Boss of Liberty Global Slams Openreach’s “Desperate” FTTP Price Cuts
The CEO and Vice Chairman of Liberty Global (VMO2), Mike Fries, has told an investor meeting that Openreach’s recently announced FTTP broadband price cuts for UK ISPs (Equinox 2) are a “desperate and premature” move by BT, which he sees as an “overreaction to the market more broadly.”
Just to recap. Openreach are preparing to introduce another round of wholesale discounts on their FTTP products from April 2023. The move is intended to help their ISPs to stay competitive with newer alternative networks (Summary of UK Full Fibre Builds) and further reduce the price of related packages, which will in turn boost take-up by consumers and aid the move away from copper lines. But AltNets view the move as being anticompetitive (here and here).
Despite this, the view from the boss of Liberty Global, which already has significant national coverage in the United Kingdom via Virgin Media’s (VMO2) fixed line broadband network, is that Equinox 2 seems “unlikely” to have a long-term impact on their plans. But in the short term, Fries said it felt like a move that was “a bit desperate and premature by BT.”
However, Fries did add that he thought Ofcom now “gets the larger picture” on this and is “likely to look at Equinox 2 in a hopefully, comprehensive way.” For its part, Ofcom has already said that its “provisional” view on the new discounts is “not [to] intervene” because the offer is “not anti-competitive” (here). But the regulator did agree to open a separate probe to examine whether Openreach’s practice of amending its full-fibre prices could act as a barrier to competitors’ entry and expansion in the market.
Mike Fries said:
“What any investor in a telecom market requires, or would like to see, is some long-term certainty and a level playing field. Equinox 2, from our point of view, is unlikely to make a long-term impact on our plans.
But in the short term, [Equinox 2] feels to us to be a bit desperate and premature by BT, reflecting, I would say, an overreaction to the market more broadly for whatever reason they felt that was necessary. On the other hand, we think Ofcom gets the larger picture here and is likely to look at Equinox 2 in a hopefully, comprehensive way, and we look forward to the consultation process.”
Speaking of AltNets, the CEO of Virgin Media O2, Lutz Schüler, also commented at the same event that their perception of rivals in the alternative network space was that they were “getting under stress” due to returning weaker penetration (take-up) than they need. Indeed, we have reported on such things a few times before, but it’s worth noting that high inflation and rising costs (energy, leases, suppliers etc.) are another significant factor.
Lutz Schüler said:
“So according to our numbers, there are 7.6 million fibre homes in the UK from altnets and the penetration is around 15%. And from a pure wholesale perspective, we all know you need 40%, and cost of capital are increasing. So opportunistically, we will look at it and we will take the opportunities then as they come.”
As we’ve said before, gauging take-up is a difficult thing to do and requires context, depending on the environment of any given location, as well as the age of the deployment (take-up takes time to build organically). If an operator is achieving a 40% take-up as an average, then, we think, it could be said to be doing very well. But in dense urban areas a figure of 20-25% might be enough, while rural locations may require a much higher figure.
Suffice to say that a somewhat arbitrary figure of 40% may not be correct for every operator. But it’s worth noting that Virgin Media’s own figures may not even achieve that. The operator now covers 16.14 million premises and has just reported having 5,653,800 broadband customers, which equates to a take-up of 35%. Given that VMO2 is currently mostly focused upon urban areas, then that’s a healthy level, but it’s still not 40%.
Lest we forget that VMO2’s parents have just established a new Joint Venture – Nexfibre, which will be building into exactly the same market and facing many of the same challenges as other AltNets, albeit with the backing of a major anchor tenant ISP in Virgin Media. Nevertheless, Lutz Schüler’s comment has, perhaps unwittingly, just set a very high bar for Nexfibre’s own level of take-up to be judged.
Mark is a professional technology writer, IT consultant and computer engineer from Dorset (England), he also founded ISPreview in 1999 and enjoys analysing the latest telecoms and broadband developments. Find me on X (Twitter), Mastodon, Facebook and Linkedin.
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So VM don’t like price cuts because it makes their current 13.8% increases calculated from full price packages (ignoring any customer retention discount or offers) look inflated like they really are.
Additionally, VM price increases beginning April 2024; this formula will now be RPI from February that year + additional 3.9%.
So VM are bashing BT because it is likely to make them cheaper then VM?
I’m ignoring the effect for ALTNETS as this was a VM statement – because there I think BT are just doing this to try and starve off competition from ALTNETS to make it unattractive to invest, not because they want to make it cheaper for customers. Lets remember BT also have an appalling price rise formula of CPI + 3.9% too.
Yeah, I find this stuff quite transparent really.
PR droid from any telco company: WAAAAH our competitors reduced their pricing! This is clearly an abuse of market power and puts us under pressure.
Yes. That is how this exactly how a competitive market is supposed to work! Just look at how lethargic BT was at rolling out FTTP until serious competition threatened their business model.
It’s not going to make BT cheaper yet. BT are putting up consumer prices by 14.4% this year, even though Openreach is dropping the wholesale price. BT are double dipping. It’s disgraceful.
Mike, it could make NEW customer offers cheaper and when I say BT, I mean a filter down to other operators using Openreach infrastructure. Sorry still used to BT and Openreach being the same whatever guise is in place.
While I agree overall, the price rises are just sharp practice and profiteering because they can from the isps.
EE for example are putting my £45+vat 12 month mobile broadband deal up by 14.4% in April “due to increased costs and to continue investment in our network”, yet a new customer can sign up to the same deal with the same device for £30+vat a month.
This shows that it’s nothing to do with costs or investment, it’s just “we want more money”. New customer prices don’t shift when these price increases happen, it falls on the old customers and just causes churn in a pointless race to the bottom.
If BT want to give me FTTP at 1.8 down and put my price up by 13% every month they are welcome to – it’s a HELL of a lot LESS than I am paying now!
mike, One could call BT’s double dipping when Openreach are lowering its prices…..erm “racketeering” perhaps? Bit like Mcdonalds icecream machines isn’t it?
VM would do better to focus on improved Customer Service that price hikes & fussing about competitors.
VM higher price used to reflect a speed advantage but Openreach FTTP and ohers have fully eroded that and exceeded it in top tier upstream speeds.
VM advertising for Gig 1 has fallen flat on its face. Few customers have any kit with 2.5Gb/s ports to match a Hub 5 and those that have Hub 4 have just taken a 200Mb/s speed hit back to 940Mb/s as the latest Hub 4 firmware rollout has broken the LAGG capability.
How is that different to any other Gigabit ISP? Most people have gigabit LANs so speed will top out at around 940Mbps. Why are you arguing this is a particular failing of VM when it’s not?
Because VM said in original press release and a copy still on their forums web site, that existing customers would be upgraded to HUB5 at no extra cost which does have a 2.5gbps WAN port and Wifi AX speeds not just lower AC like other hubs. Then they back tracked by making up excuses.
They also over provision at 1230mbps and sell as GIGABIT not 920mbps for example.
“those that have Hub 4 have just taken a 200Mb/s speed hit back to 940Mb/s ”
Poor sods! I mean taking that sort of speed for £62 a month ( or £35 if you take the current deal)
VM missed my road in 1999 and never bothered to fill in – so I pay 10 times them of £35 VM to get 940 down –
Anyone having IQ>60 slams the CEO and Vice Chairman of Liberty Global – Mike Fries for selling RFoG/DOCSIS on newly build parts of network in 2023.
*built
I’m going to take a chance and say that Mike Fries doesn’t make those decisions personally, and that the people who do know more than John at ISPR about why they had to run RFoG at the start.
They’re building an entirely new network behind the XGSPON. Ignoring all the rest about needing a new provisioning system.
A bit more to it than just lighting fibre. RFoG they can connect some customers immediately. I’m sure there’s loads more to it as well. VM isn’t full of engineers with some kink over RFoG. They don’t actually like having to use it now, it’s a constraint.
Reality Bytes how do you know this, unless you’re high up in VM then it sounds like you’re just pulling this from a part of your lower rear facing body. How do you know they view it as a constraint (it is, but how do you know VM see it that way)?
The obvious answer is obvious: they get to keep using their dodgy old kit. They get to keep using rubbish cable modems, using up their stocks of CATV coax garbage and they keep their costs down. I’m quite sure they would rather use up the kit they have, and keep their costs down than invest in new XGS-PON equipment. BTW it’s highly amusing that people keep blathering on about VM using XGS-PON when we all know they’re not likely to start offering symmetric services or 10Gig service. It wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest if they offered something like 1000/100 on their Gig1.
VM are bricking it right now, and still throwing ancient cable-tv rubbish at new builds which makes no sense except for cost and hoping the average customer is uninformed about upload speeds (which is why they tend to bury that info and go looooook! it’s 1Gig!!!)
Sorry the company you work for/shill for sucks btw. I hope you get to keep your job.
@Billy if you look at the LinkedIn of some of the VM network engineers then you will see that most of them are pretty anti cable and pro PON with some being critical about some of the US cable networks which are going with Docsis 4.
RFOG was always going to be transitional so VM could use their existing backend systems and equipment for a while and easily switch to PON later. RFOG was always a relatively small part of their network so wouldn’t be worth switching a lot of their backend systems and headend equipment until a larger PON rollout.
Virgin will not offer a 10Gig service on XGS PON, nobody will as that would take the entire bandwidth of the PON. As for symmetric services, the current asymmetry is due to cable technology so they could go either way.
You do realize that the expensive bit is the laying of the fibres? A RFoG network physically looks *EXACTLY* like a PON network and the two can actually coexist on the same network. Consequently from the perspective of a HFC network operator transitioning to a RFoG network which allows for higher upload speeds (the main complaint of HFC networks) is the obvious logical set. Once that has been achieved they can then migrate to a PON IP based network using the exact same physical infrastructure that was installed for the RFoG network.
> Virgin will not offer a 10Gig service on XGS PON, nobody will as that would take the entire bandwidth of the PON
*cries in italian XGSPON marketing*
tim. it/fisso-e-mobile/fibra-e-adsl/fibra-10-giga
Too expensive bad high up too much need be careful by Virgin Media.
Virgin are bricking it and rightfully so. They are loosing customers hand over fist to Alt nets . Why on earth would anyone choose Virgin if they had a choice of an Alt net? I know i didn’t, nor did my neighbour, or the guy across the street. Ok, the whole street left VM.
Data for VM losing customers hand over fist to altnets please. Not just your street where VM apparently lost everyone.
People seem to think an altnet arrives in a competitive or even uncompetitive, no other full fibre, area and there’s a stampede. It just isn’t happening.
Some altnets have been funded and run understanding it’ll take a while, just as it has every other time new broadband came in. Others.. well.
Nexfibre aren’t going to be entirely building their way to their coverage target and aren’t going to be paying the over a grand per premises passed VM did for the mainland bits of what’s now Wight Fibre.
If you look at actual numbers VM’s broadband customer number is growing.
Altnet will have had an impact but take up is difficult to access, your good experience with them will have influenced your neighbours decision while someone who hasn’t heard of them before will be more likely to avoid.
Specific altnets vary as well, Cityfibre and Youfibre have been relatively successful where others (e.g Trooli) have struggled.
Sometime in the next couple of years my street will have fibre from BT, Cityfibre, and Upp!.
I am 100% ditching Virgin Media at the first opportunity. I’m with them because I have no other options. It’s either Gig1 with VM or a crappy 20Mbps VDSL service from an ISP using Openreach.
I’ve had no end of issues with Virgin, from deal with years of poor performance due to oversubscription (although still better performance than I’d get over VDSL), issues with SuperHubs and awful latency due to chipset issues, rubbish upload speeds, bad customer service. Yeah I’m leaving asap.
@Reality Bytes… I don’t have data to backup Althappy’s claims but I have seen/talked to a variety of people who either want to use dual connections or swap from VM.
Amazingly it’s not been due to price but latency.
Last night for example… I was playing Warzone2 with another UK streamer on US East servers.
He was complaining that his latency was 160-180ms whereas mine was 110-120ms. After seeing the difference between VM and BT he then placed an order for a BT connection during his stream.
Ditching VM after price rise scandal and changes to RPI + 3.9% every year.
So are two other members of the family on VM.
So 3 families going to an ALTNET here.
Reality Bytes (or is that Sir?)
Lets leave official figures until the next round of statistics from VM’s Joiners and leavers data shall we? That way, it’s all nice and official. Wouldn’t you agree?
Of course, they will have to heavily discount new customers to try and keep the figures up , but overall this should reflect in their turnover and profit per customer figures which will show the truer figures.
‘@Reality Bytes… I don’t have data to backup Althappy’s claims but I have seen/talked to a variety of people who either want to use dual connections or swap from VM.
Amazingly it’s not been due to price but latency.’
Yes – absolutely. Virgin Media have two separate issues that make their latency to many destinations uncompetitive.
The first is that they use DoCSIS. DoCSIS adds 2-4 ms of jitter to the connection. Not a big deal but if connecting to servers in the UK noticeable.
The second is that neither the VM national network or their connections to the wider world are built for latency. The VM national network follows the cable networks so goes between towns where there’s cable coverage. This often means the routes aren’t the most direct and adds some more latency – noticeable relative to BT Retail performance in the UK and further afield.
The wider world connections are a bigger problem. Liberty Global are a tier 1 ISP and behave like it. They don’t like people connecting to them without paying them and so VM’s routes to many locations are quite direct as VM have been moved largely behind the Liberty Global network.
If your main concern with regards to your broadband is latency VM are probably a bad choice.
PS: For anonymous: this is what being unbiased looks like. Asking for data on the claimed churn numbers, while being happy to discuss, confirm and explain why VM are a bad choice for some people.
Oh dear, how sad, never mind.
I feel so bad for Virgin Media.
Not.
Tell Mike Fries – STOP BLOODY GREEDY ON EXPNSIVE VM. HE SHOULD SHUT UP.
Calm down, Phil.
So price cuts to service providers and cheaper packages for customers are something Virgin are against
Remind me never to go to them, then
VM have spent the past decade soiling their own bed because they were in many cases the only game in town for above-100Mbps speeds, so didn’t need to be anything other than mediocre to guarantee customers. Now they are upset they have to sleep in the bed they messed.
Haha the altnets would be really happy if they were getting 25-40% take up as it stands – the vast majority are absolutely not – many aren’t in double digits at all.
Consolidation will happen, because it just doesn’t scale in the current model as they’d hoped.
And you think that’s good for consolidation for the public do you? Back to monolithic dinosaur predators whose answer is to hold customers to ransom.
Yes it will, and sooner, faster and more widely than most thought.
I hope there will be some smaller insurgent networks left. They have delivered some really innovative products and disturbed the market. The multigig services and the XGSPON networks have helped nudge CityFibre and VM to use XGSPON.
That’s what I meant. If it wasn’t for those other ALTNETS doing the 1gbps/10gbps symmetric stuff at a competitive price, the others would have stood still. Take away innovative competitors and you are left with the two dinosaurs again.
Nobody is pretending that some of the ALTNETS won’t exist having chosen to build in areas with multiple providers, non-symmetric service and not competitive pricing, some even patchy coverage. That’s why Trooli are in trouble for example.
You know what, for the VM fan boys on here, lets publish this news story on the VM forums and let the customers add to the comments shall we? Their phones lines and Whatsapp can’t cope with people ringing to cancel despite them staggering notification of price increases and change to RPI + 3.9%.
Content punters aren’t on support forums seeking help for their working services or billing so doesn’t really prove anything.
If asking for actual data to back up a claim makes someone a fanboy guilty as charged.
This website is brigaded by VM employees and their brain dead ‘reality bytezzzz’ type commenters. It’s absolutely pathetic.
Indeed. Astroturfers often criticise the company they’re astroturfing for – https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/02/boss-of-liberty-global-slams-openreachs-desperate-fttp-price-cuts.html#comment-277269 and compliment the competition – https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2023/02/boss-of-liberty-global-slams-openreachs-desperate-fttp-price-cuts.html#comment-277270
I actually use an altnet. I’m writing this comment through that connection. I subscribed as soon as they were available and am a strong advocate of theirs.
If you can’t handle the concept of nuance that’s your issue: sorry.
VM customers will leave, but we need a place to go i.e. Openreach or an Altnet.
Being in an RFoG area without FTTC or FTTP, VM becomes the option of last resort.
> Openreach or an altnet
It would be nice if more openreach-based ISPs would integrate altnets into their offerings. But where I work, Equinox 1 & 2 is having a massive impact. I’ll let you make insinuations on what that means. 😉
For us at least, there are other factors from the ppl higher in the chain that put a halt on our own integration. 1) our routers could not handle OR gigabit. 2) National financial situation causing contraction in wider business revenue.
But I respect the decision as nobody has been laid off yet in contrast to other non-Telco big names. We also lost a really good new router thanks to the economic pressures which caused the CoL crisis. I can only hope we get the greenlight to work on this sooner than 2025.
Reality bites ( sir )
‘People seem to think an altnet arrives in a competitive or even uncompetitive, no other full fibre, area and there’s a stampede. It just isn’t happening’
And your data for the above comment ?
Let’s try to help Sir Bites out . Hands up, if you had the choice of VM or an Alt net , who would you go with ?
My data for the above comment would be the altnets’ own numbers for homes passed and actual customers. You can find stories on this very website such as https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/10/london-full-fibre-isp-g-network-denies-warning-it-may-collapse.html
‘The company’s accounts also reported that it had ended 2021 with a total of 340,000 premises passed and 8,664 connected customers, which is up from 180,000 premises and 3,477 customers in the year before’
https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2022/06/full-fibre-isp-youfibre-hits-10000-uk-customers-and-offers-6-months-free.html
‘At present Netomnia has so far covered around 130,000 premises (up from 50,000 in September 2021) and they aim to reach 1 million by the end of 2023. In that sense, the figure of 10,000 customers equates to a take-up rate of just 7.69%, which is low. But that’s to be expected from a brand-new network that is still in the early process of ramping-up its rollout (adoption takes a long time to grow, due to various reasons).’
Obviously if you know more than myself, Mark and, indeed, the bosses of a few altnets who have far lower take up expectations than immediately taking all VM customers as they pass their homes all power to you. In the real world altnets fight a combination of people under contract, aggressive discounting from VM, BT and whomever else, and of course indifference – some people stick with what they know.
I find VM’s complaints personally particularly aggravating because they stopped expanding their network on the estate where I live about a 5 minute walk down the road.
So I literally only have OR as an option with no signs of an alternative in sight.
Yeah.
It’s easy to forget that in many areas VM are in direct competition with OR FTTP and even sometimes more than one FTTP Altnet as well though.
It’s just that for many of us it’s OR or nothing so we can’t really understand what their issue is and comments from VM to this effect don’t really mean much when we know fine well VM have little to no interest in expanding their network (along with most altnets).
I used to like Telewest/Blueyonder back in the 90s/00’s when they served me, looking at that address now I can see what their problem is though: they had a high speed internet monopoly and had invested big in building the cable network, nowadays they’ve got OR offering FTTP and one Altnet in the same street though. Given that their pricing doesn’t look as competitive and their product is no longer unique.
It’s just hard to sympathise from my current location where it is OR or nothing as far as wired connections so their complaint seems to be that I’m not going to be paying enough for that OR service…
Virgin is scum but Openreach cut prices and BT raises them
I am preaching everyone I meet to move to an alt. These clowns need to be both taken down
BT don’t want the business. Wholesaling is where it’s at!
I’m moving from Virgin to BT it’s costing me £10 a.month more, but It’s worth it to avoid higher ping, higher latency and the offshore call centres
Has Virgin Media started XGSPON overlay yet? 5 billion for 15 mil premises including mdu? Sounds like a lot of tosh considering cost of Openreach overlaying theirs costing significantly more.
Where’s the 5 billion come from? It’s about £100 per premises to upgrade to FTTP.
Nexfibre is seperate, originally allowing for around £500 per premises IIRC which is higher than Openreach but VM have a tendency to spend more and go underground. The talk about Nexfibre acquiring Trooli would have valued it around £300-400 per premises though Trooli I’d all PIA.
Can’t compare the Openreach and VM builds. VM are building fibre to the last cabinet and will do the rest when customers order. They happen to have cabinets far closer to customers than Openreach hence costs coming in closer to Openreach FTTC than Openreach FTTP.
They dive into an area, depending on the condition of the network do a ton of unblocking, overlay, etc, building more chambers, splitters in some of those later, and duct and core drill into Openreach chambers as needed. Then get subduct in the existing, fixed CATV ducts, build the OLT and power cabinets, build new fibre access cabinets and feed with duct from the old ones as necessary and that’s most of the access work done.
There’s other work going on as well, but that’s the transport network behind the OLT and I don’t think is a part of the budget for Project Mustang, the XGSPON overbuild.
They’ve been building the overlay since 2021.
The technology is irrelevant to the vast majority of potential customers – they don’t understand the difference between HFC, RFoG, FTTP. The only ones who care are gamers due to the iffy latency of VM’s technology, but the mass market responds to marketing, and that’s perhaps the one and only area of strength for VM, because they throw so much money at it. Their support is poor, their pricing only good on new customer offers, the new RPI+loads pricing is going down rather badly. And for years now they’ve been seeing ARPU shrinking despite annual price rises. VM isn’t really an ISP, that’s merely a side order on what they really are, a huge debt pile waiting to collapse. A few fag packet calculations suggest that VM have about £3,000 debt per customer served. Dig yourself out of that hole, Fries!
100 quid per premise? That’s even more of a pipeline dream, I thought it was 5 billion but I’m obviously getting confused with the nexfibre plans to build additional units.
Considering all of VMs network is made up of the UK’s failing cable companies and in mostly urban areas have they factored the cost of MDUs, blockages and other operating costs of running 2 networks side by side until the customer wants to switch from “fibre” to fibre.
It’s funny the marketing VM used to do slagging Openreachs twisted pair vs their thick coax. Now Openreach and the altnets are doing fibre they’re all of a sudden bricking it and slagging competitors about unfair pricing?
Operating costs irrelevant. Blockages accounted for in the budget but as I said a fair whack of it will be fibre to nearest cabinet, so costs are around Openreach FTTC costs with a note that there’s no need for power for every cabinet, only every 3000 prems or so.
We’ll see if they’ve done the maths right, I assume people evaluated network before they made the decision to go this way, but it wasn’t about bricking it with altnets. The cost of upgrading to DoCSIS 4 was so high it became almost the same cost to overbuild full fibre.
DoCSIS 4 would’ve required replacement of all amplifiers and optical nodes, a bunch of in-home installation changes to remove splitters, etc, GaN power supplies to feed the new remote PHY nodes, new fibre to get those nodes closer to customers, new taps in the cabinets, network maintenance to remove unterminated connectors, etc, etc, etc. Basically out come all the active components, a bunch of passive ones and a bunch of stuff customer’s home.
These companies should stop crying and slagging off other companies for cutting their prices.
Rather than trying to keep prices artificially inflated, they should concentrate on making their own products more attractive, more competitive.
The big six get away with it, the shareholders love it, the sheeple baa in they’re fields chewing on the same grass and do nothing about it. It only makes more sense that corporate greed grows ever bigger unchecked.
expected response from the VM employ…..sorry, Reality Bites.
Anyone know what TOOBS take up is ? Can you do the digging for me sir Bites?
I’m simply not as invested as you are . It’s quite simple….
The story is one of the owners of VM complaining , calling the competition ‘desperate’
I’ve never met anyone that enjoys VM’s service , or indeed their product.
I believe people will leave in their droves, given the option ( as seen in my local area )
Simple. Let’s see where we are at the end of the year.
‘expected response from the VM employ…..sorry, Reality Bites.’
You expected facts and evidence? You’re welcome.
‘Anyone know what TOOBS take up is ? Can you do the digging for me sir Bites?’
Certainly. About 10% according to https://www.toob.co.uk/news/toob-celebrates-its-10000th-customer-and-3rd-anniversary/
‘I’m simply not as invested as you are . It’s quite simple….’
Indeed. Which explains why you’ve no idea what you’re talking about. You’ve a very negative opinion of Virgin Media and part of that is making things up about altnet take up and when preesented with the facts and evidence claim people are employees and take your ball home.
I worked for one of VM’s forerunners about 20 years ago. I’ve zero skin in the game, I was just bored and enjoyed fact checking. Bringing in some reality if you’d like, and some times reality disagrees with our opinions. That’s life.
Its amazing I tried to leave VM this week because they did not supply a hub 5. I have 36 days left in contract. The retentions team now have full access to a supply of hub 5’s and I could have one tomorrow. No thank you, if you wanted to keep me you would have supplied one months ago when i asked. Vodafone are giving a great package with WIFI 6e router and repeater. Why don’t VM get this?
Openreach currently have a FTTP take-up of around 28% of premises passed.
BT Group have previously said this is much higher than they expected – especially given the continuing increase in the number of premises passed.
Mikes just annoyed its BT who keeps his corporate greed in check.
A LOT of people in these comments just simply don’t get, or understand, that the latency and related issues and upload speed limitations on VM’s existing cable networks using coax somewhere down the line .. is because of an American technology being used from before Virgin Media became Virgin Media. That technology is called DOCSIS. It is the reason for these speed issues. VM have done the right thing by wanting to change to XGSPON across their entire footprint. This will bring true symmetric speeds to VM for the first time, allowing them to compete with altnets like CityFibre. (Indeed, VM’s parent company, Liberty Global, has established NexFibre – a wholesale infrastructure company much like Openreach, which will have VM as anchor tenant, (not owner – so as to avoid competition concerns). It’s this new XGSPON network that will eventually completely replace all of the original CATV network plant that Virgin Media inherited, and then kept expanding with RFOG. RFOG to XGSPON migration is a whole lot easier than doing it from COAX as explained very well by a poster above.
In other words, alnets and VM will have much more of a technologically level playing field – minus the extra benefits of XGSPON afforded to VM and the other wholesale tenants on the NexFibre network.