D3.1 News thread

ED E

We have a news thread for the NBP, Siro and eir FTTH, probably about time we cover D3.1 and VMs efforts.

Blurb:

DOCSIS 3.1 Technology Delivers Gbps Services
There is a lot of excitement around DOCSIS 3.1 technology , and the new capabilities it brings to cable networks for both cable operators and their customers. Customers will enjoy gigabit speed access on the downstream and upstream, allowing them to download 4K video and ultra-high definition movies faster than ever. Reduced network delay will also take the online gaming experience to a new height, increasing responsiveness and allowing higher resolution graphics. Also, the widespread availability of cable high-speed internet will make high speed broadband available to more households than any other technology.

July 2014:
VM UK
Virgin Media UK Lab Testing 10Gbps DOCSIS 3.1 Broadband Upgrade

Sept 2015:
Virgin Media's new SuperHub router has early preview

December 2015
Comcast switches on the first public gigabit cable modem
Previously they'd been all staff trials.

Outlook:

The rollout is ambitious, as Fries said he expects 40% of Liberty Global’s network in the U.K. and Germany will be D3.1-ready by the end of 2015, and sees 80% of its full footprint outfitted for the new platform in about three years.

For those of us in VM areas the chances are we'll get D3.1 a long time before the FTTH rollout hits us, so this is a big deal.

Nollog

I can't see them doing the NBP though.

ED E

No way, HFC isnt suitable.

bk

Using D3.1 to get the most out of existing coax cable investments makes a lot of sense.

While we are all very excited by the FTTH developments from Eir and Siro and possibly the NBP, the reality is far more people in Ireland are likely to end up getting Gigabit services far sooner and more widespread from Virgin, then from Eir/Siro FTTH.

Having said that, it would make no sense to use HFC for the NBP. If you are laying brand name cable, then there is almost no cost difference at all between brand new HFC and FTTH. The majority of the cost for new builds is labour and civils. However HFC does have higher ongoing OPEX costs then FTTH, so it would make no sense to use HFC for brand new builds.

In the short to medium terms, Virgin should be able to significantly undercut Eir/Siro FTTH services with their own Gigabit services due to lower capex. However in the long term Virgin will face an issue where the lower opex of FTTH will allow Eir/Siro to reduce the gap and maybe even eventually undercut Virgin, longterm.

At that point Virgin will have to think about going FTTH themselves.

I suspect Virgin will use D3.1 in a similar way to Eir used FTTC. Use it as a stop gap for the next 10 years to undercut other FTTH providers, while quietly building out their own Fibre backbone in preparation for slowly rolling out FTTH themselves from their fibre backhaul network.

You can see the same in the US from Comcast. They actually have two different gibabit services. The just announced 1Gb/s DD3.1 service that they are likely to rollout to almost all of their footprint over the next year or two. But they also have an existing 2Gb/s service, that uses FTTH for people who live near their existing Fibre backhaul. Now this FTTH service is expensive at the moment at $300 per month, but they are likely to continue to develop this service longterm alongside their D3.1 rollout.

Interesting times ahead.

bk

Alan Glynn, head of network engineering at Virgin Media Ireland, talks about the cable operator's plans for DOCSIS 3.1 trials in 2016:

http://www.lightreading.com/cable/docsis/prepping-for-docsis-31/v/d-id/720071

Highlights:

- Field trials for D3.1 not until end of 2016
- CMTS firmware for D3.1 not available yet, CPE for D3.1 not certified yet.
- Need to clear space/spectrum for the greater bandwidth (remove analogue channels perhaps).

It is interesting to note that the new modem Ed E mentions above doesn't support D3.1, but does support 3 times as many DOCSIS 3.0 channels as the existing modems.

So I expect we will see them go to at least 500Mb/s or maybe even close to 1Gb/s using D3.0 on this new modem this year, while D3.1 will be more of a 2017 technology.

It is also possible that they will simply sit on 240Mb/s for 2016, as they aren't really facing any competition yet from FTTH in the areas they service and instead wait for D3.1 to be properly ready for 2017 and gigabit services then.

crawler

http://www.lightreading.com/cable/docsis/prepping-for-docsis-31/v/d-id/720071?

Horses mouth...

EDIT - Oops sorry - BK got there

ED E

In broadband terms ~2yrs between 240Mb and D3.1 really isnt a long time but part of me still had hopes for a slightly sooner rollout.

In any case, still on 120_12 so really don't have the use case personally.

Thanks for the link

Thor

fritzelly Just mentioned seeing a billboard for 360Mb speed from UPC.

No mention anywhere else, but it does fit with the current stance on support with D3, and the arrival of D3.1 early 2017.

Flibbles

"Reduced network delay will also take the online gaming experience to a new height, increasing responsiveness and allowing higher resolution graphics."

Hahaha what?

Thor

Flibbles wrote: »

"Reduced network delay will also take the online gaming experience to a new height, increasing responsiveness and allowing higher resolution graphics."

Hahaha what?

I guessing it's referring to cloud gaming. Something that has yet to really offer anything substantial mostly due to pricing and lack of extensive catalogue of games.

pm.

No real point in the increase speed unless you are wired in, I only get 50/60 with my crappie router 😧 would a new router help and if so is it just plug and play?

bk

pm. wrote: »

No real point in the increase speed unless you are wired in, I only get 50/60 with my crappie router 😧 would a new router help and if so is it just plug and play?

Yes a new wireless router can potentially help a lot, I get 200Mb/s from my wireless router.

See here for more details:

http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2057367191

ED E

Maybe we could try and segregate out the tech support that normally creeps into these threads?

ED E

And while it looks like any other black box, this new standard is capable of pumping data at 10 Gbps over existing coaxial cable. Still, Comcast is ushering in its new service with only a tenth of that power—currently offering one gigabit per second downstream speeds with 35Mbps upstream.

Comcast pushing 3.1 to 5 cities but only allocating 35Mb US. Disappointing start.

http://www.wired.com/2016/04/comcast-offers-fiber-speeds-coax-thanks-new-modem/

bk

ED E wrote: »

Comcast pushing 3.1 to 5 cities but only allocating 35Mb US. Disappointing start.

http://www.wired.com/2016/04/comcast-offers-fiber-speeds-coax-thanks-new-modem/

One thing to understand, D3.1 is a massive standard that includes an incredible number of different options.

In order to take full advantage of D3.1, a massive amount of work needs to be done:

- Node splits
- More fibre to local nodes.
- Upgrade all gear to support 1.2 and 1.7 Ghz
- Clearing of analogue TV channels, etc.
- etc. etc.

Do all of the above and they can deliver 10Gb/s. But initially they are likely to go with much smaller changes, that will deliver 1Gb/s.

D3.1 should be seen the basis on which cable broadband will continue to evolve over the next 10 years, rather then a one time upgrade.

From the presentations I've seen the cable industry (in general) is looking at:

- 500Mb/s for 2016
- 1Gb/s for 2017/2018
- 1.2Gb/s for 2020
- 10Gb/s for 2026

All this time they are also balancing the costs of these upgrades versus the cost of simply jumping to FTTH. There isn't a simple answer to this question.

ED E

As a small aside, is the EURODOCSIS side standard being dropped with 3.1?

bk

ED E wrote: »

As a small aside, is the EURODOCSIS side standard being dropped with 3.1?

Yes, well more like folded in as D3.1 is backwards compatible.

The reason for EuroDocsis versus Docsis in the US was the different width of channels, 8MHz wide in Europe versus 6MHz wide in the US. D3.1 is a radical departure in cable technology, doing away with the concept of these channels and instead moving to narrow 20 kHz to 50 kHz wide subcarreirs which are grouped together in large spectrum blocks.

Calling it 3.1 is misleading, it is actually a radical change, it should really be called DOCSIS 4 or DOCSIS Next.

ED E

Yeah, as discussed before in the other thread they're once bitten twice shy.

bk

ED E wrote: »

Yeah, as discussed before in the other thread they're once bitten twice shy.

Yup, though now they realise they have to upgrade anyway or go to FTTH. There is no standing still in the competition with FTTH rollouts.

ED E

Short term there's still a great opportunity for them to undercut the FTTH deployments due to far lower costs. Most wont pay €87/mo for 350Mb, but they might pay €55-60..

Cuddlesworth

bk wrote: »

Yup, though now they realise they have to upgrade anyway or go to FTTH. There is no standing still in the competition with FTTH rollouts.

For new areas yes. For existing areas with dense market share, it might be a very long time before anybody offers FTTH.

bk

Cuddlesworth wrote: »

For new areas yes. For existing areas with dense market share, it might be a very long time before anybody offers FTTH.

With Virgin offering speeds many times what Eir can offer, it is only a matter of time before Eir come under pressure to turn their attention back to the urban areas and roll out FTTH or G.Fast.

tsue921i8wljb3

I posted this in the eir FTTH thread but I don't want to drag that thread off topic with talk of Virgin. What to people think is Virgin's plan for the future in Ireland? We have already seen them begin to lose subscribers. This most likely will increase as both eir and Siro continue their rollouts. Can anybody see them becoming resellers on eir or Siro's networks? Are they content to tread water undercutting the FTTH providers but not really increasing subscriptions.

Interesting to note that Virgin Media in the UK have announced a FTTP rollout to ten rural communities as part of the larger Project Lightning initiative which will see one million FTPP connections by 2019. However seeing as they did not enter the NBP bidding process it is unlikely that the Irish arm of the company has any such aspirations. They might though have plans to upgrade some of their legacy areas to full fibre.

https://recombu.com/digital/article/virgin-media-rural-fibre-broadband-rollout

bk

Savanna Scrawny Tomb wrote: »

I posted this in the eir FTTH thread but I don't want to drag that thread off topic with talk of Virgin. What to people think is Virgin's plan for the future in Ireland? We have already seen them begin to lose subscribers. This most likely will increase as both eir and Siro continue their rollouts. Can anybody see them becoming resellers on eir or Siro's networks? Are they content to tread water undercutting the FTTH providers but not really increasing subscriptions.

Virgin isn't effected by the Eir and SIRO FTTH rollouts, as for now they largely aren't targeting Virgin areas.

Virgins drop in subs was purely due to them increasing prices significantly over the last few months. They went from one of the cheapest ISP's and fastest, to ones of the most expensive, but still the fastest (very small and limited FTTH rollouts aside).

It turns out this was a company wide strategy at the Liberty Global level, they increased prices across all their markets and it seems it was largely successful, they managed to increase revenues, while actually reducing churn levels!

However it seems that Irish people are far more price sensitive. Increasing prices when competition is heating up from Eir, Vodafone and Sky (all now doing TV, attractive bundles, lots of advertising, etc.) doesn't seem like a wise step in retrospect.

If Virgin want to reverse these sub loses, they simply have to reverse the price increases and introduce more attractive bundles, etc. They need to return to being price competitive again.

As for Virgin doing FTTP, yes, this is a very interesting question being asked by the entire cable industry. Cable can absolutely do 1Gb/s, but there is a tipping point where the cost of the network upgrades to enable cable to do 1Gb/s and beyond become almost as expensive as just doing FTTP (taking into account higher maintenance and operating costs of Coax versus FTTP).

Of course you need to be an account for these companies to answer that question and in fact, it can be different from market to market, due to different configuration of coax networks in different countries.

One interesting idea emerging in the industry is to do both FTTP and HFC in parallel! Basically move the top 5% of the most demanding customers to FTTP, while leaving the other 95% of much lighter users on older, "slower" DOCSIS gear. Doing so can take significant pressure off the DOCSIS network and allow them to milk it for far longer, even taking into account the cost of FTTP for the 5% of users.

Comcast are already doing this in some markets in the US, where they offer both 2Gb/s FTTP and 1Gb/s DOCSIS 3.1 in the same areas.

In fact I could see Eir doing similar in urban areas. I could see them offering 100Mb/s VDSL2, 300Mb/s G.FAST+FTTC and 1Gb/s FTTH all at the same time. Slowly roll out FTTH to the most demanding customers, while keeping price sensitive, light customers on "good enough" VDSL2 and G.Fast.

Interesting times ahead.

tsue921i8wljb3

bk wrote: »

Virgin isn't effected by the Eir and SIRO FTTH rollouts, as for now they largely aren't targeting Virgin areas.

"For now" is my point. You make valid points about the historical position of Virgin in the Irish ISP sector. It just seems to me that they have plateaued. There is more than likely another loss of subscribers coming in the next quarter as the Netflix fiasco hits.

Most of your post was what they can do to retain existing subscribers, I am suggesting that they seem to have no announced plans of how they plan to grow their broadband subscriber base. Are they happy with ~400000 broadband subs? Long term eir and probably also Siro will move into Virgin territory as it is mostly (all?) high density urban areas increasing the pressure even more on the customer base.

The UK arm of the company has announced 4 million new connections by 2019. What, if any, plans does the Irish version have?

KOR101

Savanna Scrawny Tomb wrote: »

Most of your post was what they can do to retain existing subscribers, I am suggesting that they seem to have no announced plans of how they plan to grow their broadband subscriber base. Are they happy with ~400000 broadband subs? Long term eir and probably also Siro will move into Virgin territory as it is mostly (all?) high density urban areas increasing the pressure even more on the customer base.

The UK arm of the company has announced 4 million new connections by 2019. What, if any, plans does the Irish version have?

You can see what's happening in my estate either way. Virigin are already in two apartment blocks in the estate. So, they may figure that once Eir and SIRO bring their FTTH into the estate, they will also try to bring it into those apartment blocks.

Alternatively, they haven't made any big announcement of a rollout programme for new subscribers because they are not interested in bidding for the NBP, so they don't need to put themselves on the map in the same way. Instead, they prefer to make highly specific well timed moves ahead of the competition in areas where they are well placed to do so. Better to do it under the radar, unlike SIRO who have opened themselves up to competitors taking their areas before they have even got started.

ED E

That I know of, Chorus/NTL/UPC/Virgin have never done a big rollout. They do upgrades piecemeal, and new areas.

Curious to what LG have planned in the long term. If we give D3.1 an 8yr lifespan at most they have to either quadruple their workforce and start a major build or go into the reselling others glass.

tsue921i8wljb3

ED E wrote: »

That I know of, Chorus/NTL/UPC/Virgin have never done a big rollout. They do upgrades piecemeal, and new areas.

Curious to what LG have planned in the long term. If we give D3.1 an 8yr lifespan at most they have to either quadruple their workforce and start a major build or go into the reselling others glass.

What about the idea of LG purchasing eir? The CEO talks in this article about an IPO but did not rule out the possibility of a trade sale. Let eir win part or all of the NBP then acquire them. May be pie in the sky!

bk

Savanna Scrawny Tomb wrote: »

"For now" is my point. You make valid points about the historical position of Virgin in the Irish ISP sector. It just seems to me that they have plateaued.

For now and the foreseeable future.

Eir say they will do 100,000 FTTH connections this year, at that rate it will take them 7 years to complete the rural rollout, before they can turn their attention to urban virgin areas.

Even if Eir and Siro speed up their rollouts, it is likely going to be at least 5 years before they can even start to connect up urban Ireland with FTTH. At that stage, Virgin will likely have been offering 1Gb/s already for the past 3 years and will likely be looking to offer 5Gb/s by then. The cable industry is already doing forward planning for 10Gb/s over coax for 10 years from now!

Virgin are well positioned to compete with FTTH.

That is why I talked about them reducing the price increases and getting the pricing right. Their isn't anything fundamentally wrong with their network or business, they just need to be careful with getting the pricing balance right.

You are correct that their growth in subs has plateaued. But that isn't the end of the world either. While I do think they need to stem the flow of customers they are seeing at the moment, they don't need to be aggressively expanding all the time either. They could be just as happy, keeping numbers as they are now and instead focusing on reducing costs in their business and growing profitability in that manner.

Now that might not be good from a competition perspective, but that doesn't make it a bad business strategy. Consolidate on your existing customer base, profit as much from it as they can for now while they face so little competition. Once Eir turns it's attention to their areas, they can then once again look at FTTH or whatever new DOCSIS technology is then available.

They can also grow in other areas. Grow Virgin Mobile customers for instance and their investment in content with TV3, etc.

Savanna Scrawny Tomb wrote: »

What about the idea of LG purchasing eir? The CEO talks in this article about an IPO but did not rule out the possibility of a trade sale. Let eir win part or all of the NBP then acquire them. May be pie in the sky!

That would be very bad from a consumer perspective as we would return to the bad old days of a monopoly. And as such I'd expect any such move to be blocked by the competition authorities.

On the other hand, I'd expect Sky, Vodafone (while spinning off the Meteor network, maybe to Virgin, for competition authority reasons), BT and perhaps others would all be interested in Eir if it came up for sale.

The Cush

Huawei press release - http://www.huawei.com/en/news/2016/6/First-10-Gbit-HFC-Access-Platform

Huawei launched a 10 Gbps hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) access platform at Angacom 2016. The platform is the industry’s first large capacity product to support 10G Docsis 3.1 in Cable as well as 10G PON in fibre. It is to save about 70 percent space in head-end and improve the preference up to 30 percent over coax.

Huawei's 10 Gbps HFC access platform consists of a large-capacity OLT for optical aggregator, high-density 10G PON interface board, Docsis 3.1 based D-CCAP, 10G PON ONT and unified network management system.

The new platform can also improve the Signal-to-Noise Ratio and transmission efficiency. As the D-CCAP modulates video at remote fibre nodes, instead of at the head-end, Huawei's 10 Gbps HFC access platform realises significant space saving in headed equipment rooms while at the same time delivering an improved user service in video.

It can support both broadcasting TV and future IP video, help the MSOs to release the potential of coax, build the on-demand network, and generate innovative services based on hybrid access platform.

http://www.telecompaper.com/news/huawei-launches-10-gbps-hfc-access-platform--1147487

http://advanced-television.com/2016/06/08/huawei-claims-10-gbits-first/
http://www.broadbandtvnews.com/2016/06/08/huawei-launches-first-10-gbps-platform/
http://www.fiercecable.com/story/huawei-claims-be-first-out-10-gbps-docsis-31-powered-access-platform/2016-06-08

bk

What is very interesting about this is that Huawei aren't just introducing D3.1, they are also introducing a fundamental network change somewhat similar to FTTC but for cable networks.

They are basically moving the CMTS/CCAP (think somewhat similar to DSLAMS for ADSL) out of the headend (think somewhat similar to a phone exchange) and instead putting it into the local fiber nodes (the box at the end of your street, similar to a FTTC cab).

This will allow HFC to go to even higher bandwidths then it does today and should easily do 1Gb/s. Pretty exciting stuff.