Virgin broadband - where do the fibre optic cables stop?! None in myhouse!

I've just moved to Virgin Broadband having previously has ADSL down my
BT line.

I've seen the adverts from Virgin talking about their fibre optic
network and it set me wondering where the fibre optic cables actually
stop. Do they go to that box in the street near my house or what?

They certainly don't come into my house as that's a bit of copper.

Surely BT's network has lots of fibre optic cables in it too?

Will there come a time with Virgin where you can get a fibre optic
cable right to the back of your computer and get amazingly-fast
broadband?

 

The cable model is generally to a street box, known as fibre to
the kerb. The last bit is copper. I think some can pay extra
for fibre to the home.
Main problem is that even fibre to the home is limited by
backhaul bandwidth, so whilst Virgin might be able to
deliver streaming video on demand, their broadband offering
suffers from congestion and contention, and once beyond
Virgin it may be like a piece of damp string. Even with
a 20Mbps fibre connection you wouldn't achieve 5Mbps
from most sites in the States, you would be lucky to
see 1Mbps.
In contrast commercial, military, and academic neworks
have dedicated high speed links, or pipes, and can deliver
high speeds within their own network, even if it spans the
world, can't see the Stock Exchange and major financial
institutions settling for 2Mbps to their Hong Kong trading
floor.

 

But they do pay a bit more than £9.99/month for that privilege

 

yes I expect that they are on the L package, lolol.

 

In answer to your question, you will need to check with Virgin if you are
already in one of their cabled areas.
If you are, then you'll get broadband-by-cable (fibre to premises).
If not, they'll fix you up with good ol' ADSL via your existing BT
line/socket.
If you're not in a cabled area - no chance. AFAIK they stopped laying new
cable years ago.

George

 

It's fibre to the street cabinet and then coax to the house, I'm assuming
the OP is a domestic user, the cable modem sits on their TV distribution
network - nothing to do with the phone connection. The cable they use into
domestic premises is a coax with a couple of twisted telephone pairs laid
alongside.

Peter