10Mb upload

[pip08456]

Due to BT rolling out their FTTC and offering 40Mb down and 10Mb u/s it is doubtful if VM won't automatically upgrade 50Mb users to 10Mb upload and perhaps filter down better u/l speeds to the lower tiers.

As VM are trialing it ATM (and more) it would seem a "no brainer" for them not to compete.

My doubts about this being successful are the problems they already have with the services they offer at present and the issues a lot of people have with their connection.

It has to be admitted that VM cannot supply what they offer in all areas (that could be the same with BT).

My thoughts are this

BT Infinity is not BT Wholesale who provide the FTTC and will sell their FTTC network to other ISP's such as Be. O2, Sky etc.

BT Wholesale's fibre optic network is new gubbins (pardon the northern phrase) and realitically should not need any upgrade for a few years.

We all know about the publicity shot done by VM near Telecom Tower when the roll out was announced (don't mention the word a**e especially on VM's forum!). but can they back it up?

I think VM have a lot to lose and are really worried about it as their monopoly on cable services are about to go and it is about time. They (NTL & TW) have had their own way for far too long and have treated some of their customers apallingly. Thankfully I am not one of them!

So could this signal the demise of VM or are they going to pull their socks up and survive? 100Mb by end of year? Who needs it?? Why hasn't VM realised that their customers want a stable connection and a decent u/l speed???

[|Kippa|]

Personally I think that VM are one step ahead of BT, and by the time BT fully roll out 40 mbit download rate, VM will probably have rolled out or started to roll out 100mbit connections.

[Sephiroth]

Due to BT rolling out their FTTC and offering 40Mb down and 10Mb u/s it is doubtful if VM won't automatically upgrade 50Mb users to 10Mb upload and perhaps filter down better u/l speeds to the lower tiers.

.....
So could this signal the demise of VM or are they going to pull their socks up and survive? 100Mb by end of year? Who needs it?? Why hasn't VM realised that their customers want a stable connection and a decent u/l speed???

Igni has posted plenty on what VM would need to do to provide competitive upload speeds. The main "take home" from his essay was (IMO) that they would need to take upstream channels away from the legacy network and then bond the channels. Assuming network topolgy otherwise remains the same, the legacy tiers would potentially suffer as they lose upstream capacity.

Igni (who'll prolly jump in quckly as I've mentioned him and he's watching!) also said that the infrastructure quality would need cleaning up so that upstream could rise above 16QAM. That's a very tall order.

For balance, though, VM seems to have re-financed itself and can apparently divery cash flow from debt to infrastructure improvements.

I hope for VM's sake that they make their announcements sooner rather than later rather than continually playing their low rank cards close to their chest.

[Ignitionnet]

Due to BT rolling out their FTTC and offering 40Mb down and 10Mb u/s it is doubtful if VM won't automatically upgrade 50Mb users to 10Mb upload and perhaps filter down better u/l speeds to the lower tiers.

Still seems that 100/10, 50/5, 20/2 and 10/1 are most likely according to the peeps I speak with.

As VM are trialing it ATM (and more) it would seem a "no brainer" for them not to compete.

There has never been any attempt to compete with DSL on upstream speed ever since the original 512kbps residential products when DSL had 256kbps upstream and cable 128k.

My doubts about this being successful are the problems they already have with the services they offer at present and the issues a lot of people have with their connection.

It has to be admitted that VM cannot supply what they offer in all areas (that could be the same with BT).

To offer 10Mbps requires work which will relieve legacy upstream capacity restraints too.

My thoughts are this

BT Infinity is not BT Wholesale who provide the FTTC and will sell their FTTC network to other ISP's such as Be. O2, Sky etc.

BT Wholesale don't provide FTTC and will not be selling it to the LLU operators when they decide to purchase it. They wholesale the service, it is actually provided by another division of BT, the same division that sell LLU operators their products.

BT Wholesale's fibre optic network is new gubbins (pardon the northern phrase) and realitically should not need any upgrade for a few years.

It's likely it will require upgrade in the medium term as it will max out at 60Mbps downstream and 15Mbps upstream - the technology is approximately 50% reusable for a full FTTP / Fibre To The Premises deployment.

<snip>

So could this signal the demise of VM or are they going to pull their socks up and survive? 100Mb by end of year? Who needs it?? Why hasn't VM realised that their customers want a stable connection and a decent u/l speed???

VM are growing at a reasonable pace and most people are reasonably happy. VM do however recognise that they need to grow into new areas as they are virtually at maximum penetration in their existing areas. If there were concerns over VM's existence these would be reflected in their share price.

100Mbps is, of course, a PR stunt and a relatively inexpensive one while upstream uplift would not be so inexpensive in some cases. They could even offer 100Mbps right now if they started applying their FUP to the people on 50Mbps who want to try to mirror the entire Usenet feed. Most customers do, to be fair, have reasonably reliable connections.

There will be some defections to BT when the FTTC products become available however until it's clearer what the larger players, Talk Talk, Sky, O2, will be doing with the technology the full impact remains to be seen. Few will move from VM to BT Infinity as it's something of a like for like situation and the people who would do that aren't likely to be interested in the additional upstream speed for now.

The primary thing from VM's point of view is BT advertising the higher upstream speed. Most people still are relatively uneducated as to the benefits of having that higher speed so VM can get away with it but as it becomes more mainstream the conditions change slightly. They'll do it when they have to and not before, which will be at the same time as the 100Mbps deployment most likely as they can roll both into a single project.

We are already seeing the same technology that would be used for 10Mbps upstreams deployed on the network for additional capacity to relieve congestion so it's not too far away. Do be aware though that the deployment of 100Mbps that happens this year is likely to be minimal.

---------- Post added at 13:11 ---------- Previous post was at 13:03 ----------

Igni has posted plenty on what VM would need to do to provide competitive upload speeds. The main "take home" from his essay was (IMO) that they would need to take upstream channels away from the legacy network and then bond the channels. Assuming network topolgy otherwise remains the same, the legacy tiers would potentially suffer as they lose upstream capacity.

Potentially, though it can be mitigated easily enough through better use of available spectrum. DOCSIS 2 has a number of advantages....

Igni (who'll prolly jump in quckly as I've mentioned him and he's watching!) also said that the infrastructure quality would need cleaning up so that upstream could rise above 16QAM. That's a very tall order.

.... the ability to use SCDMA to get more bandwidth out of marginal networks along with hardware improvements in noise cancellation, etc, so that more performance can be obtained from the same network conditions being one of them.

There's also no real urgent need to go over 16QAM while the upstreams remain pegged to 10Mbps maximum on bonding modems and 2Mbps on unbonded ones. If however upstream bonding isn't used 64QAM or resegmentation so that less modems live on each upstream is probably essential. That's an either, or, as one or the other must happen in that case.

The line cards can adapt to network conditions so it wouldn't be at all surprising to see areas running 64QAM with a 16QAM fall back profile. Would make perfect sense to do this in fact.

Lots of games that can be played - they just have to find the right one for each area, it could be a very bespoke and relatively inexpensive deployment or they could bite the expensive bullet and blitz areas to bring them up to a certain standard - we'll see how they roll! :)

[pip08456]

An informative post as usual Igni

[|Kippa|]

Has the 5mbit upload increase been put on the back burner? I've not heard anything about it in quite a while. Is there likely to be an upgrade?

[Ignitionnet]

Has the 5mbit upload increase been put on the back burner? I've not heard anything about it in quite a while. Is there likely to be an upgrade?

Like most things in VM towers the fanfare is always well in advance of the substance.

As I understand it they're looking at everything still and weighing it all up. From the RF network point of view it's a bigger upgrade than the DOCSIS 3 50Mbps rollout was originally.

[nutellajunkie]

Yes I agree, like many. Most of us dont need vast amounts of download, we just want a reliable service, with an increased upload, how difficult can THAT be?

Ive been using broadband since it came out, and Ive NEVER had an issue with it, APART from the upload speeds. I share allot of photos and movie clips, and sometimes even sending at 50k a second is a little off-putting now.

[BexTech]

The poor upload speed is what lets VM broadband down.