Virgin Media O2 Preps 2Gbps UK Broadband Speed for Coax Network UPDATE2
Over two years have passed since Virgin Media (O2) started making 2Gbps download speeds available via their full fibre (FTTP) network (here). Sadly that move left most customers on their older DOCSIS 3.1 powered Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) network stuck with maximum speeds of 1Gbps (1,130Mbps), but this may soon change.
Regular readers may recall that Virgin Media has previously conducted successful trials of 2Gbps speeds on their coax (HFC) network, so we know it works. But until recently they hadn’t yet provided enough DOCSIS channels for this to be deployed commercially.
However, a number of VMO2’s broadband customers recently notified ISPreview that Virgin have – over the past couple of months or so – now begun deploying enough downstream channels to potentially support a speed boost from 1Gbps to 2Gbps (the extra capacity is not yet available in every HFC area). The ISP has had to wait until they’d finished rolling out the previous upstream boost before doing this.
Advertisement
At present, we don’t know when this speed will actually go live on their old coax network, and it’s also unclear if they’ll increase upload speeds at the same time to maintain their previously favoured 10:1 performance ratio (we’ve not yet seen evidence to show that uploads will go beyond 104Mbps via coax). But officially VMO2’s position, when asked, is that they have “nothing to say on this at the moment“.
In the past Virgin Media has often speed boosted slower tiers at the same time as increasing their top download speeds, so that’s also a possibility. But historically Virgin Media’s PR team has preferred to keep their cards close to their chest on such announcements, so we’ll just have to wait and see what crops up over the next few months. But for now, if you want 2Gbps speeds (including symmetric) without switching ISP then you’ll need to be on their live XGS-PON based FTTP network, including via nexfibre.
At present around 9 million of the operator’s c.19 million UK homes serviceable can access their full fibre network, although not all of those are XGS-PON or 2Gbps ready lines. The reality is that most of their UK network is still HFC and that’s why any speed boost on coax is going to be more impactful to their wider customer base.
UPDATE 3:38pm
Advertisement
Several readers have provided feedback, which we’ve been able to check, that appears to indicate the 2Gbps service may already be live on HFC in some specific locations. For example, some addresses in Oldham (e.g. OL9 8HA) return a “Gig2 Fibre Broadband” (+Netflix with Ads) product on their checker from £51.99 per month that offers 2000Mbps downloads and 200Mbps uploads. We’re currently running further checks.
UPDATE 5:20pm
Virgin Media has confirmed to ISPreview that they’re running a small trial of the 2Gbps (200Mbps upload) speed service on HFC in some locations, although we don’t know if the final package will have the same upload speed as the trial (at this stage 100Mbps seems more likely).
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, BlueSky, Threads.net and Linkedin.
« Amazon Leo Prep New Constellation of 5,105 Satellites for Global 5G Mobile
Advertisement
Leave a Reply
Privacy Notice: Please note that news comments are anonymous, which means that we do NOT require you to enter any real personal details to post a message and display names can be almost anything you like (provided they do not contain offensive language or impersonate a real person's legal name). By clicking to submit a post you agree to storing your entries for comment content, display name, IP and email in our database, for as long as the post remains live.
Only the submitted name and comment will be displayed in public, while the rest will be kept private (we will never share this outside of ISPreview, regardless of whether the data is real or fake). This comment system uses submitted IP, email and website address data to spot abuse and spammers. All data is transferred via an encrypted (https secure) session.
No changes here. Still just one DOCSIS 3.1 channel on downstream and upstream.
It seems likely that it’ll be 2000/100 right now. I would like if some of the other plans get an upload speed increase, particularly on M250 (iirc isn’t M125 132/20 with M250 being essentially 264/25 so not as big of an upgrade).
2000/200 in Bedford
still wouldn’t as there’s two FTTP providers
@anon, I’m limited to Virgin Media only. Openreach is ADSL here, CityFibre doesn’t care about my area despite having cabling to a VodafoneThree pole relatively near. VodafoneThree 5G and O2 4G really are my only alternatives.
VM can easy replaced HFC coax into Full Fibre (FTTP) but they not really bothered!
They are slowly upgrading their coax network to support FTTP, at least they seem to have done that where my parents live.
As for existing installations, personally I think the ideal would be to just offer upgrades on request/as needed than forcing everyone.
I say this because in the case of my parents, FTTP via VM could cause more problems than it solves, especially as they wouldn’t want/pay for faster speeds anyway.
Not that “easy”. Having an existing duct and cabinet network would make that part relatively easy, but re-digging everyone’s garden is not. Remember that the VM network is entirely underground.
Openreach had to admit defeat on copper because FTTdp G.fast was a silly idea, FTTC G.fast didn’t have the necessary range, and VDSL was soon becoming obsolete in terms of speeds customers wanted. HFC has a lot more to offer, and if VM can upgrade it relatively cheaply and quickly then this is a good stop gap for less demanding customers while they deploy FTTP in the longer term.
Again it bears repeating that while some users of this website insist that multi gig symmetric FTTP is the only way to do, most customers don’t care
Virgin Media have installed all their fibre assets locally, new smaller fibre cabinet next to the existing HFC ones, all added to the existing duct network, fibre backbone run in and based on a conversation with local engineers all commissioned and allegedly ready for service for well over two years now.
But can still only order HFC services from Vermin Media locally. Where vegetation can take hold several the local VM cabinets are overgrown – no evidence of access to them recently, so no new orders or churn, and Openreach full fibre has been in place now for 4 years so now has the local market sown up nicely. Gawd knows what VM are up to with all their fibre assets deployed locally but not available to order.
Oh BT Ivor, lets FANNY_VERIFY your comments.
You said:
“Openreach had to admit defeat on copper because FTTdp G.fast was a silly idea, FTTC G.fast didn’t have the necessary range, and VDSL was soon becoming obsolete in terms of speeds customers wanted.”
Mostly true, but FANNY_VERIFY adds an additional statement:
“……and because Altnets came along and showed Openreach up by deploying a much more modern, forward thinking network using XGS-PON, with symmetric speeds (not sliced into tiers), lowered prices, introduced no-incontract pricing for some Altnets, and let customers re-contract under new customer offer pricing. Faced with increased competition, Openreach had to call time on copper even though they didn’t want to because it was easier to sweat copper.”
Now, the Openreach fanboys and gals on here will rush to bury the facts by saying pricing that is not profitable. That is not true for *most* Altnets. The reason they are crashing and burning, is due to incompetant government policy crashing the economy and crippling busines with costs, like wages and interest on loans, and the fact that the BT/Openreach and some major ISP’s using Openreach have far more established brand names that are household names. Alnets had to start from scratch and rent PIA from Openreach, costs they cant reduce over time. If the brand names were more established the pricing would mean even higher take-up and government policy decisions would make them more succesful. Word of mouth outside brtual advertising which costs loads (look at EE’s budget!) takes a long time when it’s positive. Customers tend to tell more people when they receive BAD service than good.
@Ivor – you do realise that one of the big reasons VM did not go beyond current speeds was apparently concerns about power usage across the network. Whilst VM will almost certainly upgrade to 2Gbps because they are now very much losing the current speeds race between providers, and in addition to this their current proposition just looks relatively uncompetitive. Having said that, I believe it was the power budget that originally pushed VM to join the FTTP race as it was felt that overall the power budget would be a good reason to stop using HFC along with concerns around maintenance.
Fanny – Cityfibre and other “original” altnets still have a ton of GPON out there. Not a factor in Openreach’s decision making. None of them are making money due to economic reality, even with everything massively skewed in their favour through unsustainably cheap PIA pricing and Openreach being prevented from providing proper competition.
Anon – yet here we are, with VM launching multi gig HFC to at least some parts of their network…? Again, I repeat my point that while the users of this website think symmetric speeds are all that matter (as proven by Fanny’s post) there are a lot of users who really don’t care about how it is delivered and might prefer a 2 minute upgrade over a disruptive 2 hour one.
@Ivor
I never mentioned anything about symmetric broadband. In fact I very much doubt we will see it on their HFC network. I do however see the deployment of channels to get themselves up to 2Gbps download just to remain competitive. That is a very different ask. I also doubt that VM will go to DOCSIS 4.0 due to the power issues I’ve already raised.
BT Ivor, Cityfibre have replaced MOST of their GPON, and have a little still serving lower end package tiers where its suitable. Cityfibre started a lot earlier than most Altnets, so did use GPON initially, but, and crucially, went to XGS-PON rather than continue to deploy GPON like OR have even as of today right now. Yes, OR have combi-OLTs but we are looking at least 12-24 months away for national XGS-PON on OR.
Symmetrical speeds are very much possible on Dosis 4.0
Mate it is not that easy, and nobody wants the price increase to upgrade the whole footprint to full fibre.
Why do people always think things are so easy to do.
Could someone please explain these power issues
I didn’t think they’d bother increasing the speeds of their coax network any further.
Interesting.
Maybe they are doing so to keep people who think they need more speed. There are people who seem to think they need super-duper speed and will pay for it and will never get anywhere near to using it to it’s full.
Up to people at the end of the day.
I am amazed that Coax can go that fast, pretty interesting.
“Coax” using DOcSIS 4 can go up to 10gbps symmetric. DocSIS 4 was considered too expensive to deploy in UK, so Liberty Global/VM went for XGS-PON symmetric instead for their upgrade path.
VM currently use DocSIS 3.1, in theory can have up to 10gbps down and 1-2gbps upload. You’ll never see this speed in the UK, as mutliple heritage HFC networks from former cable companies are now merged into VM, and they used different deployment techniques and kit. Spectrum varies in different areas and VM does have noisy parts on its network which inflicts damage to throughput and effective use of certain frequencies. Also DVB-C for TV on HFC network is still going using valuable potential spectrum. I think VM trials maxed out at 200mbps for upload. The current HFC is a mix of DocSIS 3.0 and 3.1 channels.
Even if they launch 2gbps on HFC, it doesn’t alter the dreadful latency compared to full fibre networks like Openreach or Altnet.
On full fibre installed properly, you don’t get SNR issues, caused by noise ingress, or high power levels that affect throughput (most people wouldn’t know about these) or US Profile assigment profiles that keep fluctuating randomly.
An Openreach full fibre connection or ALTNET fibre is superior to HFC.
I wonder if they will introduce this 2gbps profile to re-contract customers into new 24 month contracts because they know they won’t complete the HFC to FTTP upgrade by 2028. Im my area, they have not done a thing, but think it’s because they are waiting for the Netomnia buy out to happen. Those 2gbps contracts would be the most lucrative, especially if they also had TV with it.
“Dreadful latency”
Show me on the doll where Virgin Media hurt you
Nonsense. Nothing to do with personal like/dislike.
DocSIS has inherent latency issues due to the work it works in slots with other cable modems. It can be compounded by power levels being wrong (which can be randomly changed when any engineering works happens). HFC is always above full fibre. Comparison 2ms-8ms on average for fibre, and 18-28ms on DocSIS. It does vary area by area because of routing paths etc. It also depends on hoe busy the CMTS that serves your address segment as well.
Mate latency issue is a non-argument unless you are specific super super gamer, the average consumer will not notice that latency. The majority of people are normal people and all they want is a reliable connection, no one noticed the average latency.
Stop exaggerating issues over certain technology.
“DocSIS has inherent latency issues due to the work it works in slots with other cable modems”
You mean just like TDM on a PON network. That kind of Time Division Multiplexing, that “cases latency”?
I understand now 🙁
More people trying to outwit others.
DocSIS has more latency. Period. Read up about it if you dispute. Its also all the RF to optical conversion that goes on in an HFC network…..
Wezz, this “average person” gets thrown around a lot by people. Actually, “average” people do not know the name for it, but when they go on a fibre network they notice because it is so much snappier in responses.
Also for those people that run their own Plex servers or have security surveillance that stores video on premise – maybe on cloud too as backup, you dont want latency. The first example is not an average user, the second these days is.
Yes it has more latency. Will most people care? No. I can play online games just fine and I don’t notice the delay and I don’t think anyone else except a competitive gamer is going to notice. Also VM’s network is good for gaming anyways since you can get a NAT type A
It’s already live, I can share example postcodes if that helps
It is live in my area. 2000Mbps download, 200Mbit upload for 49.99 a month, 53.99 from April 2027.
This is why I don’t want to leave YF – if they start this price rise stuff.
That’s £14-£19 more than 2000/2000 on YF
Do not go for virgin media
It’s nightmare
Do not tempted by there very Rosy advertising and promises
Worst network so far i come across.
Please don’t do mistake i did.
This is an interesting development: why do it whilst VM is spending megabucks to overbuild its HFC with fibre for XGS-PON (and thus higher speeds)? Answer: although this overbuild is planned for completion in 2028 (read end of December), the migration to XGS-PON will take a lot longer and probably won’t be completed until around 2040. So, that’s a long time being stuck with 1Gbps download on DOCSIS whilst competitors are offering higher speeds.
I have a hub 5 with:
1 downstream DOCSIS 3.1 channel and 31 DOCSIS 3.0 (SC-QAM) channels (although some users report 32 DOCSIS 3.0 channels).
1 upstream DOCSIS 3.1 channel and 5 upstream DOCSIS 3.0 channels.
My OFDM channel is only 94MHz, so VM can increase to 192MHz and/or add an OFDM channel. Either way this must be done by cutting the number of SC-QAMs down to 24 or even 19. This would push DOCSIS 3.1 downstream capacity to 2Gbps. I think VM still has some old hub 3s out there, so expect replacement with hub 4s and hub 5s to help with this SC-QAM pruning.
As for upstream speeds: this won’t be symmetrical, expect 200Mbps maximum for 2GBps download.
Why not try and give us current users a stable service that doesn’t keep dropping out would be nice.
It’s 100Mbps upload, 200Mbps is only available on XGSPON at this time