For the curious, a friend informs me that he has seen VNL labelled racks and DSLAMs appearing in exchanges in Manchester.
Didn't mention if he has seen the media cache servers that accompany Homechoice DSLAMs however this equipment is in several exchanges in the Manchester area, in his words every exchange he had been to in that area, albeit not live, backhaul equipment (1Gbit/s BES as per London builds) has been installed but he didn't see linecards there and very few tie pairs available.
Sounds like these are brand new installations in mid-build. Have to hand it to Tiscali they are putting their money into the triple play in a hurry. They are also, sensibly, replicating the Homechoice DSLAM architecture, proven to work in London. As expected taking the technical expertise and experience of Homechoice as the only remaining deployer of IPTV in the country and using it along with their financial resources and data network.
While Tiscali retail are widely derided Tiscali wholesale and the technical people around there are far from stupid, which probably explains why they like to distance themselves from their retail arm
This resolves one of the main issues about Homechoice expansion outside London which was backhaul network - they didn't have one as such at all, however with Tiscali's multi 10Gbit network available that issue is resolved. The speed of it isn't at all surprising, it's easily conceivable that a lot of the prep work for expansion, site surveys, etc, was done a while ago waiting for the resources, financial and technical, to get the equipment in and have a network available to connect it.
So those of you in Manchester interested may have Homechoice / Tiscali as an option in the not too distant future! Hopefully the issues with the service that turned some people off, myself included, will be resolved and a feature rich, competitively priced service will be offered!
Seems highly likely too that if Manchester is getting this treatment Birmingham will be also, purely speculation but I'll try and find out for sure next time someone I know visits a Birmingham OLO hostel
Didn't mention if he has seen the media cache servers that accompany Homechoice DSLAMs however this equipment is in several exchanges in the Manchester area, in his words every exchange he had been to in that area, albeit not live, backhaul equipment (1Gbit/s BES as per London builds) has been installed but he didn't see linecards there and very few tie pairs available.
Sounds like these are brand new installations in mid-build. Have to hand it to Tiscali they are putting their money into the triple play in a hurry. They are also, sensibly, replicating the Homechoice DSLAM architecture, proven to work in London. As expected taking the technical expertise and experience of Homechoice as the only remaining deployer of IPTV in the country and using it along with their financial resources and data network.
While Tiscali retail are widely derided Tiscali wholesale and the technical people around there are far from stupid, which probably explains why they like to distance themselves from their retail arm
This resolves one of the main issues about Homechoice expansion outside London which was backhaul network - they didn't have one as such at all, however with Tiscali's multi 10Gbit network available that issue is resolved. The speed of it isn't at all surprising, it's easily conceivable that a lot of the prep work for expansion, site surveys, etc, was done a while ago waiting for the resources, financial and technical, to get the equipment in and have a network available to connect it.
So those of you in Manchester interested may have Homechoice / Tiscali as an option in the not too distant future! Hopefully the issues with the service that turned some people off, myself included, will be resolved and a feature rich, competitively priced service will be offered!
Seems highly likely too that if Manchester is getting this treatment Birmingham will be also, purely speculation but I'll try and find out for sure next time someone I know visits a Birmingham OLO hostel
