News - Vigin Media looks to extend coverage via telegraph poles
Quote:
It?s often impractical to put fibre underground in rural locations, so Virgin?s trying something different.
Read more.
Re: News - Vigin Media looks to extend coverage via telegraph poles
A nice bit of lateral thinking by Virgin, but before you go knocking BT and its desire to improve the the infrastructure of the country you should try living at the end of a telephone wire strung up on poles, I used to and it was a bloody nightmare with regular disconnections as wires snapped and poles got knocked down by careless drivers.
What BT wants to do is to drastically improve the core infrastructure in a substantial and long lived manner. The thing about the multi-billion it wants to spend now is that it wanted to do pretty much the same thing 20 odd years ago when it would have cost millions and it was able to fund the entire cost itself, it got stopped because the then government wanted to privatise the industry and knew that if it let BT invest the way it wanted to then no one would be able to compete.
Re: News - Vigin Media looks to extend coverage via telegraph poles
Quote:
Originally Posted by
cordas
you should try living at the end of a telephone wire strung up on poles, I used to and it was a bloody nightmare with regular disconnections as wires snapped and poles got knocked down by careless drivers.
Erm, most of the population actually do have telephone lines coming from poles... they are pretty reliable.
Maybe your pole was just on a bad road junction or something.
Re: News - Vigin Media looks to extend coverage via telegraph poles
Quote:
Originally Posted by
mikerr
Erm, most of the population actually do have telephone lines coming from poles... they are pretty reliable.
Yeah, one poll, and the line comes in to that from the ground. In the country your power and telephone is often delivered entirely via poles, so if you've got 100 poles between the substation and you... well, your chances of an incident are somewhat higher :)
Re: News - Vigin Media looks to extend coverage via telegraph poles
Hardly original thinking. Optus was rolling out their HFC network on poles in Australia in the 90's.
Re: News - Vigin Media looks to extend coverage via telegraph poles
Would these telegraph poles be the ones BT installed originally?
There really needs to be legislation put in place to force BT, Virgin and any others to share trunks, ducts and poles to allow all parties to expand their networks. I think this would benefit everyone.
Re: News - Vigin Media looks to extend coverage via telegraph poles
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Originally Posted by
Funkstar
Would these telegraph poles be the ones BT installed originally?
There really needs to be legislation put in place to force BT, Virgin and any others to share trunks, ducts and poles to allow all parties to expand their networks. I think this would benefit everyone.
The trouble is we also require them to make a profit from their investments. They have no motivation to share their assets. In fact it's probably the only advantage BT have left.
Re: News - Vigin Media looks to extend coverage via telegraph poles
Hey, I was married in Woolhampton (where this trial is set) earlier this year. :)
And it's not all that rural either, it's only a few miles from Reading and right on the A4, so not exactly representative of truely rural areas.
The population is also pretty aging - a lot of the population are well into their retirement - again I wonder how suitable this place is as a trial location.
Re: News - Vigin Media looks to extend coverage via telegraph poles
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Originally Posted by
Phage
The trouble is we also require them to make a profit from their investments. They have no motivation to share their assets. In fact it's probably the only advantage BT have left.
They also have choice. Their infrastructure is flexible, unlike Virgin's. Sue it's all ADSL, but there is a multitude of different ISPs offering different services, even if I had VM at home I don't know if I would take it, I rather like being with Zen at the moment.
Another bonus of being with BT is I can change my ISP and not mess with my phone line. Changing to opens up a world of hurt if the migration doesn't go smoothly.
Re: News - Vigin Media looks to extend coverage via telegraph poles
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Funkstar
They also have choice. Their infrastructure is flexible, unlike Virgin's. Sue it's all ADSL, but there is a multitude of different ISPs offering different services, even if I had VM at home I don't know if I would take it, I rather like being with Zen at the moment.
Another bonus of being with BT is I can change my ISP and not mess with my phone line. Changing to opens up a world of hurt if the migration doesn't go smoothly.
Aye. Tis true.
But as Zak's thread exposes, you can have support problems when there's more than one company involved.
Re: News - Vigin Media looks to extend coverage via telegraph poles
Quote:
Originally Posted by
Phage
Aye. Tis true.
But as Zak's thread exposes, you can have support problems when there's more than one company involved.
Oh for sure. You are always going to have issue like that, no matter what.
But I do prefer the idea of having everything separate. I really don't like these all in one packages.
Re: News - Vigin Media looks to extend coverage via telegraph poles
It's virgin don't forget, so this announcement is more about free press coverage rather than of any real substance.
As a poster above says, the location of the trial isn't what most people would describe as "rural". This is about one-upmanship over BT. Nothing more.
Always take Virgin press announcements with a pinch of salt.
