Written by Nick Wood for Telecoms.com
Virgin Media O2 has begun selling broadband services via its new, 10 Gbps-capable XGS PON network.
The UK cableco began a commercial trial of the technology with select customers last November.
“These trials proved successful so now we are taking the next step forward in our network evolution and starting to sell services powered by the latest fibre technology, known as XGS-PON, much more widely,” wrote VMO2’s chief technology officer, Jeanie York, in a blog post on Thursday.
Until recently, VMO2 customer were served entirely by its hybrid fibre coaxial (HFC) infrastructure. VMO2 upgraded it to DOCSIS 3.1, enabling it to be quick out the blocks in offering gigabit broadband services, but compared to the latest fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) technologies like XGS PON – which supports symmetric 10 Gbps downlink and uplink speeds – DOCSIS has limitations when it comes to upload speed.
This wasn’t always an issue, but upstream data as a proportion of overall network traffic is increasing as customers make greater use of cloud services, user-generated content and video calling. While the latest HFC tech, DOCSIS 4.0, offers a significant improvement in upload speed, it is still slower compared to the downlink.
