Virgin Media in talks with power firms to expand network
Subsidies not included
Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Backup/Recovery
Virgin Media plans to expand its cable network to up to a million homes in areas where BT doesn't think upgrading its network will be worthwhile - and the cable company says it won't need subsidies to do it.
It is in talks with power companies for access to their streetside poles, which are used to deliver electricity in many rural and semi-rural areas.
The discussions are sure to be encouraged by the coalition government, which has scrapped a £6 per year landline tax that would have subsidised fibre optics for the "final third" of the country, where BT cannot see a commercial case for upgrades.
At a conference in July the government will explore with industry how "superfast"* broadband can be expanded to cover the whole country by the end of the decade at minimal cost. Ministers have indicated they see partnerships of the type under discussion by Virgin Media as the way ahead.
Kevin Baughan, Virgin Media's director of technical strategy, said subsidies will be necessary for "superfast" broadband to reach all homes, but that they didn't figure in its plan to piggyback on the electricity infrastructure.
"This is about changing the fundamental economics of deploying fibre," he said.
The scheme is in its early stages. A small-scale technical trial is underway in Woolhampton, a village in Berkshire where fibre has been run to 25 homes from two poles installed by Virgin Media in a pub car park. The fibre runs all the way to the sides of houses, unlike in a standard UK cable deployment, where the light signal is converted to an electrical one at a streetside cabinet in order to run over a coaxial line into premises.
Jon James, Virgin Media's executive director of broadband, said the economics of expanding faster broadband into areas rejected by BT make sense. "For them it's not worth upgrading existing customers to slightly better service, but for us it's a new market where we know we'll get 30 to 40 per cent take up," he said.
Virgin Media's network currently covers 12.6 million homes, about half the country.
Competition in the broadband market is set to intensify in the next 12 months as BT's fibre-to-the-cabinet upgrade programme and marketing gathers pace. Virgin Media will launch its 100Mbit/s downstream product by the end of the year, in part to demonstrate the technical superiority of its last mile infrastructure. ®
*The government's catch-all term for the coming generation of fixed and mobile internet access technologies.
COMMENTS
that's nothing
I have Virgin 20mb Broadband. My next door neightbour (less than a meter away) cannot have Virgin as they are not in a cable area?
Solution. Wireless, half price braodband for me and him.
BT Highway
BT haven't been running for 50 years. It was privatised in the 80's, originally it was the GPO, and BT Highway wasn't 'dual ISDN', just ISDN2e which gave you 2 ISDN channels (okay three is you count the D channel) so you could have either two channels running to give you 128Kbit/sec, 1 channel to give you 64Kbit/sec and a phone line, or two phone lines.
It wasn't a bad service but it was damned expensive. I remember looking into it when I was a heavy dialup internet user, in the end I stuck with standard analogue dialup and eventually took up ADSL (at 512Kbit/sec) when BT started the wires only trial.
I do agree with some of your points though, BT only do what is good for BT. If a village puts in alternatives (wireless for instance) BT will come along and mysteriously install their kit and undercut the competition.
Still this has to be good news about Virgin, maybe eventually when they exhaust the possibilities of their standard cable network they might look at replacing the copper with fibre, and with all those existing ducts it would probably work out economically viable, at least in the long term.
Rob
Clarification please
"Virgin Media's network currently covers 12.6 million homes, about half the country"
Is 12.6 million homes actually half the country, or half the population?
IT infrastructure monitoring strategies
Agentless Backup is Not a Myth
Steps to Take Before Choosing a Business Continuity Partner
Requirements Checklist for Choosing a Cloud Backup and Recovery Service Provider
Data control in the cloud
