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Fibre Optic Broadband


villarule123

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i currently have o2 broadband 20mb @ 9mb speed..

however i am getting increasingly jealous of all the people i know on 50mb broadband and want in on the action

it says on the virgin site that my address isnt supported for fibre optic (i live at 108) however it IS supported down to number 36, then its cut off

is there anything i can do to extend it to my house? i can practically see number 36 from my window now!

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The thing to remember about fibre optic is that it won't be f/o right up to your front door. It will only be f/o to your nearest exchange.

My old house was about 150yrds from the exchange and that was about the very limit of Virgin's capability, even with their mahoussive non-standard cable. Granted we ran the TV,phone and BB off the same line but we had many an issue and engineer visit.

Since we've moved nearer to an exchange its perfect, and **** me, is 50MB broadband GOOOOOOOOOOD :D

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is there anything i can do to extend it to my house?

Email cablemystreet@virginmedia.co.uk and pray.

They're slowly expanding the network to cover gaps in the network, but it's pot luck if you can get service.

Your best bet is to email that address with your details and they'll let you know if it's possible. They have a maximum allowance they can spend per customer to get an install done, so if you can get your other neighbours that can't get it to also sign up you'd stand more chance.

The thing to remember about fibre optic is that it won't be f/o right up to your front door. It will only be f/o to your nearest exchange.

Not exchange. Exchanges are a BT thing.

With cable it's the street cabinets. 150 yards is nothing really, they were probably fobbing you off.

If you were running too many devices they can always run another drop cable to your property.

Also, it's not necessarily fibre to the street cabinet you're connected to, often the network is split up so there's one optical node in a neighbourhood, which is then linked via coax to other distribution nodes, where you'll then be connected to.

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is there anything i can do to extend it to my house?

Email cablemystreet@virginmedia.co.uk and pray.

They're slowly expanding the network to cover gaps in the network, but it's pot luck if you can get service.

Your best bet is to email that address with your details and they'll let you know if it's possible. They have a maximum allowance they can spend per customer to get an install done, so if you can get your other neighbours that can't get it to also sign up you'd stand more chance.

The thing to remember about fibre optic is that it won't be f/o right up to your front door. It will only be f/o to your nearest exchange.

Not exchange. Exchanges are a BT thing.

With cable it's the street cabinets. 150 yards is nothing really, they were probably fobbing you off.

If you were running too many devices they can always run another drop cable to your property.

Also, it's not necessarily fibre to the street cabinet you're connected to, often the network is split up so there's one optical node in a neighbourhood, which is then linked via coax to other distribution nodes, where you'll then be connected to.

Exchange, Cabinet, potaytoh, potartoh meh.....

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I moved house last summer, we initially went for VM (decision was helped by getting £150 quidco cashback). The signal from the router was shocking and couldn't get anything upstairs. Tried a number of things but no good. Cancelled under their 28 days guarentee and went to BT Infinity which is very good (but a little pricey).

Best thing was VM still paid the £150 despite me cancelling the contract without handing over any money :lol:

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no-one will do it for me, its **** annoying

even more so when people at the bottom of my road can get it..

i have emailed that address and no reply, called virgin and they said no and pretty much wanted to hang up on me asap

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  • 2 months later...

found a checker online for my street and there's no plans for my street at all, so i wont be getting it until after 2014 at the earliest it seems.

whereas number 36 down my road is happily on fibre optic :angry:

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Ah man :-( ....

That just seems silly, might sound stupid but have you tried putting your number into the BT Infinity line checker on the off chance?

I know someone who lived on a street that BT said couldnt have fibre, when he put his number in the checker it turned out he could and it just works.

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no-one will do it for me, its **** annoying

even more so when people at the bottom of my road can get it..

i have emailed that address and no reply, called virgin and they said no and pretty much wanted to hang up on me asap

And **** expensive for them to do.

You're getting 9 meg download speeds dude, be happy. You're way ahead of the curve.

I had a 10mb Virgin line a while ago and was pulling 8mb from it, though the cab was right outside my ground floor flat at the time. Virgin run an excellent service. I know FACT that they (and BT etcetera) are working their balls off to upgrade our ancient yet surprisingly sound infrastructure. But they just don't have the man power because they can't legitimise charging the consumer. Then you get in to the cost of sub contracting.

I work as a data cabling 'engineer'. To run a cat6 link between your two cabinets in your office? £300 give or take. I need to be paid, the boss needs to be paid and Nexans need to be **** paid.

Would you pay £500 to have the link extended to your home? Because you probably could.

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Would you pay £500 to have the link extended to your home? Because you probably could.

£500?

You're having a laugh right?

You can probably add a zero on the end of that.

Chucking a link between cabs in an office is easy, you can do it in minutes without breaking a sweat. Worst case you're probably looking at sawing through a bit of drywall if it's between different rooms and running it through the nice hollow walls.

Extending broadband service to your home requires streetworks. The two are not in any way comparable.

Roads need to be dug up, ducting needs to be laid, it takes multiple visits (at least two teams, one does the duct work, then a secondary one to do the actual cable pull into the ducts and connect it up).

This is why they'll only consider it if it's either a REALLY short run, or there's a lot of interest in the area. £500 and they'd wire up anyone who asked without a thought.

For VM's initial roll out (back in the 90's when it was a mass of local cable operators) the end cost per subscriber worked out to around £4000, and that's with doing entire streets at a time rather than individual properties so they were benefiting from economies of scale.

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My point was the consumer often expects things, for free, that are unreasonable because they don't understand quite what they're asking for.

Indeed and my point is that even when people think they understand what they're asking for, they're often still miles off in what it'd actually cost.

The big problem we have had is the inability for anyone but BT to throw cables from poles. If we had the same regs as other countries, such as the US, we'd have been throwing fibre from pole to pole for decades (all of VM's equipment in the street cabinets is pole mountable), and VM would probably have a far higher coverage, with the added bonus of less vandalism of the network seeing as the equipment will be out of reach!

Instead they've had to undergo costly digs every time they want to hook up a new street. Even when companies think they have a cheap way in (like fibrecity using sewers) the costs are still ridiculously high and economically unviable (hence fibrecity now being defunct)

Now that the regs are being loosened though and anyone will be able to use BT's poles it should get a lot cheaper to wire up properties, and we should start seeing faster roll outs.

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I didn't realise the regs were being loosened. I thought these rules were in return for BT having to provide USO for POTS. Do you have any references to this changing? I really hope this happens; it might mean that I get the option of cable one day.

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Yeah ofcom regulated that BT have to provide access to both their ducts and poles to anyone that wants at "fair and reasonable pricing".

This is BT's site for it.

VM are currently doing trials with Fujitsu to expand their network using this, so they shouldn't be too far away from actually going forward with it, I know they've been recruiting heavily for it.

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