Virgin Media UK Pilots 200Mbps Broadband Speeds 179
MJackson writes "UK cable operator Virgin Media has announced the first real-world customer pilots of up to 200Mbps broadband services using DOCSIS3 technology from Cisco, which could make it one of the fastest Internet Service Providers (ISPs) in the world. Following successful lab trials, the 6 month long pilot started last week in Ashford, Kent (England), and will ultimately employ 100 customers in the testing process. The pilot will, among other things, test future online consumer applications, including High Definition Internet TV (HD IPTV) and the ability to deliver applications and support for home IT needs through its network. By comparison J:Com in Japan supplies broadband at up to 160Mbps and Cablevision in the US supplies broadband at up to 101Mbps. Like Virgin Media, both companies use DOCSIS3 technology for broadband over cable networks."
Re:Stop it! (Score:4, Informative)
Virgin Media are so bad they almost make BT look good. Almost.
Stop bragging, you're seriously making me want to stab my eyes with grapefruit spoons.
At least you still have grapefruit spoons. They are no longer sold in the UK, due to health and safety concerns over people cutting their mouths (I honestly wish I was making this one up - you can still find them in second-hand shops, but good luck finding new ones).
DOCSIS 3 is a bitch for the US of A. (Score:4, Informative)
From: http://www.cable360.net/ct/strategy/emergingtech/34304.html [cable360.net]
The DTI specification has a distance limitation of 200 meters between the CMTS and edge QAM modulator. There are ideas of utilizing global positioning system (GPS) to sync multiple time servers to allow the edge QAM modulator to be in a hub site and the CMTS in the headend.
The US of A is a big place. Much bigger than say - the UK. Or Japan. Each of which are about the size of Texas and Oklahoma combined. The US of A is MUCH MUCH larger. You start running into economies of scale, since your HFC needs to run to individual neighborhood drops.
It's a much bigger problem, and not quite the answer to FiOS dropping MMF right into your home.
Re:3. 2. 1. (Score:3, Informative)
Its all a trade off really, you can live in a densely populated region with no space and have fast internet or live in the country side where there is plenty of space, cheap land and unpolluted air and put up with slow DSL or wireless unless you have the money to lease 200Mbits of capacity from a satellite.
The good news for all you yanks stuck with 'slow' connections is that most Brits won't be able to get it either. Cable isn't available in any of the slightly rural places (Even inside the M25!) and all their traffic is analysed by MI5, MI6, The cops, the local council or any other government agency who wants to dig up dirt on them.
Re:Stop it! (Score:4, Informative)
Oh, but Youtube, for whatever reason, still buffers for 5 minutes
This is often caused by a badly-configured proxy. We had this problem on campus. In spite of GigE inside and a 34GB/s connection outside, YouTube still took a long time to start playing. It turned out that the proxy was configured to download the file and then pass it on to the client when it had it all. A lot of the time, the connection to the proxy would time out while the proxy was waiting for YouTube to send the whole file, but when you hit refresh it would load almost instantly.
Re:3. 2. 1. (Score:5, Informative)
The USA is a vast land with lots of empty space where as England has around 80 million people shoved into a tiny space
The UK as a whole has around 60 million people. England has less than that. Britain has a similar population density to most of the costal states in the USA - lower than some - and has some of the worst broadband in Europe. The UK has the 48th highest population density in the world, with 246/km^2. New Jersey has 438/km^2, so presumably it has much better Internet access?
It's also worth noting that the population density numbers for the UK are massively skewed by London, which has an insane population density of 4,761km^2. The London metropolitan area contains around 14m people; around 25% of the UK population. Outside this area, the population density is well in line with the most densely populated 10-15 states, which accounts for a significant proportion of the total US population.
Even in the less-populated US states, the density isn't as bad as it would at first appear. Take Utah, for example, the 40th most populous state with only 10 people per square km. Of these, 2.7m people, almost half live in Salt Lake City, with a population density up at 643.3/km^2. I suspect you will find that more than half of the people in the USA live in regions with a greater population density than the UK average so, by your argument, I'd expect all of these urban and suburbanites to have 100+Mb/s connections.
Re:Stop it! (Score:5, Informative)
Re:3. 2. 1. (Score:1, Informative)
Cablevision is in the tristate area, they offer 101Mbps for around $100/mo.
Re:Stop it! (Score:2, Informative)
At least you still have grapefruit spoons. They are no longer sold in the UK, due to health and safety concerns over people cutting their mouths (I honestly wish I was making this one up - you can still find them in second-hand shops, but good luck finding new ones).
You are. [johnlewis.com]
Re:3. 2. 1. (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Shenanagins (Score:3, Informative)
The Virgin announcement referred to an initial trial limited to 100 customers. From what I've read on Optimum Online forums, the number of trial customers currently having the Cablevision's Ultra package is probably an order of magnitude higher. Also, they claim the new package will be available throughout their entire footprint on May 11, unlike the staggered rollout that Virgin appears to be planning. Anyway, come next week, I plan on taking them up to the task ... we'll see
Re:Stop it! (Score:3, Informative)
At least you still have grapefruit spoons. They are no longer sold in the UK
http://www.johnlewis.com/230483123/Product.aspx?source=14798 [johnlewis.com]
one of the fastest in the world? really? (Score:4, Informative)
Why is 200mb/s the one of the fastest in the world when they're doing 1gb/s up and down in Japan? You call 1/5 of that comparable to 1gb/s?????
On a related note... (Score:3, Informative)
Re:In other news.... (Score:1, Informative)
San Antonio. Second largest city in Texas, seventh largest in the US. Internet options for me include:
Time Warner... 7Mb max. Woot! (They have some speed boost thingy that claims give you 15Mb. But it is a painful amount of money.)
AT&T. 6Mb DSL! If you hook up to U-Verse you can get 18Mb, but the only package I see with that starts at $200. But that isn't even available in my area, so that's moot.
Although I agree, San Antonio is pretty much a desert but neither of them go up to 20Mb down regardless of the up.
Re:Stop it! (Score:2, Informative)
At the moment their top 50Mbit tier is totally uncapped [virginmedia.com]. I guess if you raped it constantly they might say something, but at least in comparison to their other offerings it is.
If im going to be capped id rather be capped during the times their network is under the most load, than some blanket 50GB/100GB cap for the month. Which is what seems most common. At least i can make full use of my 20Mbit connection during off-peak times.
If i wanted i could leave bittorrent running for ~12hrs at night and not hit any cap. Not bad for the UK. If i do any big downloads i just wait until after 9pm.
I have hit the caps before now without realising it. They may become a real issue if you did lots of HD streaming (iPlayer HD maybe). But 95% of the time i can watch whatever i want on iPlayer, browse the web etc. and not hit their peak-time caps.
Im satisfied with Mr Branson so far ;)