What's wrong with Birmingham?
We have a giant BT tower, FFS!
BT has released new details of its fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) rollout, including a list of the first 29 exchanges to be upgraded to offer faster broadband in early 2010. Engineers will run fibre optic cables between the exchanges and street side cabinets, closer to homes and businesses. Downstream speeds will be improved to …
We are connected to Belfast Balmoral, but we're right at the limit of the current line length restriction since we're out in the sticks.
I wonder if BT will be installing fibre to our little hamlet then, or is it just to those areas where there will be sufficent take-up?
I won't hold my breath...
Anyone know what they plan to do with the cabinet modems? I'm wondering will they be multi function ADSL / ADSL2 / VDSL2 so existing user equipment keeps going or if they will force a migration to VDSL2. Knowing BT they will probably be ADSL only, with VDSL2 upgrade in 2020 (dependent on lengthy offcom study of course).
(From another esteemed organ): Steve Robertson, chief executive of Openreach, the division of BT responsible for the delivery of the plans, said: "...................it is great to announce this initial set of locations."
Nah, mate. 'Great' would be to tell everyone when the majority of Britain will have access to fibre. Good would be when you tell us that half of Britain will have it. 40% is, at best, an okay start.
Do you think it's great when your wife, partner, significant other says tonight you'll be having 40% of some really hot, kinky bedroom exercise?
Big fucking surprise North Yorkshire wasn't given FUCKALL again. We live by the sea between Whitby and Scarborough and routinely get fuckall from anyone.
I wrote to the secretary of the chairman some months ago asking if our village could be one where they conduct trials for high speed broadband rollout and they didn't even have the manner to reply.
I bet they'd write to me if I didn't pay by twatting bill eh BT?
Paris, because everyone has had a go apart from my village which gets left out of everything..
The numbers would appear to be roughly in line with population. Your knowledge of geography would appear to be a bit faulty as there are two Welsh exchanges on the list.
Scotland have 10.3% of the exchanges (8% of UK population)
Wales have 7% of the exchanges (5% of UK population)
NI 3% of the exchanges (3% UK population)
England 79% of exchanges (83% UK population)
So perhaps a little more attention to facts on your part and a bit less bleating about discrimination would be in order.
29 exchanges, 3 of them in Scotland.
Scotland's population <10% of the UK population, therefore the number of exchanges per-capita is better in Scotland than the rest of the UK.
Wales and NI can be agrieved if they want, but not sure how you can set <1/2 of an exchange up.
The exchange in Edinburgh that has been chosen is the one in an area not currently covered by Virgin Media, which makes sense - BT want to sell the whole media stuff through Home Hub, far more likely to get take-up where cable doesn't already exist.
Chingford, Edmonton and Enfield aren't in London, unless you subscribe to the view that anything within the M25 counts as London. Which is incorrect.
Unfortunately I'm not covered in the first roll-out, as I live in rural Bedfordshire. But I don't really care as I've got a choice of 8mb ADSL and 50mb cable.
However, I've noticed that so many people complaining above are also from traditionally remote, sparsely-populated areas. If you want to have the amenities associated with living in a city, move to a city! (But not Birmingham, they don't have it yet!) I don't hear city-dwellers complaining about the lack of fresh air and access to horse manure.
... My exchange has been Red for contention since January, the latest move of the goal posts predicts end of March for a fix - at which time BT will calmly move the date further back yet again. Its not like this is a rapidly expanding area either, so either the equipment is failing at a fantastic rate, or (IMHO more likely) BT just cant be arsed to spend the money to service the clients of their wholesale "Partners"
This news doesnt excite - with no LLU here BT have a monopoly here that they are happy to abuse. I doubt if we will see FTTC here in my lifetime - especially as they cant keep on top of current maintainance now!
The problem we have compared to other nations is that we have a much greater "make-do-and-mend" attitude towards national infrastructure than other nations. Nations like Japan have spent Billions over the last 30+ years keeping their telecoms networks up to date whereas ours is a mish-mash of 40+ years of haphazard expansion with little thought. BT are quite rightly asking why should they stump up the cash for fibre without being allowed to control the charge other operators pay to use it. It's a PLC and thus has to make money. If the Govt was serious about fully connecting the UK to broadband interwebs then they'd do as they've done to the railways and nationalise the cabling infrastructure and let BT, virgin, CPW etc. run their services on that infrastructure.
Just moved to Bratislava in Slovakia, the WHOLE city is wired up for 70 megs, 1 to 1 contention,
70 megs = 24 euro a month
They have had these speeds for 6 years. I was using bit torrent yesterday (for completely legal content of course! :-) and had a downlpoad speed of over 32 megs a second.
My old NTL "12 mrg" line gave me around 1 meg on non windy nights at 4 a.m. if I prayed to the intertube gods.
I mean I'm in bloody eatern europe, BT and VM and NTL just won't spend any money on infrastructure until they reall really have to.
barstewards
I won't get it in this phase, but this is better news than I had hoped for, they are actually rolling out quite a significant number of exchanges. More than any trial would.
I can wait even if my broadband drops it's connection twice a day, often when I use it the most. As for Suffolk, it is a surprising omission, because they normally test new technology out there due to BT Adastral Park research center being there.
They have obviously picked technologically and statistically interesting locations, the criteria were probably not very political, but there are limitations that are obvious:
# Fiber availability (does the exchange have enough connectivity *spare*
# Cost/ease/safety of street digging / civil engineering
# Broadband demand/usage rate
Hanlon's Razor always applies.
Bob
I'd give in to that temptation if I were you. I've been with Virgin/ntl in South Wales since their 512Mb was launched nearly 10 years ago and it's been near perfect. With the 20Mb service I get in excess of 2200k/sec every time (where the source is able to accomodate such speeds). I did have problems with a language barrier during a support call a few months ago but as the network is solid and fast who cares?
I do feel for you guys in the sticks with little more than a dialup connection. They should sort you out first and bring you in line with the rest of the country before leaving you even further behind.
"I was trolling along, on moonlight bay, dah de de de de de de dee,...."
Seriously though, is FTTC intended to replace the existing copper multicore from the exchange to "your nearest roadside cabinet" or is it going to be supplementary to it, thereby enabling ET, sorry BT, to proffer a two-tier service?
I have to agree with a great many of the posts here, it should be rolled out in more 'rural' areas first, with preference given to those areas with either no broadband, or piss-poor connections.
But that wouldn't be 'economically viable' I suppose.
Finally, my apologies to our Welsh reader. How could I possibly have missed "Taffs Well - Rhondda Cynon Taf"
"iechyd da"
BT deserve to be bailed out like HBOS, Lloyds... just for lack of enthusiasm
Taken back to being owned by the public and then let gordy splash out some ca$h on upgrading the entire UK as some side project for 2012 Olympics! And get the UK's telecoms backbone upto a modern standard with fibre ran into everyhome in the UK wether is it rural or not! Then on this give everyone a VOIP phone with the option to keep the old PSTN whilst it like Analog TV is switched off over 5 years...Its the way to go for the UK economy blah blah blah......
"BT's Openreach division will handle the rollout. It will be required to offer wholesale FTTC access to BT Retail's competitors on equal terms.".... worked for BT back in 2001 when it was rolling out ADSL and I expect that BT will only play fair once they get caught or are blown the whistle on!
I live in the Calder Valley!* Hell yeah, bring it on!
Thing is, though, if you're going to run the fibre optic all the way to my bloody street, why not run it TO MY HOUSE? Seriously, just invest in an area, run fibre to everyone. Everyone under the sun will sign up, you make a mint, and once you're showing a profit, you move on to the next area for rollout. Get on with it!
*Which, by the way, is scenic, not rural. ;-) There's a chuffin' great motorway going through it, for one.
Somebody else posted here first that i found bloody usefull becaus ewe are going to be moving soon.
Next time i will move according to exchange locations Only
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/SDHRSHM
Thanks to AndyC for the Link
To Anybody if your gonna go Virgin, you will need to be able to pass the following test
I dont rape the ISP bandwidth
I dont Game.
I only Use my Internet for text based Email
4 of my mates are on It and everything one Hates it with a passion
and another 6 are ex users and say best thing they did was leave.
As much as i get pissed with BT for not sorting out my area, I am pleased with the reliability of the service in 5 years i think it has dropped connection twice.
But on the other hand i am sorely tempted to start sending letter bombs to their tech call centers till they move them back to the UK