Virgin Media Tests 1.5 Gbps Cable Broadband In a Very Limited Portion of London Virgin Media in the UK is testing what they're claiming is the fastest residential cable broadband service in the world. According to a company announcement , the company this week demonstrated a 1.5 Gbps downstream, 150 Mbps upstream connection in London. Using the European version of DOCSIS 3.0 and channel bonding, the company is offering the speeds to a limited portion of a portion of the city's "Silicon Roundabout." Last month, Comcast demonstrated a 1 Gbps connection at a cable industry trade show. In both cases, residential customers won't see those speeds anytime soon, and the companies involved are simply interested in showing that coaxial networks still have room to stretch their legs in the age of fiber to the home connectivity.







News Jump SpaceX Providing Internet To Towns Hit by Wildfires; Verizon Launches New 5G Home Hardware In Twin Cities; + more news Stark New Reality In The Telco Business: Dumb Pipes No Longer Cut It; AT&T Unveils Mix and Match Plans; + more news AT&T Extends Overage Charge Waiver; Verizon And T-Mobile Each Insist Their 5G Strategy Is The Right One; + more news War Of Words Heats Up: T-Mobile Fires Back At Verizon, AT&T; Amazon Intros Gaming Service To Take On Stadia; + more news Starlink's Network Faces Huge Limitations; AT&T Whines T-Mobile Merger Put Too Much Spectrum In One Place; + more news WISPs Get CBRS Range As Great As Six Miles At 100 Mbps Speeds; Windstream Officially Exits Bankruptcy; + more news Charter Relaunches Free 60-day Internet And Wi-Fi Offer; NCTA: FCC Should Stick With 25/3 Speed Threshold; + more news Comcast Shuts Off Internet for Subs Who Were Sold Service Illegally; AT&T, Verizon Team To Stop T-Mobile 5G; + more news California Defends Its Net Neutrality Law; AT&T's Traffic Up 20% Despite Data Traffic Actually Being Down; + more news Are The Comcast-Charter X1 Talks Dead In The Water?; AT&T May Offer Phone Plans With Ads For Discounts; + more news ---------------------- this week last week most discussed view:

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bbeesley

join:2003-08-07

Richardson, TX bbeesley Member Fiber vs Cable - it's not about the speed most of the industry uninitiated - especially those in the media - harp on fiber being superior because they believe it delivers faster speeds. This is not generally true at the edge of the network at the subscriber end with coax being more than capable of delivering multi-gigabit speeds should the industry wish to do so as the demonstrations by Comcast, Cox and now Virgin prove.



Fiber is still a superior transport mechanism but it is because it is immune to RF impairments which are the chief cause of poor speeds on cable modems.





trparky

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Cleveland, OH trparky Premium Member Re: Fiber vs Cable - it's not about the speed Yes, cable (COAX) still has a lot of life in it. Heck, with a little bit of work they can upgrade their cable plants to frequencies higher than 900 MHz which most plants these days operate on.



Telco companies, like AT&T, that's a different story. They are still running on old copper lines that were originally designed to handle voice and little else. Their copper has no more room to grow. They have to go to fiber, they have no choice; it's either convert or watch cable eat your lunch.



Too bad AT&T doesn't realize this. I figure that AT&T wireline service will be dead within the next two, possible four years. Probably sold off to the lowest bidder. Kind of like the Fairpoint disaster.

DataRiker

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join:2002-05-19

00000 DataRiker to bbeesley

Premium Member to bbeesley

Fastest displayed fiber speed: 69.1 Tbit/s @ ~60 Km



Fastest displayed cable speed: 4 gbit/s @ ? Km



Both being plenty fast.



I can't find a good source for the theoretical capacity of Coax assuming 1 Ghz bandwidth, so feel free to correct me.

DocDrew

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DocDrew Premium Member Re: Fiber vs Cable - it's not about the speed said by DataRiker: Fastest displayed fiber speed: 69.1 Tbit/s @ ~60 Km



Fastest displayed cable speed: 4 gbit/s @ ? Km



Both being plenty fast.



I can't find a good source for the theoretical capacity of Coax assuming 1 Ghz bandwidth, so feel free to correct me.

Assuming usable data rate of 38 mbps per 256 QAM channel and 158 channels in 1 Ghz coax that'd be about 6 gbps total bandwidth. Distance is probably a couple miles with amps in cascade, but can be extended with fiber transport much further rather easy.

Parogadi

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join:2003-03-31

Racine, WI Parogadi Premium Member Re: Fiber vs Cable - it's not about the speed That including upload rates? It is leaving out latency, which becomes more relevant then raw pipe size at those speeds, the much lower ping on fiber makes real time applications much better, services like OnLive become much more viable when your ping is closer to 1 then even 50.

DocDrew

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DocDrew Premium Member Re: Fiber vs Cable - it's not about the speed said by Parogadi: That including upload rates? It is leaving out latency, which becomes more relevant then raw pipe size at those speeds, the much lower ping on fiber makes real time applications much better, services like OnLive become much more viable when your ping is closer to 1 then even 50.





Latency is more dependent on routing, distance, and peering arrangements. Using DOCSIS over coax would add about 8-16ms to what ever the path started with.



On the other hand, what percentage of homes and neighborhoods have coax already installed? Waiting for the latency and capacity of fiber to reach you might take years... Yes it's leaving out upload rates. Which are in the low hundreds of mbps currently.Latency is more dependent on routing, distance, and peering arrangements. Using DOCSIS over coax would add about 8-16ms to what ever the path started with.On the other hand, what percentage of homes and neighborhoods have coax already installed? Waiting for the latency and capacity of fiber to reach you might take years... your moderator at work hidden :



Parogadi

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Racine, WI Parogadi to DocDrew

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Re: Fiber vs Cable - it's not about the speed It's stil taking years to get anything decent over the long past it's replace date copper out here, if they're going to have to run new lines anyways why not trump the competition with FTTH and start installing femto cell antenna on top of the poles while they're at it?

bbeesley

join:2003-08-07

Richardson, TX bbeesley Member Re: Fiber vs Cable - it's not about the speed said by Parogadi: why not trump the competition with FTTH and start installing femto cell antenna on top of the poles while they're at it?

I spoke to an executive at one cable company a few weeks ago who stated that they are seeking to do both. They are working to build out more fiber-deep systems - to include fiber to the home in one market - and they are very interested in how they can use their infrastructure to support cell backhaul and specifically picocells bbeesley bbeesley to DataRiker

Member to DataRiker

said by DataRiker: Fastest displayed fiber speed: 69.1 Tbit/s @ ~60 Km



Fastest displayed cable speed: 4 gbit/s @ ? Km







need to compare apples and apples that is Fiber CPE and Cable CPE speeds That's a little misleading because the fastest fiber speeds are only available on transport networks with speeds at the edge delivered by PON being significantly lowerneed to compare apples and apples that is Fiber CPE and Cable CPE speeds PacketExodus

join:2010-07-26 PacketExodus Member Re: Fiber vs Cable - it's not about the speed Boo-hoo. Fiber is faster. Deal with it. sonicmerlin

join:2009-05-24

Cleveland, OH sonicmerlin to bbeesley

Member to bbeesley

said by bbeesley: most of the industry uninitiated - especially those in the media - harp on fiber being superior because they believe it delivers faster speeds. This is not generally true at the edge of the network at the subscriber end with coax being more than capable of delivering multi-gigabit speeds should the industry wish to do so as the demonstrations by Comcast, Cox and now Virgin prove.



Fiber is still a superior transport mechanism but it is because it is immune to RF impairments which are the chief cause of poor speeds on cable modems.



This cable implementation delivers 1 gbps to hundreds of users on a single node. FTTH XGPON delivers 10 gbps to 32 users, as well as lower latency. Cable doesn't even compare. Yes we'll all get 100 mbps connections, possibly even 1 gbps connections over cable by 2020, but it will be traffic shaped and likely capped to "minimize strain" by cable companies that don't want to spend any money splitting nodes. Ricanlegend

join:2011-05-18

Bronx, NY Ricanlegend Member Re: Fiber vs Cable - it's not about the speed Really thinking heard to move where internet is super fast

bbeesley

join:2003-08-07

Richardson, TX bbeesley to sonicmerlin

Member to sonicmerlin

said by sonicmerlin: This cable implementation delivers 1 gbps to hundreds of users on a single node. FTTH XGPON delivers 10 gbps to 32 users, as well as lower latency. Cable doesn't even compare.





I have also done implementations where a 6Mhz carrier was dedicated for delivery of business services for just a handful of customers.



so....what is my point?



back to what I previously stated. Cable and Fiber have similar performance potential at the edge depending on how each is engineered and operated. This presumes much about the implementation of HFC, and based on my experience it is usually much less than "hundreds per node" and much closer to the number you list for FTTH - which BTW isn't always 32I have also done implementations where a 6Mhz carrier was dedicated for delivery of business services for just a handful of customers.so....what is my point?back to what I previously stated. Cable and Fiber have similar performance potential at the edge depending on how each is engineered and operated. tmc8080

join:2004-04-24

Brooklyn, NY tmc8080 Member multi-channel uplink If Virgin Media has solved the upstream channel bonding to the tune of 150mbit UPLOAD, then why is Docsis 3.0 USA implementation coming in at 8-20 megabits? Is there something that much more costly in the network or are the companies being strategically stingy about it's deployment and offered tiers?



Sure, the Euro docsis spec is no dobut more robust with 160mbit top upload vs the 120 in the Usa spec.. but apparently this has been solved, so we see further embarassment by the USA leaders of the industry for lack of innovation (since it's not even on the radar as a BUSINESS CLASS service with a HUGE PRICETAG to start with).

MonkeyLick78

join:2002-01-27

Hixson, TN MonkeyLick78 Member ? Cable has a lot of total bandwidth right now. The problems come from how many share it. 1, 5 or 10 gbps means something very different on a fiber network. tmc8080

join:2004-04-24

Brooklyn, NY tmc8080 Member Re: ? docsis 3 was sold (to cable companies) as a technology to eliminate the issue of being oversold in the last mile nodes. a dedicated PER USER guaranteed bandwidth was the promise of docsis 3. verizon nodes have a guaranteed fiber route of 200/200 under gpon per user, however the highest tier currently offered offered is 150/35. the intent should never have been to use docsis 3 to dice up for 750 customers where they were previously serving 512 as the same bandwidth speeds. the intent was to offer the same 512 users more bandwidth (albeit at the same or slighty higher cost, until competition pushed it down). your comment..

