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back to article BT earmarks super-speedy 300Mbit/s broadband for 50 exchanges

BT is planning to offer a 300Mbit/s Fibre-to-the-Premises (FTTP) broadband service to 50 exchanges by the end of this year. The national telco has not said which exchange areas will get the FTTP service, which will cost subscribers £50 a month. The telecoms giant claimed it would be punting the fastest download speeds of all …

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  1. Anonymous Coward
    FAIL

    Have and have nots

    While some areas get faster and faster broadband, other parts of the country are being ignored and are stuck at 2 meg or below. The gap between the fastest and slowest is getting wider all the time and I see no indication that BT are interested in increasing speed anywhere other than where it is dead easy and maximum profit can be achieved.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Well the government was supposed to be addressing this

      Before the usual suspects played the anti-competitive card.

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    2. Ian Yates
      Reply Icon

      Re: Have and have nots

      "where it is dead easy and maximum profit can be achieved"

      Well, they are a for-profit company, so that seems pretty reasonable.

      Were their remit just to provide the best connection to the whole of the UK, this type of thing could be easily solved.

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      1. Piro Silver badge
        Reply Icon

        Re: Have and have nots

        You'd think are for-profit, but they also have been subsidised to provide better services across the country, which they don't seem to be quite doing.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Coat

          Re: Have and have nots

          Exactly. However remember they are wasting money on paying parking fines too.

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      2. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Megaphone

        Re: Have and have nots

        "Were their remit just to provide the best connection to the whole of the UK, this type of thing could be easily solved."

        I doubt that. Based on water industry experience, a rural population requires something like 10x or 20x the network length per property connected as an urban population. Any common sense approach to national roll out would hit the biggest benefit areas first, and the smock-wearers wouldn't be getting rural broadband any time soon, unless they live next to a BT board member. That's also why some urban areas still don't have decent broadband.

        The straw-suckers complain that BT won't do things because they don't make a big enough profit, but given the indicative ratios on network length, even if BT were prepared to do it at cost and with no margin, I'll wager that most of the have-nots wouldn't pay the true cost, and would be whining that they should be subsidised.

        If they don't like the lack of urban facilities, then the sensible thing is to move. Should anyone with a nice five bed detatched in the country (big garden, with a view, please) wish to swap for my more modest suburban property (with an oh-so fat 60 Mb pipe) then I'll be pleased to receive their offers.

        12 9
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Have and have nots@Ledswinger

          Since you have insulted half the population with your post, I'd like to add....

          Townie Cunt.

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          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Happy

            Re: Have and have nots@Ledswinger

            "Since you have insulted half the population with your post..."

            I am pleased to have been of service. I'd even have given you an upvote if you'd had the cojones to post under your normal posting name.

            But what is there to be insulted about? A few tongue in cheek terms like "smock-wearer" that I'd expect an interweb user to be able to tolerate, and the observation that the rural have nots probably wouldn't pay the actual costs of the facilties they want.

            Is there anything else you'd like to contribute to the debate?

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            1. Yet Another Commentard
              Reply Icon

              Re: Have and have nots@Ledswinger

              "Is there anything else you'd like to contribute to the debate?"

              Yes. Us straw suckers produce the food that you townies eat. Yet to get it we have to go to a supermarket and pay the same price as you for it, despite it potentially coming from a field half a mile away.

              As another above states we do this because (aside from having to) there is a recognition that for the greater good I pay more than I should for my food so you pay a fair amount for yours.

              We can, if you like, stop giving you food.

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          2. kyza
            Reply Icon

            Re: Have and have nots@Ledswinger

            Since you have insulted half the population

            80% of the UKs population live in towns or cities, so at most he's insulting 20% of the population, many of whom more than adequately fit the colourful characterisations offered by Ledswinger.

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          3. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Have and have nots@Ledswinger

            So when they pass a law saying Broadband is a right for every citizen....

            Dont hold your breath, there are still area's with no mains electricity in the UK, or so far from the power station (my parents) that on sunday afternoon the voltage is down to 160V.

            Broadband, Phone etc, they are still not a right in the UK.

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        2. M Mouse
          Reply Icon
          Thumb Down

          Re: Have and have nots

          While I'm sure your modest suburban property wold appeal to some, I suspect many not-so-suburban dwellers don't actually have a 5 bed detached property in the country, but a 3 bed semi in a small(ish) village, several km from an exchange. It's many smaller villages and hamlets which make up the bulk of the "Market 1" (Openreach supplied, no alternatives) exchange users, who, if they're lucky, get the wondrous speeds of 1 to 5 Mbps and have little or no likelihood of going much faster for a number of years (and then, only if BDUK funding covers their exchange and more important, their cabinet).

          I did what you suggested, a while (18 months) ago, and moved from a rural village (with a connection of 1.5 Mbps) to a suburban area, where Virgin Media is widely available. Unfortunately, the road I moved to has no VM service, so 30, 50 or more Mbps are unavailable. Then Openreach delayed (because last summer was wet) the upgrade to fibre at my exchange (by 9 months). If I'd still been in the old house, I might now get 75+ Mbps (the cabinet was ball-throwing distance), but where I am, the estimated speed is in the low 30s Mbps. It's definitely not always 'faster' in urban areas, and not always worth the hassle and expense of moving...

          Far too simplistic to suggest people move. Do you really want 100% of the population to live in urban districts (save a few mega-landowning farmers whose "farms" are the complete rural space in a county, and who choose to live a short distance from the exchange to be able to get 10+ Mbps broadband (what I have at present) and everyone else is in horrible traffic filled urban jungles, where there are still a number with poor connections and the services/utilities infrastructure is under even more likelihood of collapse ?

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          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Meh

            Re: Have and have nots@ M Mouse

            "Do you really want 100% of the population to live in urban districts"

            No, and where did I or any other poster moot that?

            Where people choose to live is a choice for them. But I chose my house based on its assorted facilities and relatively suburban aspect. As a result I choose (for example) to endure the costs and inconvenience of a relatively long drive to work as a trade off, and I don't have a good rail connection. But unlike the rural broadband moaners, I accept that those are outcomes of my choice, and that it isn't the job of the rest of the population to speed up my drive to work, or to subsidise a new rail connection, unless there's a compelling economic case (which there isn't).

            I suspect there's many people who would be quite pleased to live in the country without high speed broadband, but lets go with your apparent desire for universal, subsidised high speed broandband, and see what transpires, eh? Fast forward not very far to a digital future, where we have universal high speed broadband, teleworking, and most of the population engaged as information workers, and where physical commuting is both expensive, unpopular and even frowned upon. What will happen when it doesn't matter where you live? I'll tell you: instead of the few rural peasants flocking to the satantic mills, what's actually going to happen is that the well-to-do of the mills will empty back into the countryside, which will become (far more than it already is) a series of expensive middle class ghettoes, leaving the urban areas for young hipsters and the poor. That may sound a bit extreme, but it is only an extrapolation of existing trends. Don't bother chasing broadband to the towns, because broadband could bring the town to you.

            Is that what you're advocating?

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            1. Anonymous Coward
              Reply Icon
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: Have and have nots@ M Mouse

              I grew up in the most rural parts of the countryside when I was a kid. Our nearest neighbour was 1 mile away, the village itself - no pub, no shop, 1 church - was 2 miles from them. When I was a kid, most of the people in the village worked in farms around the village, or in the market town a few miles further. There were a lot more farms then, as well as lots of small-holding.

              Fast forward to today, virtually no-one works on farms anymore in our area, since it is mainly agriculture, produce/grains/feed, not much livestock - with modern machinery this means only needing a few people to man massive farms. All the small-holdings are gone, whipped together into larger farms.

              Nowadays, there are more people living in the village, but none of them work there. They don't even work in the market town, they work in the country town and commute to and fro by car each day. There is no reason for most of this people to live here, apart from the idyllic countryside.

              They all get what I would call reasonable broadband - even my old man right on the outskirts of the village, 7km as the crow flies from the exchange (in another village), gets 3.5 MB.

              This is their choice, they choose to live in the village with no pub, no post office, and shit internet. I can say this with confidence, because a house in the village is vastly more expensive than the equivalent property in town.

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        3. Bluenose
          Reply Icon

          Re: Have and have nots

          I live in a rural area by choice, funnily enough the nearest motorway is just over 2 miles away and I have two train stations just over 12 miles away in each direction (West and East). I can buy my milk, roast and other goods in the village shop. Most importantly of all I live 1.5 miles from an exchange that delivers speeds of up to 20MB+ via FTTC.

          Me, I synch at 3.4MB and get an average speed of about 2.9MB because I am attached to an exchange some 2-2.5 miles away. To make matters worse there is a nice long string of fibre runs straight down the middle of our high street linking London with Birmingham funny though that the people who own it don't want to allow the people whose road they ruined to get any use from it.

          As far as I can see most villages and rural town are not actually that far from fibre whether it be the cable that runs alongside the railway lines. motorways (because all those wonderful motorway signs are cabled with fibre) and under peoples roads to connect all you lovely city dwellers but the owners can't be bothered to let us share in the benefits because it would slow down the speeds for the likes of you.

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        4. David 138
          Reply Icon
          Flame

          Re: Have and have nots

          It cost my company £28000 to have 10mbps fibre installed to the property because broadband in rural areas is poor at best. The investment is needed in rural areas, nowadays why should a company be trapped in London? The government needs to stop investing in areas that don't need help, and BT need to stop wasting money on projects like this. Your average person doesn't need that speed, and the companies that do can probably afford it anyway.

          They need to get a good infrastructure in first then worry about rubbish like this.

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        5. Da Weezil
          Reply Icon

          Re: Have and have nots

          You really are an arse. The water you mentioned in many cases comes from rural reservoirs that feed metropolitan areas. 5 bed house? I wish..... we are priced out of the local market by townies buying homes that get lived in a few weekends a year.

          Apart from the farms inland of here that provide food for the country, we are the guys that provide you with power, (Soon to be 2 power stations) warmth (LPG terminals that feed the national grid) and fuel for you car - again like the locally grown food we pay more for fuel refined 8 miles from where I sit than people in Cardiff 120 miles away.

          Of course if we all moved to the city you wouldn't have fuel to drive or boot your computer to post your drivel etc - unless you rely on solar power - a good 1/3 of the UK's needs come through this county. Clearly you are out of touch with reality as many of our politicians.

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          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: Have and have nots

            STOP THE TRAIN AND GET OFF THE URBAN VS RURAL DEBATE!!!!!!!!

            When I posted about the choices I made when moving house, and hinted that one of them was broadband availability, I think everyone (wrongly) assumed I moved to a town/city.

            Actually, I'm in a rural area, in a very small town/large village, but I knew before I moved here that the exchange was well hung when it came to broadband (ADSL2+ at the time, FTTC now). I even asked the previous tenants what internet they could get.

            This isn't a question of urban vs rural, plenty of urban areas have very poor broadband speeds, and equally plenty of rural areas have very good speeds.

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        6. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: Have and have nots

          @LedSwinger.

          I pretty much agree with you. If people are going to live in "Marry your own Cousin" areas of the country, for the wide open spaces, it seems a bit hypocritical to demand others to fund your services.

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      3. YetAnotherPasswordToRemeber
        Reply Icon
        Unhappy

        Re: Have and have nots

        I live in one of the largest towns in the UK and the exchange here isn't Infinity capable and isn't on the published upgrade plan so won't be done for the next couple of years at least

        So the argument that BT will only put stuff in the easy to get to / decent profit areas is crap. The rural exchanges around here, for example, have had fibre for at least 2 years if not longer and those 10 - 15 exchanges cover a total population of less that my town, so upgrading 1 exchange would have surely been more cost effective than having to upgrade 10 - 15

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    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Have and have nots

      I chose to live near a railway station, for good transport to the rest of the country. I chose to live within walking distance of a supermarket, so I don't have to drive whenever I want a pint of milk. I chose to not live somewhere that didn't have mains supplied gas.

      These are all considerations when choosing somewhere to live, why is broadband speed and availability any different to any other utility, or any other pro/con about a location?

      There are many things I don't have where I live, or aren't as good as other towns have (swimming pool/gym, beaches, etc), but I don't kick up a stink and complain that companies should be going out of their way to provide these to me, probably at a loss.

      12 11
      1. Lamont Cranston
        Reply Icon

        Re: Have and have nots

        Oh, dead. This is veering perilously close to the "I don't have kids, so why should my Council Tax be spent on schools?" arguement. The greater good, remember?

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      2. Ben Tasker
        Reply Icon

        Re: Have and have nots

        @AC, sometimes you don't get that much of a choice - we recently had to move at fairly short notice and the rentals market is pretty dead around here at the moment. So we've got a nice house but I've lost my shed, garage and Infinity connection. I'm now on ~4MB which I wouldn't have accepted had I had a choice.

        That said, I don't think it's BT's responsibility to do something about it (though I won't complain if they decide they want to blow fibre). I opted not to risk making my family homeless to try and get a better BB connection (kind of a non-decision really!), knowing the house was out in the sticks and the BB would be much slower.

        Can't help think that a lot of the commercial incentive for BT to risk improving service to outlying areas disappears (or at least reduces dramatically) every time someone like Sky or TalkTalk start demanding access to x or y though.

        If BT could see an ROI in (say) 6 years from providing faster BB to my area, it's possible they might consider it. The real unknown risk though, is whether the situation will be the same in 2 years time, if TT/Sky manage to get Ofcom to grant them access to another element of the infrastructure, what's the risk to the ROI? Say if Sky managed to get the cabinet unbundled for example. I'd certainly be hedging my bets if I were them.

        Would still like a better speed though!

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        1. Ninetailed
          Reply Icon

          Re: Have and have nots

          @Ben Tasker

          Surely you're not saying that the real world is a complex place and that "can't they just..?" arguments rarely hold water? I salute you, sir, but are you sure you're in the right forum?

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          1. Steve Foster
            Reply Icon
            Devil

            @Ninetailed

            Ah, perhaps you're thinking he's got lost on the way to the Daily Mail forums?

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      3. Fink-Nottle
        Reply Icon
        Thumb Down

        Re: Have and have nots

        I chose to live near a railway station ... etc.

        These are all considerations when choosing somewhere to live, why is broadband speed and availability any different to any other utility, or any other pro/con about a location?

        Before you get too smug about your choices, do you live near a Star Trek style matter transporter? A flying car hub?

        The point is, you cannot choose to live near a non-existent utility. Broadband availability is different to other utilities as ownership of most properties predates the advent of broadband.

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      4. Flywheel
        Reply Icon
        Devil

        Re: Have and have nots

        It's jolly nice that you can afford to live where you do, and your lifestyle is good, but not everyone is as fortunate, often through no fault of their own. Are you an MP by any chance? Or a Council Chief?

        You may also be aware that the current government is moving as much of its "services" onto the 'Net and we're all being encouraged to "do it online". Now in Dave and Nick's (and yours) comfortable little world this would be no problem, but if you're stuck in the end of a broadband no-go area you're going to be a bit stuck eh? Of course, no-one in authority considered this and over the next few years we're going to see the fallout.

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      5. elaar
        Reply Icon

        Re: Have and have nots

        Re: AC,

        Unfortunately, because you live in town and a considerable distance from any reservoirs, from now on you will only receive 0.5gallons of water per day, whilst us country folk have unlimited plans for the same amount. Sorry!

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    4. Dr. Bobalicous
      Reply Icon
      Unhappy

      Re: Have and have nots

      Some of us are stuck at 0.33Mbps due to a fault that cannot be fixed until outside contractors come and remove the shiny new telegraph pole that they put in too deep.

      On the other hand my work has a superfast 2Mbps connection while situated in a large business park just 10minutes away from the North Easts biggest data centre.

      I'm guessing we wont even get a sniff at FTTC never mine FTTP...

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  2. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Great, but will BT prioritise those areas that need this?

    Thinking business parks, enterprise zones, anywhere with a lot of start-ups (or where it is likely to stimulate start-ups) ? Or will it just be 50 exchanges in the South East?

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    1. hplasm
      Reply Icon
      Meh

      Re: Great, but will BT prioritise those areas that need this?

      Follow the money...

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    2. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Great, but will BT prioritise those areas that need this?

      @AC Of course it will be restricted to the South East, after all why would anyone else need fast Broadband, London is the centre of everything and faster broadband will go with the new HS trains to concentrate even more businesses there. The rest of the country will become either a large slum or a theme park.

      We're all in this together, but some are more in it than others

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      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: Great, but will BT prioritise those areas that need this?

        What is not funny is that when HS is built it will probably be quicker to jump on a train with a large file to send to London on a USB Stick than it will be to send it on some crappy connections......

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        1. ThomH
          Reply Icon

          Re: Great, but will BT prioritise those areas that need this?

          I own a flat in London, Zone 2. BT still isn't able to supply fibre-to-the-cabinet to it. I therefore do not advocate that just moving to the south east will make you important in their eyes.

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    3. Bob H
      Reply Icon
      Stop

      Re: Great, but will BT prioritise those areas that need this?

      I worked at an office in London which was surrounded by other business premises, BT didn't convert the cabinet to FTTC because there weren't any residential users. BT needs to preserve its existing expensive fibre business so I suspect this is why they are avoiding upgrading business cabinets.

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    4. Da Weezil
      Reply Icon

      Re: Great, but will BT prioritise those areas that need this?

      They said Enterprise zones were a priority for BDUK funds in Wales, except that the first tranche went to areas around Newport and Swansea (including the constituency of the Minister for Economy, Science and Transport that is so rural its a short bus ride from Swansea city centre).

      The real rural areas are only now getting BT ADSL2 due to the spread of Talk Talk LLU having been previously "financially nonviable* for upgrade despite the predatory pricing arrangements in market 1 areas.

      I have zero confidence in either BT or the government in regard to this area

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  3. Oliver Mayes

    "The national telco has not said which exchange areas will get the FTTP service"

    I'll save you some time, it's London.

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    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Holmes

      It won't all be London Exchanges

      There will be at least one in Cardiff and one in Glasgow & Edinburgh (as a sop to their governments)

      I'd fully expect one or two to be in the N.W (Liverpool/Manchester) area.

      so here's a challenge.

      To All those who think the exchanges will be ONLY in London.

      Why don't you pledge to give £10.00 to Macmillan Cancer if you are wrong. I'll do the same it all the exchanges are in London?

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      1. billse10
        Reply Icon

        Re: It won't all be London Exchanges

        @Steve Davies 3

        Nice idea: I'll match it.

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    2. CaptainBlue
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      "I'll save you some time, it's London."

      I sincerely hope so: I live in Rotherhithe, SE16 on the Thames overlooking Canary Wharf (and Telehouse).

      The best I can get is 370kbps from any provider as all I have is a skinny bit of copper and an exchange miles away as the cable lies. For this reason, I've now given up on wired broadband and gone to tethering over 3G for my connectivity.

      I would willingly pay for fast broadband - cable, fibre or unicorn drool - but no-one offers the service.

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  4. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "unlimited" package

    did the " " come from the BT? If they did - well, it's clear what the "unlimited" means.

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  5. Wanda Lust

    Regulate

    There's one very simple regulatory requirement that shoud be put on landline broadband and mobile operators: for every high customer density post code they provide infrastructure, 'x' rural postcodes must be provisioned in the same timeframe.

    Broadband is the 21st century utility, coverge has to be universal.

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    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Happy

      Re: Regulate

      "There's one very simple regulatory requirement that shoud be put on landline broadband and mobile operators: for every high customer density post code they provide infrastructure, 'x' rural postcodes must be provisioned in the same timeframe."

      I already pay my way for my VM broadband on fully commercial terms. I'll happily support your proposal so long as you're also proposing that the rural dwellers will pay the marginal cost of the service they want, on similar commercial terms.

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      1. James Hughes 1
        Reply Icon

        @ledswinger

        Twat.

        So many arguments but here are some...

        Farmer's need decent broadband. (that's where YOUR food comes from - corollary - food in supermarkets costs pretty much the same countrywide - which means the people in the country where it's produced are subsidising the people in towns through transport costs)

        Rural companies need decent rural broadband to stay competitive (that's where some product you buy comes from)

        People who cannot afford to move in to cities/towns need rural broadband so they have some chance of competing/living on the same level as those in towns/cities. The government is pushing for more internet based services - should people who live the the country be denied this benefit?

        So, its not as simple as you seem to think.

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        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: @ledswinger

          Thing is due to just about every interaction between government and public moving to an online service (Livestock control paperwork, DVLA vehicle paperwork, HMRC paperwork) basic (i.e. a solid 4mbit and above) broadband is a simple necessity of running a business or keeping a home these days. Most of the problems with rural broadband stem from long lines put in when noah was a GPO apprentice which have never been replaced.

          Of course, if you do think the countryside has nothing to offer urban folk, we'll happily keep those big resevoirs of drinking water you seem rather keen on to ourselves...

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          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: @ledswinger

            "Thing is due to just about every interaction between government and public moving to an online service (Livestock control paperwork, DVLA vehicle paperwork, HMRC paperwork) basic (i.e. a solid 4mbit and above) ...."

            Are you still in short trousers? This type of stuff was eminently feasible on a 32k dial up modem back in 1993 - that was how every home accessed the web, and many businesses besides. The agriculture sites concerned are low graphics (eg CTS Online) and will exchange data with spreadsheets, and there's nothing onerous about the DVLA services. We're not talking about gigbytes of data being exchanged. A solid 4 Mb line is certainly nice to have, but to post on a tech site that it is some technical or human rights minimum just shows you up.

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            1. Anonymous Coward
              Reply Icon
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: @ledswinger

              I am in short trousers, due to the heat. But that's not important right now...

              The world moves on, and with the ineptitude of government web coding you do need a reasonable speed to use govt websites. Also, there are a multitude of other services that rural locales find more essential e.g. online shopping (when your nearest supermarket is 45 mins away online ordering is a godsend) and distance learning.

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              1. FutureShock999
                Reply Icon
                Childcatcher

                Re: @ledswinger

                ledswinger is right - FAST broadband is only really useful for data-intensive businesses (like data centres or very large corporate offices) and home entertainment uses.

                It is INCONVENIENT to use a slower internet service to process government interactions, but not NEARLY as inconvenient as standing in line for an hour at Wandsworth Town Hall. Or the DVLA, anywhere.

                I bought my first dial-up modem in 1982 - a Radio Shack 300 baud acoustically coupled modem connected to my 6502 single-board computer. I got on JUST FINE with BBSes all over the globe. Yes, I even downloaded p0rn, er, images. How much bandwidth did you say you need?

                And I walked up-hill to school - BOTH WAYS DAMMIT!

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          2. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Re: @ledswinger

            @AC 12:26

            Ludicrous.

            you can SURF absolutely fine on a sub 500k connection.

            Download? Stream?other high bandwidth services? No. but you can do everything you mention on dial up, never mind "needing 4Mbit or above". Utter nonsense. You may not be able to watch netflix, or steal next weeks "Hanibal" but you certainly can do any of the online activities you see as "a necessity" (ie tax your car, fill in a job seekers benefit application) anything that is simply going on a webpage.

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        2. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Thumb Down

          Re: @James Hughes 1

          "Farmer's need decent broadband."

          Funnily enough, agriculture has evolved quite successfully over the past five to ten thousand years with f*** all access to the internet. If your defintion of agriculture is "applying online for EU subsidies via DEFRA's crummy web site" then you may have a point, but that makes stuff all difference to the art and science of planting seeds, letting them grow, and harvesting them.

          "Rural companies need decent rural broadband to stay competitive "

          Another nonsense claim. So how did they stay competitive before? Most rural companies are rural because that's where their customers are, and the few that aren't are there as a lifestyle choice. I've lived half my life in the countryside, and I've not seen many rural data busineses in urgent need of 100 Mb connections.

          "People who cannot afford to move in to cities/towns need rural broadband so they have some chance of competing/living on the same level as those in towns/cities"

          <fx: Sound of sad violin playing> Last time I looked, rural rents tended to be higher than urban rents. This idea of some army of rural poor, unable to move to the bright lights, and wanting only an internet connection to give them the chance of a well paid rural job is complete rubbish.

          1 1
          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            @Ledswinger

            "Funnily enough, agriculture has evolved quite successfully over the past five to ten thousand years with f*** all access to the internet. If your defintion of agriculture is "applying online for EU subsidies via DEFRA's crummy web site" then you may have a point, but that makes stuff all difference to the art and science of planting seeds, letting them grow, and harvesting them."

            Shows how much you know. DEFRA want to know when you buy, sell, move, lose or gain livestock and they want to know ASAP. You can't even transport livestock without filling a permit in.

            By your reckoning, farmers shouldn't be using tractors as they got on OK without them in 1789...

            "Most rural companies are rural because that's where their customers are"

            And HMRC expects just about everything to be online now, same with HSE.

            "Last time I looked, rural rents tended to be higher than urban rents."

            Rural income is considerably lower than urban/suburban income. Also there's a massive shortage of affordable rural homes, pushing up rent costs.

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            1. Anonymous Coward
              Reply Icon
              Anonymous Coward

              Re: @Ledswinger

              And why do you need 4Mbps to fill in a form? ISDN BRI could even do that.

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          2. jonathanb Silver badge
            Reply Icon

            Re: @James Hughes 1

            And if your definition of agriculture is doing the weekly RTI submissions to HMRC for the wages you pay to your staff?

            0 0
  6. meanioni

    It's not a problem, the North still has pigeons, they can be harnessed to deliver information (unlimited).

    PTTP "Pigeon To The Premises" :-)

    4 0
    1. fiddley
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Up

      Never underestimate the bandwidth of an avian carrier with a couple of 128gb micro sd cards around its neck :)

      2 0
    2. FutureShock999
      Reply Icon
      Coffee/keyboard

      New keyboard, now please...

      I've lived in Meltham....I agree, lots of pigeons...

      The only problem is now I HUNT pigeons, and I would hate to think I am destroying someone's data feed...

      0 0
  7. ColonelClaw

    More Upstream Please

    300 down, no complaints there, but 20 up? I feel like I already spend way too much of my day watching a YouSendIt* progress bar crawl along, and 2 megabytes a second isn't going to improve that a great deal.

    *YouSendIt have just told me they are rebranding to 'Hightail'. Is that a joke? I will be genuinely embarrassed to send anything to anyone using such a terrible name. Time to switch to someone else...

    2 1
    1. Lunatik
      Reply Icon
      FAIL

      Re: More Upstream Please

      Oh you poor dear.

      First world problems indeed.

      4 3
  8. Nextweek

    We need a change of marketing

    A 300MB line is going to be largely idle. I use both a 40MB/10MB line and a 80MB/20MB line and really don't feel the difference. The networks need 3 things, Multicast support, IPv6 and rural FTTC. Anything over 80MB at this point is not serving anybody.

    6 1
    1. Fuzz
      Reply Icon

      Re: We need a change of marketing

      I agree with you up to a point here.

      For a single person you get very little benefit once you go over 50Mb/s. However there is plenty of need if you have a lot of people who all want to stream video at the same time.

      The other thing that needs to be addressed is the poor upload speeds. Instead of offering 300/20 they need to be offering 50/50. What's the point in running a fibre all the way to someone's house and then only giving the same upload speed they can get over copper?

      2 0
    2. M Mouse
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Up

      Re: We need a change of marketing

      Agreed. IPv6 etc, desperately needed.

      But we need HS2 like a f***ing hole in the head, yet that's a "vanity project" and in this respect, it looks as if Openreach/BT are doing the same... Limited benefit but faster "to show we can". Funds could benefit faster (in the up to 50 Mbps category) for everyone, in both urban and rural areas, rather than superfast for a minority.

      I wasn't that keen on the Crossrail project (15? Billion) because the South East is already artifically important (and with a proportionately high cost of living, which will just go higher), but HS2 is even worse (if it hasn't just been derailed now the excessive cost / waste has become clearer, of late).

      1 1
    3. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: We need a change of marketing

      Why multicast support? TV broadcast is, these days, about users wanting to watch things in their own time, any time. I think operators are more interested in content cacheing servers to reduce core bandwidth than in multicast now

      I've only seen one commercial use of multicast in all my years so far. For multiple-locationsimultaneous announcements. Is BT or anyone really considering it's use for IP broadcasting now? Interested if so.

      0 0
  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Gas, clean water, electricity are utilitles and should be provided to every home. Broadband isn't. As pointed out by another poster, it's a service that should be considered when choosing where you want to live.

    6 3
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Why should utilities be provided to every home - they certainly aren't now. Gas isn't available to about 7m people in Britain. There's about 3m people off the public sewerage network using septic tanks, and about 2m people on private water supplies.

      3 1
      1. James Hughes 1
        Reply Icon

        Whilst some of those services are not available to all, there are alternatives (I'm on septic, and oil heating; costs are roughly equivalent). There is NO alternative to decent broadband at a cost equivalent price.

        So you argument that utilities are not provided to every home is misleading, much like the rest of your comments on this thread.

        0 1
        1. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge
          Reply Icon
          FAIL

          Broadband isn't a necessity, clean water and heating are.

          2 1
          1. Anonymous Coward
            Reply Icon
            Anonymous Coward

            Ever tried sorting out HMRC/DEFRA/DVLA paperwork without it?

            0 1
        2. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          "Whilst some of those services are not available to all, there are alternatives (I'm on septic, and oil heating; costs are roughly equivalent). There is NO alternative to decent broadband at a cost equivalent price."

          Good lord, you really ARE stupid! Of course if you start demanding a specific high speed broadband offer, priced below cost, then there's no alternative to subsidised broadband. But you're not being offered it because collectively people won't pay what it costs, the rest of us don't want to subsidise you, and you DO have an alternative, and that's dial up or ADSL.

          Broadband isn't some human right for rural rednecks, it needs to be paid for, and all I'm suggesting is that those that want it have four choices: Pay for the service they want at whatever vast cost that entails; Build their own network (as with septic tanks and private water supplies); Move to where the service is available at a cost you are willing to pay; Or simply stop whning that you can't download grumble flicks in HD.

          5 0
      2. dajames
        Reply Icon
        Facepalm

        So not the point

        There's about 3m people off the public sewerage network using septic tanks, and about 2m people on private water supplies.

        But that works. Having your own broadband network in a village that's not connected to the rest of the internet sorta doesn't.

        Maybe you can see why ....

        1 1
        1. Anonymous Coward
          Reply Icon
          Anonymous Coward

          Re: So not the point@ dajames

          "Having your own broadband network in a village that's not connected to the rest of the internet sorta doesn't."

          Who suggested that it wouldn't be connected? There's a variety of communities that have successfully taken matters into their own hands and built their own broadband, and sorted out the backhaul.

          1 0
  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Those complaining that 300mbit will be in the South East...

    Thing is projects like these need two things in an area to make them profitable:

    1: High population density

    2: Either high disposable income, or lots of business premises

    Which basically means the SE commuter towns or the equivalent for other population centres.

    It's no surprise this is where Virgin Media concentrated its services...

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  11. Wanda Lust

    Regulate

    In Northern Ireland, broadband delivery was seen as an important enabler for many things rural. The Dept Of Enterprise, Trade and Innovation funded the ADSL rollout so all BT exchanges could provide 8Mb broadband, more recently it's been the Dept of Rural Development that has funded FTTC rollout. FTTC is by no means ubiquitous but what's been achieved under the devolved admnistration is a lot better than England seems to be achieving.

    This cannot be left to the market, it has to be regulated and the models provided to date aren't exactly successful for the country as a whole.

    Meanwhile, I see we have Sky making noises about getting unbundled access to FTTC cabinets. Foxtrot Oscar Rupe, go install your own cabinets and patch over from the subs line just like BT do.

    1 1
  12. BOBSta
    Flame

    I must be mad!

    Soon, I'm planning to move from my near-a-city-centre tiny flat with (effectively) FTTP Virgin Media cable to a nice new house in a new village development out in the countryside. My current BB is supplied from a private "street" cab within the flat complex (15 flats). It has a nice big fat fibre coming in to it, then via about 20 meters of high quality co-ax directly to my Superhub. I pay a lot for 60m/s and actually get about 48m/s down and 2.7m/s up. Downstream is fine and I am fairly happy as I don't have multiple simulations video streams all going on at the same time. I AM, however, unhappy with the p!55-poor upstream which should already realistically be in the region of 6-10. There is no technical reason why it couldn't be 20m/s or even 30 m/s up, but I wouldn't ever use that, so I don't see the point.

    When/If I move, I will be stuck with a poxy old BT ADSL service from an exchange about 2.5 miles away, which isn't unbundled or 21CN or Infinity upgraded. Best estimate for speed is <7m/s down and God-only-know what upstream. Am I pleased about that? No.

    However, I'm moving for the greater good of a (hopefully) peaceful life in a larger house. I do not have a choice of which provider takes my money for BT providing a crap service. But I am certain that I SHOULD have choice and that the service SHOULD provide an acceptable modern level of performance. Afterall, I will be paying the same money as an end customer in the country as someone who is getting the "package" in a city. It shouldn't cost BT any more to put in a fast FTTC connection in the countryside than it does in a city. In fact, it should be CHEAPER, as they don't have to dig up so many roads, jump through so many council hoops and cause as much disruption.

    However, population density means that any connection in a city will automatically return more income from the same investment, so the bean counters are always going to push for the cities first. Just once, I would like to see some of that profit being ploughed back in to providing an acceptable service to the rest of the country.

    As with increasingly stratospherically high screen and camera resolutions, the public needs to get over this "more is better" mentality and realise the other factors also affect the quality of the product and the satisfaction is gives!

    0 0
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: I must be mad!@BOBSta

      "It shouldn't cost BT any more to put in a fast FTTC connection in the countryside than it does in a city."

      Err, sorry mate, but it does. The costs of working in made up ground (concrete, tarmac) are around three times those of working in unmade (fields, verges) ground, all in. And because the network length per property is many times greater in the countryside, the savings of unmade ground aren't sufficient to offset this. Obviously you can try and use telegraph poles rather than burying the cables, as they cost half to a third as much as buried cables albeit with higher maintenance costs, but even at a third the cost it's still about five to ten times more expensive for rural overhead versus urban cables in made ground.

      Notwithstanding the mudslinging earlier in this column, we'd all like universal broadband to be cheap, and accessible to all. Unfortunately the maths is quite simple, and works against rural broadband. The only way of lowering the cost is to (in aggregate) increase the rural population served per km of network, and in indicative terms you'd need most villages about four times the size they currrently are (say 500 properties instead of 130), and the additional development would need to be quite high density.

      1 0
      1. Anonymous Coward
        Reply Icon
        Anonymous Coward

        Re: I must be mad!@BOBSta

        Nah, we don't need to do it like that, we just need to get uninformed and selfish pieces of excrement like you to pay for it. After all, us rural types who cannot afford to move any closer to town subsidise your water (as someone said, not many reservoirs close to towns, and pipes cost a damn sight more than fibre), your food, we work at the places that provide your petrol (and yet we still pay through nose for it), your food and your water, we pay the same tax even though salaries are way less, we don't get that nice London weighting on salaries, we pay over the odds for houses because of rich people from towns buying all the properties, after all, why should WE get the same sort of service as all you poor own townfolk.

        0 2
        1. BOBSta
          Reply Icon
          WTF?

          Re: I must be mad!@BOBSta - @AC

          WHAT!?

          "Nah, we don't need to do it like that" - do what like what?

          "uninformed and selfish pieces of excrement like you" - Niiiice! I bet you're a lovely person in real life! What a pity that your cowardice in posting as AC means I'll never have a chance to get to know you better.

          "we pay the same tax even though salaries are way less" - Not possible as tax you pay is directly related to the amount you earn. Earn less = pay less. And if you're talking about Council Tax, I seriously doubt that you pay more than most people in a town do for the same type and size of house.

          "we don't get that nice London weighting on salaries" - I don't live in London either. I am a country boy from the East Midlands, exiled to a medium sized East Midlands city as I couldn't afford to live where I grew up.

          "why should WE get the same sort of service as all you poor own townfolk" - If I understand your attempt at sarcasm, you seem to have missed my point and you are actually agreeing with me. I'm not happy about losing the speed and quality of service when I move back to the country. But I still want it, and I'm prepared to pay for it. I just can't have it because BT and Virgin won't supply it.

          You should seriously read and understand a post if you're going to try to rip it apart. Otherwise you make yourself look like an idiot.

          0 0
  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    I spent the last two years living in a little rural French village nestling on a mountainside the center of which looks just as it did 100 years ago but my house was blessed with 100mb Fibre to the home where I'd usually get 95mb/s down 50ish up for a measly 35 euros a month.

    Having moved back to civilization in Blighty living in a town and next to a science park I get a poxy 15Mb/s down 3 up on FTTC and which they only got round to a couple of month ago.

    If the hopeless French can put in FTTP in a little village half way up a mountain why can't we? Oh because they actually ask for EU cash and we are always too afraid to ask.

    1 2
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      One area where the French aren't hopeless is in putting the boot in for tax. I'd rather have the UK economy with crappy broadband, than French broadband in a crumbling, recessionary eurozone economy like France!

      2 0
  14. Haku

    300mbit! Holy crap!

    I have an 80mbit BT Infinity 2 connection (speedtested at just over 79mbit) and I struggle to max that out for more than a minute or two at a time, what could possibly need 300mbit?

    0 0
    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Reply Icon

      Re: 300mbit! Holy crap!

      What needs 300Mbit?

      all those streaming the crap that is on TV at the moment, namely Big Bro'

      2 1
    2. Anthony Hegedus Silver badge
      Reply Icon
      Facepalm

      Re: 300mbit! Holy crap!

      Yes, who could possibly need 1Mbps when 512Kbps is more than enough? Who could possibly need 256MB RAM in a computer? I've even heard "who needs a colour screen in a business environment" all the way back to the IBM exec who said (in the 1940s I think) that he could see a world market for perhaps six computers.

      0 0
  15. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Why not force all home/office building projects whether on green field or brown field sites to have FTTP installed by the builders/BT/Other telco, no FTTP = no planning permission. I wouldn't have thought this would put up the overall cost too much and would start improving the infrastructure, which could then be used by others.

    0 1
  16. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Watford is supposed to be already there,

    but I've yet to find anywhere to order it.

    0 0
  17. Alastair MacDiarmid

    This really rankles for those of us on shitty adsl at about 2meg or less on a country exchange, with BT as the only provider.

    Perhaps some of this money could be spent on evening out the divide rather than giving faster and faster to those who already have it?

    2 1
    1. Anonymous Coward
      Reply Icon
      Anonymous Coward

      "This really rankles for those of us on shitty adsl at about 2meg or less on a country exchange, with BT as the only provider."

      So setup your own network, apply for some of the subsidies that are now seemingly all going to BT, and make sure your local MP uses your service (so you can cut them off if they accept a 10% pay rise for doing nothing different / better than last year - or better still, publish their browsing history, maybe with some creative additions?)

      0 0
  18. MrXavia

    Now IF they would provide this to the exchanges where people are mostly on exchange only lines, that would be great!

    I would be very happy to pay £50/month for this!

    The question is what exchanges will be enabled?

    0 0
  19. Gary Heard

    kit that works would help

    Get BT to install kit that works would be a start. I have an ADSL connection that fails every time the phone rings. It's been traced to exchange equipment with a fault that has been known for 2 years. It's only because I've got stroppy that I'm managing to get something done about it.

    0 0
    1. MrXavia
      Reply Icon
      Thumb Up

      Re: kit that works would help

      Your getting something done about it???? Wow...

      took me 3 years to get an engineer to take a look, and he was shocked at the readings when he plugged in.. supposedly fixed it but nope error has returned! I am just hoping the upgrade to ADSL2+ that I have been promised this year actually happens!

      0 0
      1. Gary Heard
        Reply Icon

        Re: kit that works would help

        A phone, not broadband, engineer checked the line and then rang me from the exchange to say he was going to request that the equipment in the exchange be changed. When I asked my isp whether it had been done they said they had no visibility, so I emailed the ceo of Openreach. After a few emails it got me a broadband engineer on a Sunday. They should have changed the DSLAM yesterday. Will find out when I get home.

        2 0
  20. nuclearstar

    Pointless

    This is completley pointless, what residential person needs 300mbps downstream? I have virgin media and am on the 100 meg package, it far far exceeds my requirements for download speed, and I consider myself to be a heavy internet user.

    With everyone sharing home videos via facebook and huge 100meg pictures, they should now be concentrating on upgrading peoples upstream as well as bringing those stuck on lower speeds up to catch up with the rest of us.

    I am only interested in improving my upstream now, sure i can download my sisters wedding video in about 5 minutes, but it took her ages to upload in the first place.

    This is why we are so far behind in infrastructure, idiots making the wrong decisions and spending money in the wrong place

    1 0
  21. Disgruntled of TW

    Ummm ... so if you want to upload/backup to an Internet cloud service or use concurrent HD video conferencing streams, you're restricted to 20 Mbps? Perhaps BT haven't heard that the last 20 years of Internet traffic patterns don't necessarily represent the next 20 years?

    0 0
  22. hooneyrob

    We work for BT as one of their accredited partners. Clearly I cannot go into any detail not in the public domain but I will say that we're starting to see BT FTTP on Demand dates when performing BT business broadband checks on behalf of clients. I wrote a blog article here: http://blog.networkunion.co/blog/bid/297497/BT-FTTP-Business-availability-check-map-and-costs

    FTTP on Demand and FTTP are different products - with BT Broadband Option 3 FTTP, the exchange has to be either FTTC or FTTP, it cannot be both.. With FTTP on Demand, BT will install fibre along the same kind of route as your copper connectivity.

    If anyone (business only) would like me to perform FTTP checks (or business FTTC), connect up with me via the blog. We're MPLS WAN specialist primarily but getting involved in the business broadband sector because of our BT relationship.

    0 0
  23. Corvid
    Thumb Down

    Parts of mid Wales are still on dial up!

    I guarantee this will be London only.

    0 1
  24. briesmith

    The problem with BT

    Where to begin? None of the drivers that apply to "normal" businesses apply to BT. They have no competition. They are at no risk from newer, better technology. They cannot go bust. They have no shareholders, banks or other interest groups and stakeholders to please. Basically they can, and do, do whatever they like. So where does that leave us, the poor bloody user?

    Well, let's abandon this pretence of the relevance of ROI. It's meaningless if you accept my description of the business environment BT operates in. Any pretence by BT that it is a real business like any other and the cost of money, internal rates of return and all the other efficiency indicators real enterprises use, apply is a silly nonsense. They have more money then they know what to do with and if they need more, well, they can simply go and get it.

    It leaves us in the position of being the stakeholders in a long tail business a bit like a closed insurance company where the only real business influencer is time and its effects.

    I say tell BT to stop believing in, or pretending to anyway, fairy tales about ROI and other real world econometrics and stick to the effects of inflation. This means they can spend whatever they like today delivering broadband to the Outer Hebrides or in my case, inside the M25 just north of London, in the sure knowledge that inflation will wipe out those debts in 15 to 20 years.

    0 1
  25. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    For those living in a low-bandwidth area in the UK: How much would you be willing tp spend per month to get premium internet speeds (say, 50Mb download 10Mb upload) ?

    If the majority are ok with around £70/month for 24 months minimum, it may become viable for operators to offer,

    If not, then your access wont improve anytime soon. Yuor postal services are going to go the same way, as soon as the PO privatisation goes through. Sorry.

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