Virgin eyes 150Mb broadband speed

bealtine

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7961135.stm

Virgin eyes 150Mb broadband speed
By Darren Waters
Technology editor, BBC News website

Virgin Media will offer 100 to 150Mbps broadband speeds up to two years before BT completes its rival fibre network.
"We have an opportunity with our network to provide significantly higher speeds," Virgin Media's chief executive Neil Berkett told BBC News.
BT has said its fibre network will hit the first crop of UK cities by early 2010 and will be complete by 2012.

Virgin currently offers a top speed of 50Mbps while BT is pledging 40 to 60Mb.

Mr Berkett said its fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) network was capable of supporting up to 200Mbps but roll out of higher speeds was a "function of timing".
He said: "When we look at the market I don't see us getting the returns right now for 100 or 150Mbps.

"As we work with application providers, and content providers... there will be a natural point where we upgrade from 10, 20 and 50Mbps to something more.

"If BT were to meet the time frame they have suggested - of finishing by 2012 - I would see us as having much, much faster upstream speed, running at a minimum of 100Mbps downstream and possibly more. You can see a real opportunity there."

Faster speeds

Mr Berkett said he would be surprised if Virgin Media did not start the roll out of faster speeds next year.
BT has said it will deploy FTTC technology at 29 exchanges across the UK in the coming 9 to 12 months.
The network will offer speeds of up to 40Mbps - and potentially 60Mbps - to 500,000 homes and businesses.

Areas of Belfast, Cardiff, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London and Greater Manchester will be able to access the fibre network, which will be opened up on a wholesale basis to Internet Service Providers (ISPs) who can then offer various broadband packages to customers.

Virgin Media says its network reaches half of all homes in the UK. The technology has a theoretical limit of 200Mbps downsteam speeds.
Mr Berkett said the firm had not ruled out the possibility of opening its own network to other ISPs.
He said: "We had this conversation with a bunch of investors recently. Our position is 'Let's prove the market'.

"Wholesaling is not off our agenda but right now it is not a priority for us."
He added: "Who knows, by the time BT have rolled out their next generation network we may be in position to explore wholesale."

Thraktor

I presume this FTTC they're talking about is VDSL2? In which case, surely 150Mbps is a bit optimistic? Generally 50Mbps is about as much as you'll get with average urban line quality and length. Still far ahead of what we've got here, of course.

watty

DOCSIS 3 cable.
BAsically you can bond maybe 2 to 5 downstream 8MHz channels, normally each shared among up to 200 users, for ONE user. Modern cable has about 700MHZ spectrum for downstream and 10 Digital channels fit in one Analogue channel, releasing spectrum. Or with MPEG4, 20 channels easily in 8MHz.

Cable can run 256QAM (Moble is up to 500 times less efficent at cell edge) with only 10% FEC, so over 45Mbps is possible on one channel.

Thus five channels is about 225Mbps max.

With FTTC feeding a shorter coax the 700MHZ of cable could give over 200MBps to 200 users at 10:1 contention, with 53 chs for TV and 35 channels for Modems. You might have 250 fixed SD TV channels, about 12 8MHz channels using MPEG4, and the rest of the channels switched video, say 200 SD channels and 50 HD channels. And still have left over spectrum.

However the upstream is only 60MHz and maybe 64QAM and a maxium of one channel, 33Mbps approx per user even with DOCSIS 3 and FTTC.

Cable has some advantages over VDSL for FTTC especially if the street already has coax, as it will work even with existing MPEG2 non-IPTV, non-switched setboxes. Video over xDSL is a more expensive poorer experience as really there is a virtual setbox for each user at cabnet/exchange and rarely broadcast to support multiroom. Cable supports broadcast, Data, VOD/IPTV and Switched Video.

Switched video is where mux channels in the DVBMPEG-TS are dynamically assigned by set box demand. If no-one is watching a channel, it's not broadcast. All the > 1% demand channels can be done in about 30 to 70 channels! Basically all the "popular" channels are static, like existing cable TV and then you can have 10,000 channels. IF you only feed < 200 houses with FTTC you only need 200 switched channels

Thraktor

Thanks, Watty, it explains why they're confident about higher speeds than BT.