PC for TV

[Milo Minderbinder]

"No it's not fibre optic to the house it's fibre optic in the street and the usual telephone wire to the house."

well that sounds like an unbundled BT Infinity service - except AFAIK BT haven't let anyone else resell Infinity yet.
All the pointers are that you simply have an unbundled ADSL service through Virgin using BT's local cables. NOT a Virgin cable service
In which case you do have all the contention ratio issues to play with.


And one final point - you're trying to download Sky Go through a Virgin network??? One suspects you may be falling victim to some kind of traffic profile shaping or prioritisation. Internet companies hate streaming services, and especially those of their competitors. It would not surprise me if streaming Sky video had a low bandwidth priority for Virgin

[BOAC]

Milo - it appears we may have a yet another 'hoodwinking' by the 'system' on what is being sold here. The sooner OfCom flash their rubber teeth and sort this out the better. Whether 'Dear Jeremy' will have enough time in office, of course, before the door hits his backside on the way out..........................

We are diverging as usual from track, but.........,

I think it extremely unlikely that BT will ever 'unbundle Infinity' due to the antiquated way it is distributed via new PCPs, each of which has the necessary VSlam installed and is linked to the E-side and D-side lines at each original PCP. I can see (under pressure!!) BT being forced to offer PIA to other providers for their fibre supply INTO the new PCPs but that would require, as with Rutland Telecom/Gigaclear, the 'other' putting in either a new PCP for FTTC or termination point into a FTTP network, or of course into a fixed wireless network as I am working towards here is Sussex (40mb). However, as Rutland and others have discovered, doing 'straight' deals with BT. is a task for Dr Faustus.

Meanwhile, of course, the UK waits breathlessly to hear from the government which of the 9 (no, 3) (no, 2) major bidders will prevail for the £530 million. I wonder.......? 2 letters, beginning with B and ending with T perhaps?

[sky9]

Milo,

It isn't a BT line, the NTL fibre optic line was laid about 10 years ago. Give us credit for knowing what is outside my house.

Your second comment could well be the truth.

[BOAC]

Give us credit for knowing what is outside my house.

- of course we do, it is just that the technology you describe is completely unknown to me. As I have been active for a while in trying to get a better broadband in my locality it would be useful to know more. Can you tell us how your 'phone lines' are connected to this NTL fibre in the road?

[sky9]

From what I understand there is an NTL box on the pavement opposite where I presume that the cable is transferred to standard telephone line to the houses in the street.

From what I can gather telephone cable is perfectly adequate up to at least 20Mnps but at higher speeds cable is used to the house.

Is there any way I can measure bandwidth to see if Virgin is chocking off SKY?

[Milo Minderbinder]

From memory, NTL lines were a composite hybrid
The TV and phone signals were carried by a pair of fibreoptics buried in the cable, but broadband was carried on an embedded copper co-axial. The copper could carry a faster signal than the fibreoptic!
You have to remember its 20+-year old technology and the fibreoptics were primitive by modern standards
One things for sure - its not standard phone cable

[Mike-Bracknell]

Originally Posted by Milo Minderbinder

well that sounds like an unbundled BT Infinity service - except AFAIK BT haven't let anyone else resell Infinity yet.

Wrong. Would you like it (when I say "it" I mean FTTC/FTTP not "Infinity" which is BT Retail's tradename for it)

[Milo Minderbinder]

Thats what comes from extrapolating a local situation nationally.... round here only BT are offering the end-user service so far, they started around five weeks ago. I'm waiting to see if/when Zen come up with an offering