Vodafone to sell wholesale Virgin Fibre Internet

breeno

RTE news : Virgin Media, Vodafone agree wholesale broadband deal

http://www.rte.ie/news/business/2022/1027/1331631-virgin-media-vodafone-broadband-deal/

Any thoughts on this? Could it result in a bit of competition and reduced prices for people that are currently stuck with Virgin as their only option?

Apologies if already covered elsewhere.

bk

"Any thoughts on this? Could it result in a bit of competition and reduced prices for people that are currently stuck with Virgin as their only option?"

Great news, I'm wondering this myself. Being stuck in a building only served by VM myself.

I'm wondering how all this plays into the relationship between VM, Vodafone and Siro. It was just two months ago, that it was announced that VM would start using the SIRO netowrk and start selling services over that. Of course Vodafone are part owners of SIRO.

I wonder what all this means for VM's planned rollout of FTTH. Will they still do it? Will SIRO still expand into VM areas? Will VM perhaps use SIRO network as it expands into their areas or will perhaps Siro now not expand into VM areas and instead leave it to VM cable for now/FTTH in future?

Could we perhaps see a merger between VM and Siro? Or perhaps Vodafone buys VM?

breeno

Even if it was very similarly priced to VM it would be great to be able to hop between the new customer offers the whole time.

Glaceon

I wonder what CPE they'll use? Or will Virgin still have control over that?

odyssey06

I'm struggling to see what's in it for Vodafone...

Is it aimed at people getting 100mb broadband through old copper lines in area that have VM fibre?

Atlantic Dawn

I'd say they will package it with mobile phone plans.

Q&A

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119803620#Comment_119803620

I would think so. Siro was one approach of getting round the copper lines but this opens up another avenue almost immediately without having to wait for the engineering works.

From VF perspective what difference does it make if they rent capacity off Eir or VM.

I've been with both providers and because of the difference in infrastructure and my connection type VM is much better. However, they know this too which means my ability to haggle in renewal is limited. In contrast, I've found VF easier because they know there are more providers offering the same product.

Any one know when this might be up and running? I'm locked in until February but if I were to guess (well hope) I could see them targeted post Christmas for those January switchers?

Sir Galahad

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119800932#Comment_119800932

Despite all the trumpet blowing and press announcements Virgin still aren’t supplying via SIRO. I called them last week as I’ve got SIRO ready to go, if I want television then Vodafone are really the only supplier (Dublin).

Capt'n Midnight

I read this as VM allowing VF to supply BB over coax.

Vodafone's billing service can't be worse than Virgin's can it ? I hated having to spend ages on the phone to VM every year when they tried to ratchet up the base price by yet another fiver. At lest you'd have the option to simply ring up the other company and let them handle the switching.

It would be interesting to see what price it's sold at and if they do BroadBand only offerings over Virgins coax copper from the cab fibre. Their coax is way better and more reliable than DSL or even VDSL/FTTC. Not quite as good as FTTH but close enough.

Daith

If this allows me to switch to Vodafone as a new customer and back to Virgin as a new customer then all the better.

I've been eyeing up a 5G router to manage for a year to get out of VM, but id love to be able to stay with them in some fashion.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119807550#Comment_119807550

That isn't surprising, it was only announced over two months ago and that was just the announcement of the deal.

It will take a while for them to actually get this ready to sell to customers, they need to buy modems, put in place backhaul, update their networking, sales, marketing and support systems, etc.

I'd suspect it will be next year until we see products from either VM or Vodafone available to customers. All of this is completely new for both companies (at least in Ireland).

"From VF perspective what difference does it make if they rent capacity off Eir or VM."

True, though it does make you wonder what is happening with SIRO. Vodafone would likely prefer to use SIRO, then either Eir or VM, given that they own 50% in SIRO. This announcement would make you wonder if SIRO/Vodafone have decided it is too expensive to expand into the core VM urban areas and have decided to leave it to VM instead.

There maybe more to this story behind closed doors.

Gusser09

It's true. The devil is in the detail when it comes to the likes of this. I will believe that Voda will be able to access the Virgin network when I see it available to order on their website. Like anything it was all very vague. It shouldn't be overly hard for them to do as everything is all in place. It's obviously a ploy for Virgin to keep hold of customer using their network and at least getting some small rental rather than lose them to Eir or Siro.

I'll be disappointed if Vodafones entry package is any dearer than 35per month.

bk

"It shouldn't be overly hard for them to do as everything is all in place."

Not really, all of this is pretty new for both of them in Ireland and will require a lot of work.

VM working on SIRO is probably a bit easier as SIRO is already set up as a wholesale operation. BB is probably not too difficult, but their TV side is a lot more complicated, VM use DVB-C over coax cable for their TV service. That won't work over SIRO, they either have to start doing IPTV (and FTTH) or they will have to convince SIRO to do RFoG which they don't currently support.

With Vodafone on VM's network, that is much more complicated. VM currently have no wholesale offering and frankly HFC and DOCSIS aren't really designed to support it at all. Vodafone in Ireland have no experience of coax, DOCSIS, DVB-C. In fact I don't see how it can be much more then Vodafone simply rebranding VM's service, at much the same price.

Actually thinking about it more, I think Vodafone maybe only start reselling on the parts of the VM network that are upgraded to FTTH and not necessary on the old HFC parts of VM's network.

Rereading the article seems to suggest that:

"Our new broadband partnership with Virgin Media means Vodafone customers will be able to avail of their Fibre to the Premise network, as they continue to upgrade to fibre around the country," said Amanda Nelson, CEO of Vodafone Ireland.

The part highlighted in bold would suggest this.

Gusser09

I'd disagree. These companies particularly Vodafone will have experts who have done this before. If they were really planning on doing this they would have fleshed out any tech difficulties and issues before hand.

You might be right re the fiber to the premises only angle. I do think though that Vodafone might not be too bothered about pushing their tv. They will package up BB and Mobile offerings instead.

I think it won;t happen and we will be here in a years time wondering what happened.

rogue-entity

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119829566#Comment_119829566

That last part makes the most sense, as you said, VMs' HFC network was never setup to be shared and every cable operator in this country has maintained an iron grip on what equipment could be connected to it.

On a side note though, DVB-C could be considered a deprecated technology, even so I have it that in other LGI markets where the HFC last-mile was replaced with fibre, they would install a type of media converter/micro-CMTS in the home converting the fibre signal back to Coax. I'm assuming RFoG is used and those signals are passed along while the device drives the connected cable modem.

Glaceon

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119832908#Comment_119832908

I’m in a fibre area and this is what they installed to convert the fibre back to coax.

rogue-entity

This nicely confirms it; a micro-node converting RFoG back to Coax. I presume Vodafone would simply use a different ONT but make use of the same fibre network as suggested earlier but time will tell.

I presume the RFoG element is just a precursor before they move away from legacy RF with the happy side-effect of being able to continue operating as a 'cable tv' network for licencing reasons.

Gusser09

Nothing else on this as of yet. I presume this means that they were only seeing how the market would react rather than actually doing anything. Disappointing as I'm getting ripped off for Broadband only by Virgin.

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119916185#Comment_119916185

As mentioned above, this was largely a business announcement and likely to be a year or more before any actual products go on sale.

Also, BTW, it looks like it only applies to Fibre To The Home Virgin customers, not those on coax (like myself), so until VM upgrade your area to FTTH, this likely won't apply anyway.

zg3409

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119807550#Comment_119807550

If you have siro then tv options are sky glass (no dish needed internet only) sky tv (dish needed), free tv options such as saorview and freesat and other streaming options such as Netflix apple tv. Etc. Virgin tv is not an option.

In terms of this new service it looks like existing virgin media houses will be upgraded to fibre to the home from nearest virgin media box, typically by running wires along the front of all houses. When this is physically done to existing virgin media homes then Vodafone will resell this internet service. Presumably virgin will have a tv service too, but Vodafone may or may not or just resell virgin tv. Virgin may want their own landline type telephone offering too, mainly for businesses.

bk

Vodafone have their own IP TV option called Vodafone TV, which is available on SIRO. I'd assume it will be available on the Virgin Media FTTH service once that launches.

Virgin Media currently use DVB-C for TV service, it normally runs over Coax, but also can be done over FTTH with a converter box as seen in areas where they have rolled out FTTH already. I'm not sure they will do that over SIRO though. In the UK and other Liberty Global markets, they have launched or currently launching a new all IP TV streaming box, at the very least I'd imagine they will bring that to the SIRO market.

Daith

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119920167#Comment_119920167

Does Virgin FTTH require drilling through the external wall do you know? I'm getting really conscious about external insulation blocking any upgrade :/

loyatemu

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119920097#Comment_119920097

ach - that's disappointing - where did you read that it wouldn't include the coax areas?

bk

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/119971811#Comment_119971811

They don’t specifically say it, but the following quote from would certainly seem to suggest it, also it just makes logical sense given the way DOCSIS works, it isn’t well suited to sharing like FTTH is.

"Our new broadband partnership with Virgin Media means Vodafone customers will be able to avail of their Fibre to the Premise network, as they continue to upgrade to fibre around the country," said Amanda Nelson, CEO of Vodafone Ireland.

LarWright

Anybody more information on this and when they’re actually rolling it out? I have Virgin via coax. They recently re cabled my apartment block with fibre but haven’t connected anybody yet and anytime I check other providers (including VF) the max they say I can get is 100mb so have VF started to supply over VM network or was it just all smoke?