back to article BT fibre upgrades hit full speed

BT's fibre optic upgrade programme is picking up pace, with a further 300 exchanges earmarked to offer faster broadband today. Covering about four million lines, the latest tranche of exchanges will be upgraded between Autumn this year and Summer 2011. It represents a significant portion of the overall programme, which is …

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  1. BillboBaggins
    Unhappy

    Grrrrrr

    The date I saw a week or so ago said my exchange was supposed to go live today.

    Now after a bit of digging it's not due till September!

    Not happy

    1. Dave Murray
      Thumb Down

      English Telecom

      At least you have a due date. There are NO exchanges in Scotland on that list.

    2. jackharrer

      Re: Grrrrr

      Doesn't matter that exchange will go live. It will take another 10 years to pull this fibre to cabinets, judging by former performance. Guess how long for Fibre to Premises...

      Poplar exchange has been full for last 2 years. I cannot even connect (expensive) business connection. Sorry, no space left. Actually there is a lot of space (I suppose pre-reserved) for AOL/TalkTalk which is such a rubbish nobody wants it.

      Ridiculous, nothing more. They should be legally obliged to provide decent infrastructure.

      1. Anonymous Coward
        Anonymous Coward

        Nothing is reserved for AOL/TalkTalk

        If BT says there is no space left then it means there is no space left on BT equipment - BT does not reserve place for AOL/TalkTalk or any other provider. TalkTalk has put in their own equipment in the exchanges that has been unbundled from BT. First learn about the technology before making a comment that makes you look like a tard (commentard I mean)!

  2. BillboBaggins
    Unhappy

    Grrrrrr

    As of a couple of weeks ago my exchange was supposed to go live today!

    Now it's not due till September!

    Nott happy

    1. Gaz Jay
      WTF?

      We know.

      You told us this already.

  3. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    yeah but its BT

    So don't expect the service to be any good.

  4. Andrew Ducker
    WTF?

    No Scottish exchanges?

    Not a single one in Scotland - you'd think that bits of Glasgow or Edinburgh would be sufficiently profitable to make it worthwhile...

    1. P.Nutt
      Flame

      FFS BT

      I am well impressed with the PR machine boasting more exchanges getting fibre, Pity they are none in the country I live in getting this upgrade. Hell I would be happier with better cable to my exchange let alone shiny new fibre like the folk down south get.

      Pissed off fully at running less that 1mb for the last 10 years and no sign of things improving any time soon and I will not be holding my breath for BT to be getting there heads and hands out from fondling themselves to be improving my situation any time soon.

  5. bondspice
    FAIL

    Title Smitle

    That big huge list and not one Scottish exchange? Disgusting.

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Who made the list?

    Who ever made the list up does not know the UK very well.... Must have been done by the India Branch of BT. Reading Central is not in South East nor MILTON KEYNES.

    Do we trust BT to get it right no chance..

    1. jonathanb Silver badge

      Reading Central is in SE

      Contrary to what some people in London think, Reading is not on the Welsh border. It is only 25 minutes by train from Paddington, and very definitely in the South East. The South East regional assembly does meet here from time to time.

  7. Chimpofdoom!
    WTF?

    bah...

    No Scotland.. so much for British Telecom...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Grenade

      I've got an idea...

      ...what about devolution?

    2. Ball boy Silver badge
      Alert

      Re: Bah!

      British Telecom? Pah! Only because 'English Telecom' would make an abbreviation that matches a rather popular film of the 80's and encourange us all to make terribly apt piss-takes about them going home or their relying on defunct childs' games and circular saws to make connections.

      okay, okay, I'm going, t'was only a joke! If it helps, I'm in the 'upgraded' bit and I think I'm still waiting for Doom II to download...

  8. JC 5
    Thumb Up

    Poplar is on the list :)

    Well after waiting ages at least Poplar is on the list

    It must have the worst Broadband in London - I dont get 2Mb at the moment

    1. Samo
      Thumb Up

      Yay!

      Right there with you buddy... I've been waiting to get more than 2Mb myself... apparently I'm too far from Poplar!

  9. DavidK

    Great

    Some little places there but not my town in the SE with over 130,000 people.

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    8% of the population, 50% of the moaning

    Lots of complaints about Scotland which got some upgrades in the first round. The second biggest city in the UK, however, is still left out in the cold. Perhaps you meant to say "continuing BT's focus on densely populated areas not including Birmingham".

  11. allybally
    Thumb Down

    Nothing in Scotland?!

    That is a complete joke! Nothing in Scotland, Northen Ireland gets 1. Wales gets 7. England gets 296. What is going on there?! Judging by how often BT announces when these will get done, we can expect the next list not until late Summer.

    1. SynnerCal
      Big Brother

      Passport needed

      This story reminds me of an ex-colleague who used to cuss BT as "Berkshire Telecom" basically because (a) they were a lot of Berks*; and (b) if you weren't in the Home Counties then they couldn't give a toss.

      (No insult intended to denizens of the fair county of Berkshire)

      Never thought I'd be glad to have my telecoms provided by Vermin Media, but it must be because April 1st beckons ...

  12. colin79666
    IT Angle

    What about the competition?

    It's all fine BT doing the upgrading but when are competitors going to be able to offer services over these new fibre lines? The majority of ADSL connections in this country come down a BT line, only a minority actually have BT as their ISP.

  13. thebigt
    Happy

    Densely populated areas?

    Hmm, I've never really though of my little corner of West Yorkshire as densely populated but somehow the Haworth exchange has made it on this list - to my eternal joy, though slightly tempered by it being BT!

    Oh, maybe it's down to being near Keighley i.e. populated by the dense...

  14. The Guv
    WTF?

    No Scottish Exchanges... WTF!!!

    This is an outrage!

  15. Oddbin
    Unhappy

    Hmmm

    I was looking at their website last week and it had two parts of Edinburgh up for work before 2012. Corstorphine was one I'm sure. I sent BT an email saying I thought it was a joke that I had seen 3 posters advertising infinity on the east side of Edinburgh and near the A1 but there was not going to be any exchanges handling infinity for at the very best two years.

    I gotthe reply that I could go to their website to see their schedule. The very same one I ridiculed in my email.

    What I don't get is why with new developments they can't add into planning permission that the developer and BT must fibre enable the development. Split cost. Less hassle as your starting with a field. Speeds up adoption.

  16. mouldiwarp
    Thumb Down

    Very disspointed with BT 380Kb!!!!

    I live 3 miles from city centre Leeds. I can supposedly get access too a 1.5Mb donload speed but at best I get 390Kb...... Even then the signal : noise ration is so bad that the connection regularly drops. 10 years ago colleagues in Europe were getting 10Mb upload / download speeds and all this time on BT are still ripping people off selling contracts for download limits that are completely beyond the capability of the lines they provide while failing to invest in their infrastructure.

    I used BT for 12 months, I paid 35.00 per month for a 40Gb download limit. I would struggle to be able to download half that. Unfortunately to reduce the cost meant being tied in for another 12 months.... and dont get me started on the off-shore customer service. Needless to say I am now with SKY but still tied to the same crumbling and antiquated copper infrastructure......

  17. JasonW
    Alien

    Given the man-in-the-middle HTTP hijack yesterday....

    The sole purpose for this upgrade would appear to be to allow people to download the spamvertised software faster.

  18. Richard Large

    Huzzah!

    I'm on the list!

  19. Big_Ted
    Thumb Down

    Its not as good as you think.....

    I have read on various forums that not all cabinets are being connected with fibre.

    The Glasgow Halfway exchange was done late December and only about 2 thirds were connected.

    The only 2 reasons I have seen for this are not economical and may be waiting for council to ok new cabinet and power company to supply.

    Also if you would get less than 15 meg on test they will not offer it to you anyway, This has already happened to some people. So don't get too excited if you are on the exchange list as it might still be a long wait.

  20. Lionel Baden
    Go

    WOOOT

    IM ON THE LIST !!!!! YEEAAARGGHHHHHHHHH

    Although i probably live to far away from the exchange to get much from it e.g. 40mb I should still see an improvement.

    @no scottish exchange

    after the title of "exchanges in the south east are being upgraded" why the hell would you think scotland would come on that list ? or should be even on that list .....

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      D'uh!

      Title I'm seeing is "BT fibre upgrades hit full speed" with a subtitle of "303 more exchanges"

      And given it's "British" Telecom, you'd think they'd include some Scottish ones.

      Obviously as "British" as the BBC.

      Time to cancel my BT ADSL connection and go cable I guess.

      1. Gaz Jay
        WTF?

        BBC? British?

        More like London Broadcasting Corporation.

        When I watch the news in the morning, it's almost solely about London and the south east. Want proof? Have a look when they show the National Weather.... the map zooms over the entire country give a split second view of your area, then slows right down over London.

  21. Tim Bergel
    Thumb Down

    Milton Keynes not in south east?

    WTF is AC at 14:21 on about? If Milton Keynes isn't in the south east then where is it?

    Rather annoyed to see that Cambridge - our much-hyped high-tech area - is still not being converted. Maybe they think that too many people will want to use it?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Joke

      (untitled)

      Milton Keynes is North of London.

  22. theloon
    FAIL

    Well it is not really faster...

    Its Fibre to the Cab, and then worn out copper from that point to your house....

    Lets not forget that even if you get VDSL BT can't attenuate the line up or it breaks LLU for the other DSL providers using BT copper.

  23. Kenny Millar
    Alert

    Helllooooo? Remeber us?

    Hello!

    Someone please remind BT that the world doesn't end at Watford! What a total piece of pish.

  24. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Even southerns have to suffer!

    I'm surrounded by FTTC cabs here in Basingstoke (3 within 1/2 mile) but BT won't connect me to one for the foreseable future. The house just beyond my back garden fence is connected to a FTTC, I can even see them happily tapping away at 40Mbs. Fcuking BT b'stards - excuse my french - I have to live with a flakey 0.8Mbs.

  25. Michael Dee
    Thumb Up

    Sad to say, I'm very pleased

    My local BT exchange is some 3km distant and at best I could only achieve 3Mbps so my only choice was VirginMedia's 20Mbps package.

    Speeds were rarely as advertised, varying between 10 and 20 Mbps and an abysmal 750k upload. When BT offered me the new Infinity (FTTC) package and estimated 17.7Mbps download and 6.9Mbps upload for my personal installation, I jumped at the chance - even if they are half that, they are not much worse than Virgin on the download, and infinitely better on the upload. The package was appreciably cheaper too.

    One week after installation, download is 30Mbps and upload 8Mbps consistently. Support is in the UK and I even had a call to establish whether I was happy with the service or not! It's been a long time coming, but BT do seem to have got it right in recent times, despite struggling with a fundamentally antiquated network, and it now has a new, very happy customer.

  26. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Performance related pricing?

    About time the digital divide represented by the huge number ofmarket One exchanges was reflected in the pricing... Piss poor market 1 performance = small price. Low data caps = low price.

    As ever BT are busy chasing a few crumbs in multi provider exchanges while screwing over the captive market on Market One, and OFCOM allows it... it just feels so corrupt!

  27. Stu
    Alert

    Highly populated areas for higher ROI?

    Not so IMO, looking at that list they are doing what seems to be all of Leamington Spa, Rugby and Stratford on Avon PRIOR to doing any of Coventry or Birmingham, the major metropolitan areas in the West Mids.

    It seems they actually mean they're targeting areas which are more likely to have the *money* to shell out - Leamington is a richer, nicer town, you see!

    Christ they're even doing Evesham, Polesworth and Lichfield quicker!

    .

    Did I miss an earlier list where Cov and Brum are already mentioned?

  28. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    BT needs to be broken up

    If only the strangle hold BT holds were diminished, nulled, voided and avoided.

    While I don't rate local authorities as having a great deal of nounce I am sure that local authorities could do better and besides I prefer the community based model over rip em off model.

    Ah.. a shane for shure.

  29. Anonymous Coward
    Grenade

    Wales and yet not Scotland,

    looks like the big fuck you to scotland again, im gonna blame the SNP, why would BT want to do anything up here if those idiots actually split up the Union and potentially screw BT sideways with its own laws.

  30. Dave 120
    FAIL

    English Telecom more like

    21st Century fibre network? Right this way. Scotland and Northern Ireland need not apply.

  31. jason 7
    Stop

    Folks, pull out those bellwires.

    Open up your master socket (yes yes not supposed too etc. but when did you last see a BT engineer in your house) and pull out the orange wire with a white stripe attached to terminal 3.

    Reboot your router and leave overnight. Then check your ADSL speed.

    At worst it will do nothing at best I've seen it double a 2Mb connection to nearly 4Mb.

    Oh and dump all those phone extentsion leads from the hallway. Use an ethernet cable from the router instead for the long run.

    It's all in the wires and cables.

  32. mfraz
    Unhappy

    Yet again ...

    The South West is left out completely.

  33. Philip Marsden
    FAIL

    at least you get adsl

    Would be nice if BT would pull their finger out and make my exchange ADSL capable, only live 2 miles outside of ely, GRRRR

  34. Anonymous Coward
    Paris Hilton

    Erm, network-based upgrades are not political

    Glasgow and Edinburgh aside (where's the Vermin media competition there?), why would these backwaters be on the list? SE England has 15million affluent customers. Inverness doesn't.

    Paris, because she has never been to Scotland either

    1. This post has been deleted by its author

  35. Gianni Straniero

    Git tae fuck

    I suppose this might be some justification for BT's south east English chauvinism:

    http://www.griersons.com/ne2/images/stories/ukmap.gif

  36. Anonymous Coward
    Thumb Down

    Who cares

    I'd be far more interested in them actually giving the WHOLE country speeds of around 5 Meg rather than a handful of the English 40 Meg.

    Surely most of the "highly populated" areas are already well served by pretty fast broadband so all this means is that they can get it even faster while the rest of us have to continue to suffer 2 Meg despite only living a couple of miles from the exchange and few miles outside Scotland capital.

    The rich get richer an all that.

  37. Andy Livingstone

    Independence this way, please

    True enough, these upgrades are going where the population is most dense.

  38. Atonnis
    Happy

    Aww...

    Maybe Scotland could pipe in all that money they don't pay into NHS prescriptions....

  39. Anonymous Coward
    Black Helicopters

    Maybe BT has the begging bowl out for the Highlands?

    Is it possible they would be so cynical as to expect the Scots to stump up again for upgrades? Inverness pop. is 0.08% of England's...

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