Sky v ntl/telewest upgrade's

[epson]

I was talking to a friend of mine who work's with telewest,he said upgrade's will happen soon,anyone on 10mb will be upgraded to 20mb with a 2mb upload speed,also the price will drop to £25,the lower speed's will be upgraded to 10mb with 1mb upload for £17,bro adband war's,love em.

[MovedGoalPosts]

Higher speeds are inevitable since the BT based networks are also looking at ways to get more out of systems. Even the recent Sky broadband ads were indicating 16MB speeds "coming soon".

As for price point, and even launch dates, who knows, and until the official announcement this must be treated speculatively. Indeed I do wonder if your "friend" is breaking any confidentiality agreements with his/ her employer?

---------- Post added at 10:30 ---------- Previous post was at 10:27 ----------

What I'd really like to see, is not just faster download speeds, but a decent increase in upload. It's no good having loads of content you can get off the internet, if you can't put content onto the internet - an no I'm not talking of P2P, I'm talking of proper media based websites.

[James Henry]

Higher speeds are inevitable since the BT based networks are also looking at ways to get more out of systems. Even the recent Sky broadband ads were indicating 16MB speeds "coming soon".

What I'd really like to see, is not just faster download speeds, but a decent increase in upload. It's no good having loads of content you can get off the internet, if you can't put content onto the internet - an no I'm not talking of P2P, I'm talking of proper media based websites.
The technology to supply 16Mb and upwards has been around for a while and was approved under the ANFP for use in the UK last year.

Be have been doing some tests with a slightly different flavour of ADSL2+, Annex M, which allows downstreams up to 24Mb and upstreams up to 3.5Mb, Be are trying it with upstreams up to 2Mb.

I wouldn't listen to anything anyone says about upgrades that might be 'coming soon' right now. There will be extensive network upgrades before Telewest can consider rolling out a 10/1 service, let alone 20/2.

No-one will have the information on prices and packages yet either I imagine. Everyone knows a service level upgrade is coming but I'd bet that very very few people would be aware of what that upgrade is and even fewer aware of what and how much.

20/2 will only work if traffic shaped or capped as well I'm afraid. No cable operator has been able to release a service at that rate and supply an uncapped and consistent service.

[dcclanuk]

does this apply to ntl too?

i mean the 10/1 and 20/2 ?

[James Henry]

does this apply to ntl too?

i mean the 10/1 and 20/2 ?
Asking for someone to speculate on a rumour in that way is a little odd ;) I'm not sure if anyone knows exactly what is happening.

[jtwn]

If the metro networks can take the load, then whats the big deal, with bonding in theory we can have massive phat pipes compared to anything offered over ADSL/2+.

[popper]

is there any dark cable they could put into service for this bonding though?, or would they just bond whats already in use today.

[James Henry]

You don't need 'dark cable' for this. DOCSIS 3 is backwards compatible with earlier versions so should run side by side just fine.

http://www.arrisi.com/products_solutions/product_families/Keystone/index.asp

http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=wideband+DOCSIS

Gives more information, it basically uses the existing networks though. Rolling this out is helped a lot by switching analogue off, and the eventual evolution is:

Standard 1.0/1 2.0 DOCSIS single downstream -> DOCSIS 1.0/1.1/2.0 multiple downstream -> DOCSIS 3.0 bonded downstreams -> Switched digital TV + DOCSIS 3.0.

The current Arris kit that ntl have been trialling can deliver up to 160Mbps to a single area, bonding 4 downstreams together, however an increase to 640Mbps per area will be available in future versions. Cisco's 3.0 kit offers up to 640Mbps per area.

Eventually there will be a situation where all TV is 'switched' which means that a station isn't transmitted to an area until someone actually switches to that channel. Cable operators report considerable bandwidth savings using this, which will free up capacity for DOCSIS 3 downstreams.

640Mbps sounds great but it does need 128MHz of bandwidth on the cable network and that is a lot of DTV channels, even HDTV you could happily fit 50+ channels in that space, with SD 3 times that.

So the technology is there already, ntl need to move to switched DTV and switch the analogue off to free up the spectrum on the cable network for DOCSIS 3 rollout though.

The modems are a bit more expensive than the current few quid that the Ambits cost as well.

The eventual network they'd hope would be a single massive bonded DOCSIS downstream carrying everything to a single box which would split the internet and interactive from the switched broadcast. This would be the most efficient from the point of view of statistical contention.

However if you're hoping for 100Mbit in both directions not going to happen any time soon even with channel bonding, doable but precarious :)

Some more should happen with this towards the end of the year, as promised last year.

[v0id]

I wouldn't be suprised if the only upgrade that comes in the next 12 months is to bring the blueyonder upload speed upto to 512, the same as NTLs

[Andrewcrawford23]

I wouldn't be suprised if the only upgrade that comes in the next 12 months is to bring the blueyonder upload speed upto to 512, the same as NTLs

probally as ntl are bring all there downlaod services to match telewest so i suspect they will then make the uplaod match ntls in teh near future my guess september when they go with quad play, i am guessign we will see speed upgrades across ntl and telewest in a oner instead of telewest ahead of ntl, my guess again is abotu janaury for it to start sicne then they will go under the virgin label i think

[tony 125]

herd about a 100MB trial in kent worked well .....

[Andrewcrawford23]

herd about a 100MB trial in kent worked well .....

any otehr ifnomaiton about this or a source to where you foudn otu abotu it?

[tony 125]

yeah on a telewest sales com ,....worked very well they are looking at weather it is needed in the priv sec....cost ect

[Andrewcrawford23]

yeah on a telewest sales com ,....worked very well they are looking at weather it is needed in the priv sec....cost ect

Figures ti on some sort of business end jsut now, when it opens up to national business part then i can see it 6 months later for home users as that is what has happened at 1mb,4mb and 10mb trails, but there no way of knowign when they will test it national at business level though

[James Henry]

That trial was a technology trial, will be a little while before services at that speed start going live.

Again it's the issue of having to turn off the analogue before services like that become viable.

Will see more on higher speed services very soon though, I'd say give it a month, month and a half tops.

My money is on 20/1 btw, maybe 20/768. ;)

[Andrewcrawford23]

why that speed in particular?

i would probally go with 30/4 as then ti faster than anything adsl 2+ can offer assumign yoru right next to the exchange

why month to 2 months as well?

Edit: Acutalyl hwo do oyu know ti was only a techonolgy trial?

[James Henry]

It's about a balance between delivering speed and offering something that's not achievable or will be achievable once in a blue moon at 4am on a Tuesday morning.

30Mbit isn't achievable in some areas as they downstream bandwidth to each area is only 27Mbit for a start.

4Mbit upstream is not doable with the current tech being used as it would eat most of an upstream and would ruin the pings for anyone else on that upstream when one person were uploading at full speed. Not that they ever would be able to get full speed out of it.

Upstream of 4M on a 30M service is totally out of balance with the 20:1 ratio between down and up on the current ntl products.

30M is far too big a jump and total overkill. Sky are advertising 16M so that's really the target and so long as cable can offer a downstream speed higher than Sky's headline downstream rate of 16M that's the main thing. 20M makes sense.

I know it was a technology trial because.... well I asked people and they told me it was a technology trial. As it wasn't a commercial deployment it could only be a trial of the technology, so a technology trial :)

Month or two, I speak to people potentially in the know. The rumour mill is grinding happily and work is being done towards speed upgrades at the moment.

[Andrewcrawford23]

to be hones ti would have thought 20/1 would be possiable on the current system i thought that you knew abotu some sort of network upgrade to allow higher speeds and i guess 30/4 cause then it have the hgihest down and up speed in teh country excludign leased lines and fibre optic conenctions

i was only curious how you knew it was technology trial as i was begining to think you where a head enginger or something of ntl telewest :p

but goign onteh newslette ri jsut got it says something big is coming in setpermber and it be annocued then so i am guessing your right on timescale

[James Henry]

Network upgrades are ongoing and are needed to supply 20/1 service.

The upgrade needed for something like 30/4 or the 100Mbit service are a bit more involved.

[jtwn]

Haha, thankyou for recognition of the true great one James :D

Yes there there are noise issues on HFC networks, I never denied that, however its transparent to the end user to an extent compared to ADSL where your speeds depend on it. Am I right or am I right? I'm going to disallow any splitting hairs that you no doubt will try and do.

[James Henry]

Haha, thankyou for recognition of the true great one James :D

Yes there there are noise issues on HFC networks, I never denied that, however its transparent to the end user to an extent compared to ADSL where your speeds depend on it. Am I right or am I right? I'm going to disallow any splitting hairs that you no doubt will try and do.
Which has what to do with the topic in question?

http://www.cableforum.co.uk/board/showthread.php?p=795956#post795956

New topic dealing with this.

[tony 125]

true ...i'll go along with that..