Three's "Growing Pains"

3 of 3

moox

09-02-2016

Originally Posted by hammy_y:
“Well it doesn't really matter if it's decades old, it's fibre cables which are the future. While Virgin Media's isn't technically FTTP, it's a lot closer than BT's is. It's fibre on your street and then coaxial from there to your house, a lot better than fibre half a mile away and then copper to your house.”

The distance isn't really any different in either case. Virgin has the advantage that they can amplify their signal whereas BT can't. The Virgin fibre is not necessarily on your street (not all Virgin cabinets have fibre running to them).

The quality of your Virgin service depends heavily on the demographics of your area - student areas tend to get bad service because every student house seems to have Virgin, and each house has lots of heavy users - which uses the (shared) capacity of the Virgin network. Openreach's network doesn't have this problem, but there is the distance/speed problem instead.

hammy_y

09-02-2016

Originally Posted by moox:
“The distance isn't really any different in either case. Virgin has the advantage that they can amplify their signal whereas BT can't. The Virgin fibre is not necessarily on your street (not all Virgin cabinets have fibre running to them).

The quality of your Virgin service depends heavily on the demographics of your area - student areas tend to get bad service because every student house seems to have Virgin, and each house has lots of heavy users - which uses the (shared) capacity of the Virgin network. Openreach's network doesn't have this problem, but there is the distance/speed problem instead.”

Oh right, I assumed there was fibre on all of them. But they can still increase the speed quite easily and your speed doesn't depend on where you live.

And Openreach can have capacity issues too, my friend is currently getting 17 down/7 up when before they got 37 down. In fact, if you ask for fibre you have to go on a "waiting list".

Thine Wonk

09-02-2016

They have 'A' cabinets and 'B' cabinets, B's I think are just feeds from 'A' which have the fibre.

It'll not be that far to your nearest A cabinet with Virgin though, it'll be within a short walk just a street or so away.

moox

09-02-2016

Originally Posted by hammy_y:
“Oh right, I assumed there was fibre on all of them. But they can still increase the speed quite easily and your speed doesn't depend on where you live.

And Openreach can have capacity issues too, my friend is currently getting 17 down/7 up when before they got 37 down. In fact, if you ask for fibre you have to go on a "waiting list".”

That's likely to be a different issue, where crosstalk (interference from other lines) can lower your connection speed. BT can fix this with a flick of a switch (well, they don't need to do major physical works or major investment) by enabling a feature called vectoring, but haven't yet done so.

I meant capacity issues as in peak time congestion, not in terms of actually getting connected - though BT is usually quite responsive when it comes to fixing that, including installing another cabinet if necessary

Originally Posted by Thine Wonk:
“They have 'A' cabinets and 'B' cabinets, B's I think are just feeds from 'A' which have the fibre.

It'll not be that far to your nearest A cabinet with Virgin though, it'll be within a short walk just a street or so away.”

In the city I have the most experience with Virgin with, the "hub" cabinets are fairly far apart - about the same as BT's cabinets would be. Not that this matters hugely for Virgin because, as I said, they can use amplifiers to overcome distance

hammy_y

09-02-2016

Originally Posted by moox:
“That's likely to be a different issue, where crosstalk (interference from other lines) can lower your connection speed. BT can fix this with a flick of a switch (well, they don't need to do major physical works or major investment) by enabling a feature called vectoring, but haven't yet done so.

I meant capacity issues as in peak time congestion, not in terms of actually getting connected - though BT is usually quite responsive when it comes to fixing that, including installing another cabinet if necessary

In the city I have the most experience with Virgin with, the "hub" cabinets are fairly far apart - about the same as BT's cabinets would be. Not that this matters hugely for Virgin because, as I said, they can use amplifiers to overcome distance”

I'd agree about peak time congestion. On BT I got a constant 25Mb, no matter what time of day it just never changed. My Virgin Media can go from 180-210Mb, although it is usually about 200. Also I'm rural so I see a lot more Virgin Media cabinets than FTTC ones.

Thine Wonk

10-02-2016

Interesting that the latest Root Metrics report shows Three once again as the most reliable network, whilst speeds aren't their best selling point they beat O2 and Vodafone in some categories.

3 of 3