Named – Virgin Media’s Possible UK 1Gbps Broadband Launch Cities

Several credible sources have informed ISPreview.co.uk that cable ISP Virgin Media’s future “Gigabit Cities” rollout, which will mark their first major UK activation of the new DOCSIS 3.1 network upgrade, seems likely to be expanded with 3-5 UK cities now in the frame for launch around 2019/20.

At present Virgin Media’s existing HFC / FTTP network uses EuroDOCSIS 3.0 technology and their fastest consumer ultrafast broadband package delivers download speeds of 500Mbps (575Mbps for the theoretical max config rate) and uploads of 35Mbps (38.5Mbps max). In theory they could still squeeze a little more out of this but the focus now is on enabling the new DOCSIS 3.1 upgrade (i.e. like parent Liberty Global started in Germany and Poland).

The 3.1 standard is theoretically capable of delivering a peak downstream speed of 10Gbps (or 10,000Mbps+ if you prefer) and uploads of 2Gbps, although end-user packages will obviously start at a much lower rate and the initial launch seems set to be sold alongside download speeds of 1Gbps (this is being actively tested).

At the end of February 2019 the boss of Liberty Global, Mike Fries, highlighted some of their plans for “2019 and beyond,” which included the “launch of two gigabit cities in the UK” (here). However the operator may now be going for a much bigger launch this year than first proposed.

In keeping with that our sources have helped us to identify three cities where Virgin Media has already begun testing a 1Gbps service using DOCSIS 3.1 technology, which is being done alongside a new (future) Hub 4.0 wireless router (required for DOCSIS 3.1 services). Being in the testing does not mean for certain that these will be the confirmed launch cities in 2019, although it does look extremely likely.

Virgin Media’s UK Gigabit Cities (Testing)

Possible for 2019:

Manchester
Reading
Southampton

Possible for late 2019 but early 2020 more likely (*):

Basingstoke
Bracknell

* Reading is a big area and if Virgin’s main hubsite were enabled then we could easily see Basingstoke and Bracknell being added to the initial launch list (no testing taking place directly in those, yet).

The ability to rollout such speeds, at rapid pace and scale, across a network that already covers just over half of UK premises, is not to be understated and could also be seen as somewhat of a counter-move to the rising future threat from full fibre (FTTP) focused alternative network ISPs (Cityfibre, Hyperoptic etc.). Not to mention Openreach’s (BT) raised ambition for 15 million UK premises by around 2025 (here).

The DOCSIS 3.1 standard is able to achieve all of this by making several big improvements, such as by harnessing the power of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) – used in all sorts of networks to split a single signal into multiple frequencies (each of which can carry data) – and improved error correction (Low Density Parity Check). On top of that they’ll also boost their radio frequency (spectrum) allocations.

We did ask Virgin Media for a comment earlier this morning but have yet to hear back, although their usual response to such queries is “no comment“. As for the new Hub 4.0 router, we’ll be able to confirm a few more details for this later, but for now the test unit comes in black with bits of red/green (i.e. the usual VM branding / colour scheme).

Much of Virgin’s network is already prepared for the DOCSIS 3.1 transition and so once their rollout begins then it shouldn’t take long before the rest of their network is covered. Certainly it will happen significantly faster than it would take Openreach to reach 15 million premises with FTTP.

UPDATE 4:38pm

Sorry I forgot to update about the Hub 4.0. We’ve noted that the router being used in the above tests is indeed a rebranded version of Liberty Global’s Gigabit Connect Box, which is the same kit we predicted back in February 2019 (here).

The GCB features 4 x Gigabit Ethernet ports, as well as the usual 2 x Analogue Telephone ports (for VM’s VoIP phone service) and we understand that the theoretical WiFi peak speed via 5GHz and 2.4GHz is 2183Mbps (10 antennae). There are no USB ports on the original GCB design but we understand that it may have support for Bluetooth.