' developer requires no more than 5Mbit/s or so even on HD, what it does require is extremely low packet loss, low latency and little jitter.

As I mentioned on your 'argument' for 100Mbit/s plus 20Mbit downstream and 2Mbit upstream would be quite adequate until you get to the seeding and leeching of torrents at the end of the list which will eat as much bandwidth as is available and no amount of bandwidth will ever be enough for anyway.

[AdamD]

The only reason I subscribed to the 50mb product was because it wasn't traffic managed like the other tiers
I wouldn't be surprised if when 100 or even 400mb comes out, the 50mb tier will start being traffic managed to "encourage" people to upgrade to the new premium offerings.

As for 400mb, I would sign up for it, if it had a decent upload, but given that we're probably going to get a measly 5mb for the 50mb product, I think i'll stick with my current offering.

[Chrysalis]

Originally Posted by pip08456

Igni is totally correct though. Get the utilisation at peak times sorted out, the ping and jitter.

If they go for quality over quantity (which is a pipe dream) they could qutie rightly say they are the best!

indeed you beat me to the punch.

for me 20mbit download is enough, 2mbit upload (post upgrade is also easily enough).

So what would excite me is a latency/jitter upgrade. keep my latency steady and stable.

not like this.

Pinging bbc.co.uk [212.58.224.138] with 32 bytes of data:
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=33ms TTL=120
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=120
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=60ms TTL=120
Reply from 212.58.224.138: bytes=32 time=14ms TTL=120

the problem is the fix is infrastructure upgrading, an isp to justify that has to have something new to market aka higher speeds or higher usage. Which then sucks up any capacity created, a endless loop.