Virgin Media Fibre Optic Claims

[Axel]

I was sitting watching TV the other day and this ad comes on featuring Samual L Jackson, toting Virgin Media's "Mother of all Broadband" fibre optic service. I was curious so I did some digging to find that the broadband is not fibre optic at all - it's merely their own internal delivery system and that they're still using the Copper Co-Ax to deliver it to the house. In which case - how on earth can they advertise it as Fibre Optic broadband!? They might as well say they are fibre optic but deliver the service via old 56k dialup (not quite but it's a similar deal).

Promotional Page - http://allyours.virginmedia.com/sites/hatetowait/index.html

What are your thoughts on this?

[Richard Hammond]

Technically it is Fibre Optic, the whole of Vrigins network uses fibre optic to deliver TV/Phone/Broadband to the Cabinet but they use copper wire from the cab to your house.

It is a bit misleading but technically correct.

[Brian M. Veteran]

Didn't ofcom investigate this a while ago and tell them to stop calling it "Fibre Optic" because the last stretch uses copper cable?

[Fubar]

I was sitting watching TV the other day and this ad comes on featuring Samual L Jackson, toting Virgin Media's "Mother of all Broadband" fibre optic service. I was curious so I did some digging to find that the broadband is not fibre optic at all - it's merely their own internal delivery system and that they're still using the Copper Co-Ax to deliver it to the house. In which case - how on earth can they advertise it as Fibre Optic broadband!? They might as well say they are fibre optic but deliver the service via old 56k dialup (not quite but it's a similar deal).

Promotional Page - http://allyours.virginmedia.com/sites/hatetowait/index.html

What are your thoughts on this?

not true at all , i have fibre to the door and im with virgin not all of virgin has fibre to the door but alot do , it all depends what area you are in id say at least 70% is fibre to the door , even those who have coaxle still have fibre to the cabinet so their advertising is still true , if it wasn't it would have been pulled by the advertising standards agency either way coaxle to the door or fibre to the door you still get faster speeds than old crappy telephone wire :)

[That Guy Veteran]

Yeah, unfortunately, they're right. Some customers really do have fibre optic cable right to their door.

[Corris Veteran]

^ what he said.

the matter was already looked into by the ASA who cleared them of reports of lying to customers.

and as a vergin media customer while i would prefer the whole network to be fibre optic up to my house, the last few metres doesnt bother me if it works as advertised.

if anything i would be complaining about them halfing speeds after so much use, now that is annoying.

[Axel]

So surely it's not long til you guys get 100Mbps offered to you ;)

I'm slightly bitter that I live in a fully cabled area - however I can only receive the analogue TV services and no cable broadband due to Virgin media's reluctancy to perform whatever upgrade they need to.

I'm left with no other option but Sky - eek - actually I have to say they've been pretty good so far.

Anyway, so are the fibre optics only available in new areas or are they sticking them in older cabled areas too?

[Fubar]

So surely it's not long til you guys get 100Mbps offered to you ;)

I'm slightly bitter that I live in a fully cabled area - however I can only receive the analogue TV services and no cable broadband due to Virgin media's reluctancy to perform whatever upgrade they need to.

I'm left with no other option but Sky - eek - actually I have to say they've been pretty good so far.

Anyway, so are the fibre optics only available in new areas or are they sticking them in older cabled areas too?

im in an area that used to belong to cable and wireless and they forsaw to install fibre to the door and then it was bought out by ntl who then merged with telewest to create virgin so it all depends on what virgin do and what area layed fibre to the door before ntl/telewest/virgin took over :)

[Richard Hammond]

So surely it's not long til you guys get 100Mbps offered to you ;)

Virgin have already announced plans to have 200Mbps by 2012 :woot:

[Axel]

Virgin have already announced plans to have 200Mbps by 2012 :woot:

Sounds good but I'm sure I read something about BT laying fibre optic cable somewhere - so hopefully we won't have a monopolised market in the ridiculously fast broadband area and we'll see some good consumer beneficial price wars! I'm on ADSL but live about 3km from the exchange so only receive 4Mbps of the possible 16mbps. Bring on Fibre-optic!

[crazzyyfool]

Virgin have already announced plans to have 200Mbps by 2012 :woot:

No doubt with a 5GB cap after which they throttle you down to 5Mbps. :rolleyes:

[SuperKid]

Sounds good but I'm sure I read something about BT laying fibre optic cable somewhere - so hopefully we won't have a monopolised market in the ridiculously fast broadband area and we'll see some good consumer beneficial price wars! I'm on ADSL but live about 3km from the exchange so only receive 4Mbps of the possible 16mbps. Bring on Fibre-optic!

Yeah was an advert that BT was planning to lay fibre optic all over the country i think by 2012 and virgin media said why wait we've got it now.

[Brian M. Veteran]

im in an area that used to belong to cable and wireless and they forsaw to install fibre to the door and then it was bought out by ntl who then merged with telewest to create virgin so it all depends on what virgin do and what area layed fibre to the door before ntl/telewest/virgin took over :)

I'm also in an ex C&W area, and I certainly don't have Fibre to the door :(

[torrentthief]

not true at all , i have fibre to the door and im with virgin not all of virgin has fibre to the door but alot do , it all depends what area you are in id say at least 70% is fibre to the door , even those who have coaxle still have fibre to the cabinet so their advertising is still true , if it wasn't it would have been pulled by the advertising standards agency either way coaxle to the door or fibre to the door you still get faster speeds than old crappy telephone wire :)

70%!!! LOL, you just made up that number. The number is actually very low, new house builds generally have fibre installed and inner city centres and places like that, obviously some areas will too, usually decided by councils and also virgin/telewest. I couldn't put a figure on it as i dont know but it would be VERY low, around 15% or so.

Cant believe they are letting virgin advertise the broadband as fibre when the majority of people dont have fibre to their door, i'm thinking a govt official is getting a nice back hand?r.

[Fubar]

I'm also in an ex C&W area, and I certainly don't have Fibre to the door :(

yeah parts of london for some strange reason are still on anolog cable tv and dont get digital , rather strange considering in harrogate they layed fibre to the door lol

[Mike]

Sounds good but I'm sure I read something about BT laying fibre optic cable somewhere - so hopefully we won't have a monopolised market in the ridiculously fast broadband area and we'll see some good consumer beneficial price wars! I'm on ADSL but live about 3km from the exchange so only receive 4Mbps of the possible 16mbps. Bring on Fibre-optic!

problem with BT is the fibre isn't going to everyone, they want to reach 40-60mbps for the people close-ish to the exchanges and fibre to 1million really close people which to me is a joke, everyone should be allowed the same speed.

[red.]

I was thinking the same thing because i still have the coaxial cables coming into my house. I doubt that the number of house that have fibre optic right to the door is anywhere near 70% though. I'm assuming that it's only the newer customers that are getting it.

[torrentthief]

BT said that around 40% of the people will be able to get 40-60mbps. Thats not many for ?1.5bn. As for fibre, thats only really going to be for new builds they said with some selected areas too. Until we can get fibre we are always gunna have slow upload speed, UK isp's just dont want us to upload at all, 20mb down, 0.75mb up, just ludicrous! gimme atleast 5mb up!

My area took a while to have the exchange upgraded for adsl2+ so i reckon it will take a long time for the 40-60mb from BT. Also bt are only spending ?200m for the 1st two years of upgrading, then 1.3bn or so in the last year. So basically virtually no-one will be getting 40-60mb until 2010 onwards. The govt should just say "upgrade the network fully to fibre or we wont let you operate in the uk". 20mb down is pretty quick tbh, its just the stupid caps and speed restrictions to 5mb which is the problem because virgin trying to get as many customers as possible but dont wanna pay to upgrade the network which is FULL to capacity. Wouldnt be suprised if they make it 1000mb but throttled to 10mb during peak hours, 4gb cap and advertise it as gigabit speed.

[Mike]

^^ of course an ISP doesn't want to fully fibre their network, they'd be bankrupt if they did as customers refuse to pay for things they supposedly want

[torrentthief]

^^ of course an ISP doesn't want to fully fibre their network, they'd be bankrupt if they did as customers refuse to pay for things they supposedly want

nah, BT calculated as being ?12bn to upgrade everything to fibre, they could carry on with current speeds and prices but add 100mb and 1000mb to speeds and charge like ?50 and ?200 a month, no-one would complain as everything would still be the same but rich people could get crazy fast broadband. Then over time lower the prices of the 100 and 1000mb, they'd recoup the investment in 5yrs or so i reckon, they could then also add multiple hd channels and a box to record 2 hd channels at once, renting 720p movies etc, they'd have loads of ways to make money with 100mb or 1000mb speeds. They want the govt to pay a big chunk tho.