back to article BT fibre rollout reaches Scotland, Wales

BT's Openreach wing plans to deploy its fibre technology to a further 178 exchanges, the national telco confirmed today. It said that the majority of those exchanges would be upgraded in 2012. Once that work is complete, around 1.8 million homes and businesses will have access to BT's fibre-to-the-cabinet or fibre-to-the- …

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  1. This post has been deleted by its author

    1. Da Weezil
      FAIL

      Lucky you..... however huge areas of Wales are still waiting for WBC...

      Shame BTw didn't finish one roll out before starting another.

  2. Tony Humphreys
    Megaphone

    Great, but a bit like a drag race

    My exchange is being upgraded - great, but what use is a billion gig connection with a 1gb cap. Its a bit like a drag race - full speed ahead, for a quarter mile anyway.

    We need higher caps, or truly unlimited - and a clamp down on fair use policies that are just caps.

    I would rather a 2mb unlimited to a 40mb capped at 1gb or even 10, 20, 50gb

    1. mr-tom
      Boffin

      Caps based on package, not line speed

      Just pick a different package from your current ISP or change ISP.

      I am unlimited already (on a 1.5mb line) which next year will be fibred, increasing the speed significantly. Line speed is completely irrelevant to that equation.

      1. GettinSadda
        Thumb Down

        Not open to all

        Many areas don't have any unlimited deals available - if you don't have cable and/or LLU then the options are really poor. And don't get me started on "unlimited but we cap it at 2GB", or "unlimited but we throttle the hell out of you if you use more than a couple of GB".

        1. Danny 14

          infinity

          I thought infinity fttc was BT's puppy hence their packages (40mb 40gb)

  3. ElNumbre
    Facepalm

    Moving in...

    Looks like I'm going to have to move back in with the parental units - they're on the upgrade list, and I'm not. Its only been 14 years since I moved out, I'm sure they won't mind.

  4. Mugs

    Bypassed

    Great headline for BT but what about all the premises they bypassed in the upgraded exchanges? Looks like there's no pressure to add the 1 in 3 cabinets that they coudn't be bothered doing first time round.

    1. I_am_Chris

      couldn't agree more

      My exchange has had FTTC since the summer, but I can't get it :(

      Some people on the same *street* are enabled.

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I've got the 40Mb Down / 10Mb up unlimited service.

    Thus far it has been very good, no disconnects (the old bt broadband was notorious for disconnecting both broadband and wireless connections)

    From the wired server I get around 4Megabytes a second download and 10Megabytes upload

    Wireless connections are something like 38Mbit and 8Mbit.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sigh.

    Well my area aint on it so I suppose I will be putting up with my half meg connection for another 5 years...

  7. Darren Forster
    Thumb Down

    Still no Ludlow.... what do we not count here?

    Really annoyed that Ludlow is still not considered important enough by BT to be considered for an upgrade.

    Ludlow is a real joke when it comes to broadband, it's famous for it's food fair and medieval fayre and home of Boyce from Only Fools and Horses, and yet we're still on only 2mbps ADSL, not even upgraded to ADSL2 yet.

    Got a good mind to ditch PlusNet as my provider and switch to TalkTalk instead, because PlusNet are owned by BT and if BT/Plus Net want to treat their customers like this well they don't deserve any.

    There isn't much super-fast broadband in the whole of Shropshire I think BT seem to see us as a black hole in the middle nowhere that doesn't matter.

    1. ad47uk

      Hereford is on the list, which shocked me, Ludlow is pretty small to be honest, so Bt have to be sure it is worth while.

      i am surprised that Ludlow is still up to ADSL2 yet. Be careful changing to Talk Talk, if you want to change back to BT or any other service, it can cost.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I get a max of 1.5 meg, had an OpenReach engineer come out and he said "Thats a very good speed for this village"

    The nearest place to us that have gotten fibre is 30+ miles away...

    1. GitMeMyShootinIrons

      I sympathise...

      But 1.5Mb is three times faster than I get and I (allegedly) live in a city, where you'd expect at least *some* level of service.

      Mind you, I'm not going to complain as I see my exchange on this list. Who knows, I may get to 2Mb yet...

  9. Darren Forster
    WTF?

    Newport - Isle of White - LOL!!!!

    Just noticed on the press release BT have spelt Isle of Wight wrong - shows how incompetent this firm really is, either that or someone is too trigger happy with spell checker!!

    LOL!

    1. Kevin Johnston

      Ah Vectis

      It's all them oveners too busy swallowing their nammit to do a proper job.

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      I agree

      I mean, If they cannot spell that write then what hope do they have of rolling out fiber across 178 locations?

      To think, we let these peeps deal with the majority of our communications systems and they cannot even spell proper like. I demand an investigation.

  10. TheManCalledStan
    Meh

    What caps and fups?

    There hasn't been any for ages on unlimited products... they've gone for traffic management instead.

    Still another 3 million homes worth of exchanges that need to be announced.

    Remember, it took NTL and Telewest 15 years, £15billion and bankruptcy to get to 50% of the population that VM now serve.

    It's not like ADSL where the engineers go to the exchange and perform an upgrade.

    It's go to random place on map, place cabinet.

    Contractors come in supply power.

    Engineers back to connect everything up.

    Then repeat at another random place on map.

    It's an indication of this society that they don't understand the logistics required for this infrastructure build, and have this "I expect and want it now attitude".

  11. JC_
    Thumb Down

    £18 for 40Mb capped.

    £25 for 40Mb uncapped.

    Whining on The Register about £7? Priceless.

    1. Da Weezil
      Flame

      But for many.. its still £19 for capped upto 8 meg on 10 year old equipment

      You couldnt make this stuff up

      1. JC_

        True, and that sucks, no disagreement. My post was a reply to "Tony Humphreys" who was claiming he'd be a martyr and take 2Mb service over 40Mb service, for the sake of £7. Somehow it ended up as a stand-alone post.

        El Reg, for god's sake, sort your reader account-handling out!

  12. Dazed and Confused
    Flame

    don't count your chickens

    Just because they are on the list now for installation some point next year doesn't mean that next year they'll still be on the list. My local exchange was down for upgrade this autumn so I dutifully waited for the due date and then went to check the BT site only to find they dropped it back to December 2012.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Don't count on it.

    Don't trust anything BT says, they're fucking useless.

    Our exchange was earmarked for the upgrade months ago. June? July? Got pushed back to September. September pushed back to the end of this month.

    The new expected roll out date? March 2012. How about you get the original, planned, exchanges upgraded first, before promising the Earth, eh BT?

    Useless c....

  14. Disgruntled of TW
    FAIL

    It's NOT fibre ... meh

    It is FTTC. It is VDSL2+ at best, with *serious* limitations on distance from cabinets. It might one day reach 100Mbps downstream and 10Mbps upstream. You can forget "cloud anything" that involves sending your data anywhere at more than 1MBps. Seems a lot now, but it won't in 5 years. Those unlucky enough to live close to an exchange are stuck with ADSL2+ Annex M at 24Mbps at best. No infinity for them, unless the RFI regs are changed to allow installation of the VDSL kit *inside* the exchange.

    If it *were* fibre, real fibre, not metal, then synchronous Gbps is easy and logical. BT have never explained their contention ratios, or whether they rollout FTTC before or after they've made the backhaul capable of dealing with a massive increase in consumer traffic. Just how many HD movies do you need to watch/download to do 4 GByte in a day? One, with commercials. Pointless to have 10Gbps even if that's what you're capped at.

    The BT Infinity product is a denial of the inevitable need to "pass" every home with fibre, not copper. Little to none of the Infinity equipment is reusable to achieve this. Or, in other words, the BDUK funding they are gobbling up is a complete waste of public money, supported by our short sighted government. BT will continue to enjoy the monopoly of the final copper mile they've had for more than 30 years.

  15. Dick Emery
    Thumb Down

    Don't care

    Until BT offer unrestricted (as in unthrottled 14/7 bittorrent) access they can take a hike. Everyone other ISP offering FTTC is too damned expensive.

    1. Danny 14
      Facepalm

      riiiight

      'cause EVERYONE should be entitle to digital squirrel 24/7.

      Are you seriously saying that you should be allowed to max out your connection 24/7 downloading? Really? For how much? £20?

      Pay £200 and you probably can get said connection.

  16. cosymart
    WTF?

    MIDLAND??

    Noticed MIDLAND exchange on the list, anyone know the exact location other than West Midlands?

  17. Da Weezil
    Flame

    Hello BTw... West Wales - that overlooked bit west of Swansea - would appreciate some investment... maybe some WBC upgrades... after all we are more than due for it..... and it would be nice to benefit from that cheaper WBC bandwidth.. the OFCOM price cut (such as it was) didn't reach the consumer.. so we are still paying though the nose for a 3rd rate service

  18. b166er

    Never mind that shit, where's our fucking WBC?

  19. Jess--

    WBC would be nice up here in lincolnshire, it would allow me to actually drop a couple of adsl connections since I currently have to run bonded adsl over 3 connections to reach my current speeds of 10mbit down and 1mbit up.

    WBC using the same loss figures as my worst performing adsl connection would be able to give me 12mbit down and 0.98mbit up on a single connection, saving me around £40 a month.

  20. Jason 24
    FAIL

    Oi BT

    Why not fit my fecking leased line to my office that I've been waiting over a year for? Wankers.

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