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Every home I have lived in for the past 10 years or so has had Virgin fibre to the home. BT don't have the monopoly at all, they just have poor infrastructure a

Every home I have lived in for the past 10 years or so has had Virgin fibre to the home. BT don't have the monopoly at all, they just have poor infrastructure and are the defacto that most people choose. Our unit didn't have a direct fibre connection when we took the lease, we rang Virgin and they used infill money to lay a fibre cable to all the units on the trading estate at no cost to us other than the initial £20 set up fee. Perhaps I am very lucky and the North East has good internet but my experience has not been bad at all.

Rjevski 8y ago
Are you sure it's actually fibre? Or is it their bullshit coax cable (HFC) they mis-sell as "fibre"?
- matthewmacleod 8y ago
  It's a bit weird that there hasn't been a decision about the mis-selling of "fibre" connections in the UK. Virgin's network is pretty great if you're not in an oversubscribed area, but it just seems weird to bill it as "fiber". To be fair though, DOCSIS 3.1 can push 10GB through coax so it's not all bad.
  - Rjevski 8y ago
    Yeah, so it's not fibre, and should not be sold as such. Not saying HFC is bad (it's actually an awesome way of reusing a deprecated cable TV network), but it's not fibre. HFC for example is a shared medium across the entire neighbourhood, and in fact if you get root access on your modem and run tcpdump on the HFC interface you may see everyone else's packets as well - there's optional encryption built into DOCSIS but I've never seen it enabled.
  - pricechild 8y ago
    The ASA has made the decision to allow it. It's annoying that we defer to them...
- simonbarker87 8y ago
  It’s definitley fibre and we get a stable 100Mbit connection all the time.
  - diet_soda_kills 8y ago
    Sorry, but it's definitely not fibre. I know they told you it is, but it isn't. They're using the old cable TV network. It's a coaxial protocol called DOCSIS. Like BT, Virgin Media is fibre to the cabinet and then copper for the last mile. It's just that the coaxial copper and the DOCSIS protocol used by Virgin do a better job at speed than the twisted pair copper and the VDSL protocol used by BT. It's going to be very interesting to see how they advertise real fibre to the public when it arrives, if even on Hacker News there's confusion about it.
- trumped 8y ago
  AT&T does that a lot around here... every 6 months they knock at my door saying that they have been improving the network and sell it as fiber but the fiber only goes to a main box in your neighborhood, and copper goes to your house (it's probably been the same for the last 10 years)... but to tell you the truth, I don't care if it's fiber, only the actual speed matters (with AT&T it is not very fast). I could get 2000mbps with Comcast and can only get 25mbps with AT&T...
fauigerzigerk 8y ago
We don't have Virgin on this premises here in London and the mobile phone signal is so bad it's barely usable at all. But I have to say that BT has been a very reliable ISP and the speeds are OK (in spite of being copper) with the exception of Sunday evenings.
- simonbarker87 8y ago
  It might be worth contacting Virgin and see if you can get a free installation under the infill funding, it’s specifically for urban areas that have been missed out.
merinowool 8y ago
Virgin is very poor experience and they de facto have monopoly on fiber in some areas and that enables them to piss on customers who cannot get any alternative. Recently I had a fault and I was 3 weeks without the internet. I am sure that could have been resolved quicker, but their staff was completely incompetent. Cherry on the cake - I am also nowhere near the advertised speed.
- simonbarker87 8y ago
  Funny how we all have different experiences, I have been with them for 10 years (and longer before that in a shared student house) and can’t praise them enough. Much better than the experience we had with BT in the early days of starting the business.

Rjevski 8y ago

Are you sure it's actually fibre? Or is it their bullshit coax cable (HFC) they mis-sell as "fibre"?

matthewmacleod 8y ago
It's a bit weird that there hasn't been a decision about the mis-selling of "fibre" connections in the UK. Virgin's network is pretty great if you're not in an oversubscribed area, but it just seems weird to bill it as "fiber". To be fair though, DOCSIS 3.1 can push 10GB through coax so it's not all bad.
- Rjevski 8y ago
  Yeah, so it's not fibre, and should not be sold as such. Not saying HFC is bad (it's actually an awesome way of reusing a deprecated cable TV network), but it's not fibre. HFC for example is a shared medium across the entire neighbourhood, and in fact if you get root access on your modem and run tcpdump on the HFC interface you may see everyone else's packets as well - there's optional encryption built into DOCSIS but I've never seen it enabled.
- pricechild 8y ago
  The ASA has made the decision to allow it. It's annoying that we defer to them...
simonbarker87 8y ago
It’s definitley fibre and we get a stable 100Mbit connection all the time.
- diet_soda_kills 8y ago
  Sorry, but it's definitely not fibre. I know they told you it is, but it isn't. They're using the old cable TV network. It's a coaxial protocol called DOCSIS. Like BT, Virgin Media is fibre to the cabinet and then copper for the last mile. It's just that the coaxial copper and the DOCSIS protocol used by Virgin do a better job at speed than the twisted pair copper and the VDSL protocol used by BT. It's going to be very interesting to see how they advertise real fibre to the public when it arrives, if even on Hacker News there's confusion about it.
trumped 8y ago
AT&T does that a lot around here... every 6 months they knock at my door saying that they have been improving the network and sell it as fiber but the fiber only goes to a main box in your neighborhood, and copper goes to your house (it's probably been the same for the last 10 years)... but to tell you the truth, I don't care if it's fiber, only the actual speed matters (with AT&T it is not very fast). I could get 2000mbps with Comcast and can only get 25mbps with AT&T...

fauigerzigerk 8y ago

We don't have Virgin on this premises here in London and the mobile phone signal is so bad it's barely usable at all. But I have to say that BT has been a very reliable ISP and the speeds are OK (in spite of being copper) with the exception of Sunday evenings.

simonbarker87 8y ago
It might be worth contacting Virgin and see if you can get a free installation under the infill funding, it’s specifically for urban areas that have been missed out.

merinowool 8y ago

Virgin is very poor experience and they de facto have monopoly on fiber in some areas and that enables them to piss on customers who cannot get any alternative. Recently I had a fault and I was 3 weeks without the internet. I am sure that could have been resolved quicker, but their staff was completely incompetent. Cherry on the cake - I am also nowhere near the advertised speed.

simonbarker87 8y ago
Funny how we all have different experiences, I have been with them for 10 years (and longer before that in a shared student house) and can’t praise them enough. Much better than the experience we had with BT in the early days of starting the business.