back to article BT gets postcode knickers in twist, plants Shoreditch on Mount Everest

A website set up by BT to help its customers track the progress of when their local telephone exchange will be souped up with superfast fibre broadband goodness is currently displaying a dodgy bug in the postcode checker. Anyone typing in N1, which is the postcode for Islington, north London, will instead be greeted with a map …

COMMENTS

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  1. adam payne
    Joke

    That'll be a long fibre cable.

  2. GreggS

    Failing it's GCSE geography?

    Surely these days that would be a pass (with distinction)?

    1. Keith 21
      FAIL

      Re: Failing it's GCSE geography?

      Did you deliberately misuse that apostrophe while talking about incorrect use of geography?

    2. LinkOfHyrule
      Joke

      Re: Failing it's GCSE geography?

      Please don't knock geography it is a wonderful subject at school and college, I loved it - it seems to be a soft target for jokes a lot of the time, take the piss out of French instead, a totally useless subject!

      As for the topic at hand, I have had this shit from Google maps myself recently - taking me to weird places when entering partial postcodes. As for solving this issue, they need a check box that let's you toggle on or off common sense, that should work!

      1. Steve the Cynic

        Re: Failing it's GCSE geography?

        French is a very useful subject to have studied if you find yourself living in France...

        (Disclaimer: this is the voice of experience speaking...)

  3. Platelet

    I've noticed quite a few mapping tools don't equate the whole of the world with London

    Ifyou type in N1 UK rather than N1 it should work fine.

    1. Ru
      Meh

      Re: I've noticed quite a few mapping tools don't equate the whole of the world with London

      Yes, London ain't the world. But when you're a British company trying to provide useful information to British customers, maybe you should use a slightly less inclusive and cosmopolitan search system, hmm?

  4. ukgnome
    Facepalm

    No wonder my broadband speed is a paltry 1.2MB when the exchange is in South Africa

  5. Ol'Peculier
    Happy

    I checked the mapping tool on my website (which only gets about 2.5K visitors a month, and E1, N1 etc. come up fine.

    BT, can I have a job please?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      No you cannot

      The cost estimate for Broadband Britain and the reason why subsidies are needed is based on these calculations. Fiber to the top of Mt Everest is will require special H&S assessment for the Openreach engineers involved and prolonged union negotiations on overtime and danger pay. So rather unsurprisingly we are asking the government to underwrite such expensive endeavors as they are key to the future of our great country.

      You just spoiled that bonanza and you expect to be hired?

  6. DayDragon
    Facepalm

    It works if you type a city name in to the Post Code box too :)

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    If you type S42 (which is in Chesterfield in Derbyshire), you get just north of Las Vegas on the I85.

    However, at the moment if you put in a full postcode in that area, you are directed to China near the town of Huzhenzhen...

  8. Bumpy Cat

    There is some logic ...

    N1 on the BT points at the N1 in Bloemfontein. N1 is the National Road 1, a major motorway linking Cape Town to Pretoria through Bloemfontein.

    So maybe this links to some central non-UK Google maps database, where letter+number does not map to a UK postcode.

    1. Yet Another Anonymous coward Silver badge

      Re: There is some logic ...

      Well BT should just jolly well write to these chaps and get them to change the name of their road.

      One day of course they will be able to talk on the new fangled telephone - as soon as the exchange is ready.

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Bigger problem?

    Yesterday the Amazon.uk 'find a delivery point' functionlaity at checkout was FUBAR'd with a pickup point with a Reading adddress being displayed as near Leeds. I was unable to get it to find any near me at all. (And there are some because I checked a week or two back when el Reg ran a story about the service)

  10. DayDragon
    Joke

    @Bigger problem?

    Perhaps Amazon got confused with the Leeds/Reading Festival and thought Leeds & Reading were the same place :)

  11. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Service level agreement

    I'm guessing that any engineer travelling from said exchanges to repair faults will make it a pm appointment?

  12. Mystic Megabyte
    FAIL

    It found where I live but failed to find the exchange that I can see out of my window.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      You on the same Exchange as me? Status NC - seeing as the flag is in the middle of a field 2 miles away from the physical exchange i can see it isn't surprising.

  13. Pete the not so great
    Happy

    Just 2 chars?

    NW1 is ok

  14. Michael H.F. Wilkinson Silver badge
    Happy

    This was brought to you by

    The expedition to scale both peaks of Mount Kilimanjaro

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=46btEgKmCTo

  15. J.G.Harston Silver badge

    Surely we have an adequate supply of messenger boys?

  16. Fuzz

    not just postcodes that are the problem

    The other problem with this map is that even if you make it work and show where you live. All it tells you is the status at the surrounding exchanges, it doesn't actually tell you which of these exchanges provides your telephone line.

    If I type my postcode I see that all the surrounding exchanges are enabled and accepting orders bar one which has no current plans, I wonder which exchange is mine?

  17. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    No, the main problem...

    ....Is that even though (re fast fibre broadband being available) it says "accepting orders" they are not actually "accepting orders" and, according to BT I have to "register my interest" and according to Zen I have to wait until 30 September.

    30 September is not so far away, but the previously promised date was 30 June, so I'm only half optimistic.

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    > The same thing happens when [...] Shoreditch, is typed in into BT's site. But this time we're cheerily relocated to Mount Everest

    More of a pleasant fantasy than a bug then.

  19. Arachnoid

    Google maps is just like Google search in that unless you tell it the item is locally related it will use its worldwide data base to search for the results.

  20. TeeCee Gold badge
    Joke

    "London's W1, for example, brings us all the way to Algeria."

    Or "Mayfair borders" as it's currently referred to in Estate Agents' windows......

  21. StephenD

    To be fair...

    ...the site does say to "Enter your full postcode". It should deal more elegantly with those who fail to follow instructions and enter "N1" and the like, but garbage in, garbage out, and all that.

    What a surprise - the 13 exchanges around me are all described as "Not currently in rollout plans".

  22. Phil Thompson
    FAIL

    N1 is not a postcode

    It might be a postcode sector, but Google maps or whatever is just guessing at what you were thinking by typing "N1" when it expected an actual postcode. #fail

  23. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I wonder which exchange I use...

    Sam Knows.

  24. BoldMan

    Shoreditch - or at least the bit I used to live in is also in EC2 which works fine...

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