3,500 Homes in Hackney Get Virgin Media’s 1Gbps FTTP Broadband
Some 3,500 additional homes in the London Borough of Hackney have just become the latest to benefit from ISP Virgin Media UK’s extension of their new Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband network, which from day one will support average top download speeds of 1140Mbps via their DOCSIS 3.1 technology.
As usual all of this forms part of their ongoing Project Lightning build, which has so far extended their network to cover 2.5 million extra UK premises. The operator’s original network was deployed using Hybrid Fibre Coax (HFC) technology, but this build uses FTTP via Radio Frequency Over Glass (RFoG) – both methods make use of the DOCSIS standard to harness the same consumer hardware.
At the same time Virgin Media are also rolling out their latest DOCSIS 3.1 network upgrade across the United Kingdom, which by the end of 2021 aims to have made download speeds of 1Gbps+ possible across their network of almost 16 million premises. Outside those areas you can currently expect average speeds to of up to c.630Mbps from their existing EuroDOCSIS 3.0 based packages (via their top TV bundle).
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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.
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London.
Shocking.
Is there anywhere we can see DOCSIS3.1 / RFoG plans ? I’m guessing no.
DOCSIS 3.1: it’s nationwide.
RFoG: you find out when another FTTP rollout is announced.
What’s the upload speed, 10Mbps?
45-50 I think.
52mbps currently. It will rise to 100mbps when they turn on DOCSIS 3.1 on the upstream.
@Name There’s also this to consider as at some point this mag come into play (214mbps upload) https://www.ispreview.co.uk/index.php/2020/09/virgin-media-uk-trials-2-2gbps-broadband-to-homes-in-berkshire.html
they have been very slow to accelerate rollout so far in 2021 of 1 Gig broadband.
Theres a long way to go, to get to all 15 million + coverage before the end of 2021.
I don’t know whether I’d agree about the slowness part. I’m looking forward to switching from Virgin. They’ve served the purpose for me as an alternative to flaky BT and with new providers coming into my area I’ll be happy to part ways!
It’s funnny how many people have said that same thing about Virgin,
“once something else turns up I’ll be leaving”
Shame about the high latency and slow upload speeds.
and the lack of customer service, upkeep of field network kit and infrastructure, shortages of hub/modems…..
What Archie says is true but I would like to know what the main reason people give for wanting to leave virgin and when does this become a big enough problem for virgin to respond I read with interest that cord cutting and a world wide drop in pay tv subscriptions are falling so are companies like virgin and like bt who supply total packages ie phone broadband and tv will eventually just become isp’s and sky just becomes now and no dish service and services like Netflix and Amazon and svod becoming the norm and what about services like the BBC I suspect that when a fast reliable internet becomes universally available who knows?
Cord cutting is no option for many people. If I axe my Virgin Media TV subscription then how am I supposed to get my premium channels? A BT Sport app on a mobile device is just plain silly as a substitute.
Simply, I want a really low latency connection with higher speeds. Virgin try to put up your bills constantly, also. Virgin’s RFoG FTTP still has all of the same issues with latency and jitter that their coax customers do.
Note: I only use their standalone internet package. I do not take any of their other services.
Ha.
I live in central London. It would be nice to even get FTTC.
Virgin are awful. They took 5 months to tell me it was too expensive for them to install a cable to my flat.
Guess I’m stuck with 16Mbit down 1Mbit up.
Why don’t they focus on putting infrastructure in the areas that still don’t have an option further providing a monopoly to the two big players.. It would be nice to have the option to have some competitiveness between the suppliers..I can only get BT on my post code so regardless who I go through such as sky, talk talk or Plusnet (who are owned by BT anyway), I’m still going through BT
It’s my understanding that they are doing that via two means.
1) Creating a subsidiary ISP to cover the other Xmillion or so homes that aren’t part of their network and;
2) Expanding their network through ‘Project Lightning’.
Was thinking about moving to virgin.some of the comments here are pretty negative. My issue is more zoom and teams meetings and Internet dropping out or slow speeds.are virgin really bad
When virgin works. It’s great. Speeds are good. I’m on an FTTP network VM Bought rather than built. Latency is <8ms at all times. I'm in modem only mode, using my own router.
Automatic fault raising through the app is nice. Engineer booking is very quick in my area.
The bad.
Customer service is poor at best.
They did 3 hard searches when I signed up and annihilated my credit score.
Had a 12hr outage the other day for no obvious reason. 10pm to 10am. This is the longest outage I've had with them so far, but I've had maybe 6 outages since August.
Maintenance seemingly is done whenever they want
Firmware updates seemingly get pushed at 3pm (?!) causing the router to reboot to apply it. (can be seen in the logs of the router)
Complaints about faults just get closed once the issue is resolved with no recompense.
Their peering *sucks* vs BT. connection can be idle and amazingly fast getting to some sites but I find things hosted on AWS can be a bit hit and miss. Imgur for example is extremely bursty, and feels very sluggish to use.
Be prepared to leave at the end of your contract when they hike the price. Colleague served his cancellation and they wouldn't budge until then, once served he got a phone call offering him the 600 package at New customer pricing (he was paying about the same for an old 100 meg package)
Would I recommend? Yes, unless you have the option of a city fiber provider or BT FTTP if you have deep pockets (both obviously if you don't want TV too..)
The network stability is the main issue currently for me but I suspect its them smashing upgrades through to make gig1 available / fix resiliency issues etc.
Hope that helps.
In reply to Steve says : based on my own personal experience have in past used BT and Plusnet asdl at 6 down 2 up decided to bite bullet and go Virgin this being my only choice to get highspeed broadband having had Telewest in past Virgin renewed cable to my property due to old cable damage Virgin did all works on agreed dates originally had 50 mbps package with phone virgin gave free upgrade to 100 mbps on installation Some 2 years ago since then have taken online offer to upgrade to 200/20 package all went through no probs even signed new agreement electronically service has been rock solid reliable I do Ookla speed test regulary and have always been within agreed contract levels have over 20 devices connected ie smart TVs xboxes Roku stick smart phone iPads smart speakers etc only time experienced buffering was when 2 grandsons updating xboxes while I watched now tv sports but that’s happened once have not needed to speak customer services so no comment but would I recommend Virgin .. yes but be aware of price especially in year 2 after initial sign up offer hope this helps.