back to article Virgin Media to stand up rival network operator to BT Openreach

UK telco Virgin Media is opening up its fixed line broadband networks to other internet service providers (ISPs) for the first time, setting up a rival national infrastructure provider to BT's Openreach in the process. Virgin Media, full name Virgin Media O2 (VMO2), said it has initiated plans to create a national fixed …

  1. DJV Silver badge

    IPv6

    Hmmm, I wonder what happens if the other telcos want to use IPv6 on Virgin Media's network... something that VM themselves seem to have great difficulty in implementing.

    1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

      Re: IPv6

      Hmmm, I wonder what happens if the other telcos want to use IPv6 on Virgin Media's network.

      Wholesale stuff like this is usually done at a layer below IP. So you lease/rent an Ethernet, VLAN etc that might end up in it's own VRF. Then if you want to layer on IP in either v4 or v6, that's up to you, not the wholesale provider.. unless you also want to buy peering/transit into VM's own IP network(s).

    2. Lee D Silver badge

      Re: IPv6

      Ironic, given that it's a requirement of DOCSIS 3.

      1. Lurko

        Re: IPv6

        I think you'll find DOCSIS is (appropriately enough) rather akin to the Pirate's Code, in being more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules.

        Every operator picks and chooses what they will implement and what they won't, so for example full duplex has been possible as part of DOCSIS 3.1 for years*, but all most people get from Virgin Media is 10:1 down versus up.

        FD is now wrapped up in DOCSIS 4.0, but that's the same pick and mix.

        1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

          Re: IPv6

          FD is now wrapped up in DOCSIS 4.0, but that's the same pick and mix.

          Last time I looked at Virgin, they were still struggling to integrate ex-NTL and Telewest networks. So not sure how relevant DOCSIS will be other than supporting their retail division. On their Service Provide side, a lot of it was dark fibre or wavelength provision via Transmode WDM, with some pressure to switch to a more efficient switched DWDM core. But that migration is obviously expensive, as is network expansion largely being driven by retail rather than business. So that may be great if it's going to be a wholesale offer to retail-focused ISPs, but their network was often pretty far from business customers.

    3. jollyboyspecial

      Re: IPv6

      Wholesale provision is usually at layer 2. The business arm of Virgin have been providing layer 2 connectivity for a long time. What wholesale customers choose to put over those layer 2 connections is their own business.

  2. Alan Brown Silver badge

    Chorus/Spark

    When New Zealand _properly_ cleaved Telecom NZ into two _entirely_ separate companies (one handling lines, one handling services/dialtones), the line side started happily sellling duct space and maintenance services to ALL former "competitors" including the NZ equivalent to VM

    Can you imagine OR facilitating VM laying cables to endusers? That's what happened

    Britain missed an opportunuty, as usual due to regulatory capture and payola

    1. Tempest 3K

      Re: Chorus/Spark

      Actually, Openreach helping VM is happening indirectly. I have a VM via nexfibre link here (for backup) and the fibre is via OR's ducts using their PIA product........

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    More BS from Vermin

    around here, the Vermin network is still using the original cable that was laid in the 1980's by NTL. Yes folks, it is that old.

    My next door neighbour is on it and between 15:00 and 21:30, its performance is pathetic. Far too many customers trying to use bandwidth limited cable.

    OpenRetch are not being allowed to to FTTH. That concession was given to one of the startups that Vermin will probably buy out as soon as they are legally allowed.

    AFAIK, the takeup of FTTH is patchy. It isn't cost effective if you want a fixed IP. At £5.00 per month it adds 20% (+ VAT) to your bill. I'm staying put on PlusNet. 76Mb down works reasonably well.

    1. 43300 Silver badge

      Re: More BS from Vermin

      Is it that shite aluminium cable? I've encountered that in connections to several work sites and it's a good bit worse than old, knackered copper wiring.

      1. Dippywood

        Re: More BS from Vermin

        The wonderful decision to use aluminium was, as far as I know, a GPO decision from the '60s (running into the '70s), driven by cost.

        Universally recognised as a stooooooooopid idea...

        1. The Dogs Meevonks Silver badge

          Re: More BS from Vermin

          They did that in the city I grew up in (Milton Keynes) and it wasn't fit for anything. It also meant that for 30yrs the promise of bringing cable to the older parts of the city never happened... until they finally got around to laying FTTH a few years back.

          Then I moved... and now my avg speeds are about 40Mb and FTTH isn't coming here for a couple more years.

          Honestly can't wait... to tell sky to go f*ck themselves over their shitty service.

        2. Jellied Eel Silver badge

          Re: More BS from Vermin

          The wonderful decision to use aluminium was, as far as I know, a GPO decision from the '60s (running into the '70s), driven by cost.

          Kind of. But actually due to this-

          https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Congo_Crisis

          So estates built in the mid-60's ended up with oddities like aluminium cable and stainless steel plumbing because the Congo crisis disrupted copper production for a few years, and the prices rocketed. AFAIK BT's removed all the aluminium cable already and I don't think Virgin (ie NTL/Telewest/the original franchises) ever used it. I think a lot of their issues just stem from co-ax generally being more prone to damage and degradation than a lot of fibre.

          But that's not saying fibre's perfect. There were some experiments with PCF (Plastic Coated Fibre) where the plastic degrades, also some early fibre having more water in the glass. That leads to more attenuation at some wavelengths that coincide with the 'water peak', and the fibre developing microfractures and failing. AFAIK though, most of that was replaced not long after the issues were identified with fibre aging and degradation.

          1. Dippywood

            Re: More BS from Vermin

            "AFAIK BT's removed all the aluminium cable already"

            Oh, but I wish that were true. There were standing orders to remove when found, but that program stopped, and my area is still lumbered with it.

            Fragile, noisy and not suitable for (A)DSL or even FTTC - I'm stuck with Vermin until one of the FTTP solutions happens by, with Openreach having no published plans as yet.

            Aluminium is the bane of my street.

            1. Jellied Eel Silver badge

              Re: More BS from Vermin

              Oh, but I wish that were true. There were standing orders to remove when found, but that program stopped, and my area is still lumbered with it.

              There can be a trick to this. If you and your neighbours keep reporting faults, and asking to order BT Broadband, ideally including the exciting content exclusively available from BT Vision.. you might be able to game the system. Especially the Vision bit cos AFAIK. that isn't selling well.

              Basically you need to get their KPI systems to notice high fault levels (OPEX cost) and lost sales opportunities. That may then trigger BT Retail to order fibre from Openreach, or Openreach to replace it cos it's messing with their fault KPIs. A lot depends on cost though, but if there are streets nearby where there is existing fibre, it's not that expensive. Main problem is aluminium really, really doesn't like being disturbed so it's usually a rip & replace job to yoink out the cable, install microducts and blow fibre. Especially if existing ducts are full, collapsed, occupied by roots etc. It sometimes helps if there's any decent sides housing development going on because then sometimes BT's New Build team can add pressure.. Assuming the developers talk to them, which too often they don't.

    2. IGotOut Silver badge

      Re: More BS from Vermin

      "More BS from Vermin

      around here, the Vermin network is still using the original cable that was laid in the 1980's by NTL."

      My parents were on the old Telewest cabling, yet their entire support team were utterly moronic.

      They kept getting drops EXACTLY every 5 minutes. From the get go I said it was a synch issue (could see it in the logs) and it was an upstream fault. I worked in telecom and network for 20 years and had seen this issue plenty of times.

      4 engineers to the house, 2 teams in the street, 20 "support" calls, and always it was the same...reboot ..must be a router issue.

      Here is the kicker. EVERY SINGLE PERSON we dealt with was too stupid, or badly informed to spot that there were (that I became aware of) about 6 other house with IDENTICAL issues. Guess what, every single one were old Telewest customers.

      No idea if they ever fixed it, as all of the affected people left after being with them for 20+ years.

    3. NeilPost

      Re: More BS from Vermin

      Well plus zzz

      “UK telco Virgin Media is opening up its fixed line broadband networks to other internet service providers (ISPs) for the first time, setting up a rival national infrastructure provider to BT's Openreach in the proces”

      and “16 million Customers”

      National network rival my ass.

      Vermin only serve profitable locations, have very poor geographical network reach outside of large suburban and have no PSO.

  4. Mike007 Bronze badge

    This would be the company who bragged about how they were selling me 350Mbit, with "up to" and an asterisk.

    Nowhere in the small print did it mention that this only applied to speed test servers from well known speed test sites, with all other HTTP(S) throttled to 100Mbit and non-HTTP throttled to 10Mbit...

    Although the reason they agreed to early termination was because they had scheduled outages at least once a month, on top of unscheduled ones... On something they sold as suitable for business use.

    I upgraded to Openreach string, the bean cans sync at 250Mbit/50Mbit for £40/month.

  5. Excused Boots Bronze badge

    Now call me a cynic, but this news coupled with the recent article about VM’s appallingly bad customer service provision, (https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/26/ofcom_virgin_media_complaints/?td=readmore) which has been appallingly bad for some time and for which the bosses seem to be in no hurry to spend the money to fix - does start t make me think this is the starting move of a sell-off.

  6. captain veg Silver badge

    no mention of speed

    Dunno what they're offering right now, but certainly last year it amused me greatly to see/hear ads from BT offering "superfast" internet, by which they meant 25Mbps.

    In Andorra the base product is 300Mbps. For a small premium I can have 700Mbps.

    In France I can have 1.2Gbps on a cheapo consumer tariff.

    In Spain, my parents are offered 600Mbps basic with the possibility of 1Gbps for a small number (possibly 2) of tens of euros per month.

    What is VM offering? Is it better than "superfast"?

    -A.

    1. NeilPost

      Re: no mention of speed

      Funnily though .. only France is on the front page for internet speed … and its average is only 89 mbit/s. Spain ranks far below the UK and Andorra - well you could almost cover the country with a Gigabit Ethernet switch to cover that landmass - so not really representative for comparison … and the headline grabbing speeds mentioned about are not that widely available - certainly not national.

      https://www.speedtest.net/global-index#mobile

      1. captain veg Silver badge

        Re: no mention of speed

        I don't get your point.

        In Andorra the basic offer from the state Monopoly is 300 Mbps. There is no other provider, so this is the baseline.

        For another 10 euros per month they will supply you 700Mbps.

        I'm not here to argue that it's a good deal, but it makes "superfast" look stupid..

        In Spain your choices seem to me to be limited by whether or not you can get fibre. If you can then Gigabit is no problem.

        In France the government has mandated that everyone should have fibre. Once installed you can get pretty much as much bandwidth as you are prepared to pay for. Small multiples of ten euros are enough to get really big download speeds.

        -A.

  7. Boris the Cockroach Silver badge
    Thumb Down

    Anyone's

    bullshit bingo card go off?

    Vermin/O2 now want to be open retch ewwwww think I'd rather have root canal treatment

  8. jollyboyspecial

    Choices

    One of the biggest issues with internet connectivity in the UK is choice. Live in an urban area and you've got lots. And here's yet another choice for urban dwellers. Live outside the urban sprawl and you probably only have one choice and that's whatever xDSL service you get from I

    Openreach.

    1. 43300 Silver badge

      Re: Choices

      Not in all cases - there can be 'blackspots' even in cities as regards wired connections, where the only offerings are utter crap.

    2. Excused Boots Bronze badge

      Re: Choices

      There are places in supposed urban areas where the available speeds aren’t too much better than dial-up. OK, yes, slight exaggeration but still!

      But this isn’t something restricted to the UK, you will often see posts on many different forums (fora?), claiming that ‘the situation in the UK is just pathetic I can only get x speed, but in xyz country, we get speeds of ten times that’, yes maybe true for a small percentage of the population.

      I know a number of Americans working here, who when I mention this claim to them, laugh and say, ‘yes it might be true for a someone living in central NY, or places in California, but, believe me, the vast majority of Americans would kill to have the same level of choice and services which you have in the UK.

      An unfashionable view, and probably will attract a number of downvotes from people, who would wish it not be so, but true, regardless.

      The reality is that wherever you happen to live in the world, you can always point somewhere else and say ‘ look they are getting xyz and I can’t, so our system must be rubbish’!

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    The merkinisation of El Reg is laughable

    "VMO2 said in its announcement that nexfibre - a separate fiber network joint venture between Liberty Global"

    ##### BRING DABBSY BACK! #####

    1. Excused Boots Bronze badge

      Re: The merkinisation of El Reg is laughable

      "VMO2 said in its announcement that nexfibre - a separate fiber network joint venture between Liberty Global"

      ##### BRING DABBSY BACK! #####

      Or even a competent proof-reader or sub-editor would do. ;)

  10. Mark 124

    Consolidation con-soil-ation

    Please no... Would hate for semi decent fibre-based providers like Hyperoptic to be borged into VM uselessness!

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Consolidation con-soil-ation

      Spoken like someone from a former Telewest region who experienced what happened when "Telewest bought NTL" and the NTL board took over the combined company... I swear they must have removed capacity just to "harmonise the nationwide offerings"!

  11. John Brown (no body) Silver badge
    Windows

    An Openreach spokesperson said of its new rival: "We welcome competition

    Yeah, riiiiiiiight!

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