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BT speeds up fibre rollout
Thursday 09 July 2009 11:39:29 by John Hunt

BT have announced the next locations where their fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) based broadband will be available. The 69 locations cover areas all across the UK including England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales. By March 2010, a million homes will be covered, and by early summer 2010, they expect to have a reach of 1.5 million homes, continuing to 40% of the UK (10 million homes) by 2012.

"Fibre is the future and so we're speeding up the pace of our plans. We had aimed to get fibre to half a million homes by next March but we’re now being far more ambitious. We've received a tremendous response to date and so we’re keen to get on with the job.

"BT has invested billions in creating Broadband Britain yet it has done so whilst offering others equal access to its network – demonstrating once again that competition doesn't have to be a barrier to investment."

Steve Robertson (CEO), Openreach

The trials for the service went live this week in Muswell Hill, London and Whitchurch, South Wales, with some 16 service providers involved. The 69 announced today are listed below.

Exchange Region Exchange Region
BERKHAMSTED East of England MOSS SIDE North West
BILLERICAY East of England PRESTWICH North West
BRENTWOOD East of England STALYBRIDGE North West
ELSTREE East of England SWINTON, GREATER MANCHESTER North West
HAINAULT East of England URMSTON North West
HODDESDON East of England WALKDEN North West
LEA VALLEY East of England WILMSLOW North West
LOUGHTON East of England LISBURN Northern Ireland
STANFORD-LE-HOPE East of England EDINBURGH CORSTORPHINE Scotland
WALTHAM CROSS East of England EDINBURGH CRAIGLOCKHART Scotland
WOODFORD East of England GLASGOW BRIDGETON Scotland
GLOSSOP East Midlands GLASGOW GIFFNOCK Scotland
HINCKLEY East Midlands BASINGSTOKE South East
BARKING London DARTFORD South East
BARNET London BRISTOL NORTH South West
ELTHAM London BRISTOL WEST South West
GREENWICH London DOWNEND South West
HORNCHURCH London BARRY Wales
INGREBOURNE London CAERPHILLY Wales
NEW SOUTHGATE London PENARTH Wales
PONDERS END London BIRMINGHAM, NORTHERN West Midlands
SIDCUP London FALLINGS PARK West Midlands
SLADE GREEN London GREAT BARR West Midlands
STAMFORD HILL London LEAMORE West Midlands
CHESTER-LE-STREET North East NUNEATON West Midlands
DURHAM North East TETTENHALL West Midlands
EAST HERRINGTON North East WEDNESBURY West Midlands
HETTON-LE-HOLE North East WALSALL West Midlands
ALTRINCHAM North West ARMLEY Yorkshire
ASHTON-UNDER-LYNE North West CASTLEFORD Yorkshire
CHEETHAM North West HEADINGLEY Yorkshire
CHORLTON North West LOW MOOR Yorkshire
DENTON North West PONTEFRACT Yorkshire
HYDE North West SHIPLEY Yorkshire
MANCHESTER EAST North West

These 69 will of course be in addition to the 29 exchanges announced in March (and the two pilot exchanges) which will be first to see the new fibre to the cabinet based service.

[ Topic: Wholesale | 105 comments | link to this item ]
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Comments

Posted by cyberdoyle 7 months ago
40% of homes will have access to fibre at the cabinet by 2012. They will still be fed by copper, so we are still a million miles away from next gen access, but hey, its still progress innit? Maybe in 2012 somebody will think about the other 60%. Or maybe its time we JFDI ourselves? We need to put pressure on govt to take the tax off lit fibre, and give us access to ducts, and reduce the red tape needed to go under roads and rivers. No need to dig up the streets at all.
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
Progress!

VM and BT would love to give 'us' access to their ducts.

Any news on H2O?
Posted by cjbell68 7 months ago
Bet these exchanges serve lovely, lovely dense customer bases...
Posted by cjbell68 7 months ago
...ps - which are completely understandable for them to target!
Posted by sloman 7 months ago
H2O have confirmed Sheffield as the next location and is due for completion by the end of September.

From what i hear H2O still have no ISP's signed up!

Come on BT some big cities in the Midlands, Birmingham, Derby, Nottingham, Leicester etc...

Get us wired up to your('1991' Cable&Wireless)Next gen BB

Posted by cjbell68 7 months ago
@sloman

Derby - now you're talking! Mind you - still too far for a fibre link :(
Posted by the_inspector007 7 months ago
My God - I actually see my exchange listed there!! Does that mean I might see a speed increase from the current 1.2Mbps MAX I get. Will it depend on Talk Talk utilising the technology as well??
Posted by deadman1984 7 months ago
well i have to say i live in ponteland and that exchange isnt even listed i mean come on i think its time for h20 to get full fibre to every home its time for them to take over bt and get cracking
Posted by herdwick 7 months ago
no point in having an H2O fibre with no services on it, might as well buy a bit of your own and put an ONT on the wall to brag about.
Posted by Dixinormous 7 months ago
H2O might be starting Sheffield end of September but given they have only connected up a few homes in Bournemouth so far wouldn't hold the breath.

FANTASTIC to see Basingstoke finally being addressed.
Posted by bezuk 7 months ago
I wonder when we'll see a line checker for FTTC appear - it would be nice to be able to identify, for instance, if you're not connected via a cabinet and therefore won't get it, as well as some indication of expected speed.

Since the current checker is Wholesale and the product is Openreach I'm not sure if they'll built it into the current ADSL checker or do a new one though.
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
Note:

Q. Will you be rolling out FTTP or FTTC to these areas?
A. BT will be rolling out a mix of the two technologies but we expect that FTTC will be the most widely deployed.
Posted by krazykizza 7 months ago
Bring in the private companies to compete for fibre layouts and get the gov to charge them for the privilage by digging up roads. Economic stimulous in jobs, tax for the gov and better broadband.
Posted by herdwick 7 months ago
any private company can do a fibre network now, if there's an investment case to justify it. Charging them extra for the chore of digging up the roads would be the sort of measure guaranteed to kill off any investment plan.
Posted by AndrueC 7 months ago
Berkhamsted must've been chosen more for it's physical layout. It wasn't very big when I lived there in the 90s and tbh was just a dormitory town for London. Being near to Hemel Hempstead might be a factor in making life easier for BT as well.
Posted by Quark999 7 months ago
Does anyone know whether this is the "final initial list", or whether there's still more Exchanges to come in the same timeframe? I find the choices a bit odd, and yes, it's the usual "booohoo, why isn't my Exchange on here" whine I'm afraid. I would have expected Reading to be on that list - with Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco and a huge IT base, it certainly is up there with Basingstoke in attractiveness - plus its population is twice as big.

Sniff.
Posted by bookey 7 months ago
Basingstoke = 1 exchange
Reading = 6 exchanges
Which is going to be cheaper to deliver FTTC?
Posted by Quark999 7 months ago
Reading Central?
Posted by Quark999 7 months ago
By that argument, London shouldn't have any exchanges enabled, because there's so many of them...
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
Reading Central may cover a small area so not the best.

Microsoft, Oracle and Cisco won't need fast ADSL in their buildings.
Posted by AndrueC 7 months ago
@Somerset:Very true. OTOH presumably it means there's no shortage of backhaul in the area. Moths to a flame and all that :)
Posted by amforbes 7 months ago
Looks like it'll be another decade before I see the benefits of the "next gen" broadband. Following the same roll out pattern as they did when broadband was first being rolled out, despite the fact that rural uptake of broadband has overtaken the uptake of broadband in major cities way to go BT.
Posted by Quark999 7 months ago
Microsoft, Oracle, Cisco and Symantec *employees* definitely want faster internet - that's the prime target audience. Can't be the size of the exchange - Reading Central has more premises (per Samknows) as either Bristol North or West. In fact twice as many as Bristol West. In fact, Bristol South (the only one that's missing) has the most premises in all of Bristol.

Seems pretty random to me - but I guess it has something to do with the physical layout more than anything else...
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 7 months ago
Quark? Those companies are certainly not depending on ADSL for their internet connectivity, though.

And yes, having the physical space without needing to shuffle gear arround too much is going to be a major initial factor I'd imagine...
Posted by Quark999 7 months ago
Of course not. But it's probably the biggest concentration of IT workers anywhere in the UK, probably in Europe. It is definitely THE best area to roll out fibre - there's teleworkers and all kinds of people who appreciate faster Internet connectivity. With not too many services maxing out regular ADSL connections it is going to be vital to reach those early adopters first. And where better to find them than in England's Silicon/Thames Valley? Slough (O2, Amazon...), Bracknell (Fujitsu, Dell...), Newbury (Vodafone...) and other places like that are also all missing...
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 7 months ago
Except teleworking, by definition, suits those some dictance from the office. So they'd be looking at nearby exchanges, not the city's own ones.

And I think you'll find that those locations will be within the first five hundred. But the first hundred or so, they're doing it where it suits them to learn the issues and problems of the process.
Posted by Quark999 7 months ago
I'd be willing to bet that there's more people teleworking in Reading than in most places - nowadays that doesn't usually mean working EXCLUSIVELY from - but after coming back from customers etc. when it's not worth getting stuck in traffic again.

In a similar vein, it's shocking to see the patchy mobile phone coverage along the train lines into London. Or no mobile phone coverage at all on the tube. Crazy, really...
Posted by chrysalis 7 months ago
2 exchanges in the entire east midlands region, ouch. Something special about that region that makes it unattractive to BT?
Posted by AndrueC 7 months ago
None at all in the South Midlands. Oh well - we were in the third 'cancelled' phase of ADSL roll-out as well. At least we've got LLU and thanks to Be I have a 13.5Mb connection. That's plenty for me at the moment.
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
Do teleworkers need faster connections? Probably not for emails and downloading documents. What else?
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
Quark999 - Thereare other Bristol exchanges, just not called Bristol something. Filton is a key one as there are many on very long line lengths in big housing estates.
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
Do BT have to do all cabinets in an exchange area? Why not just those on long lines?
Posted by yobrenoops 7 months ago
Its purely going to be chosen by ease of uplift of the cabs and maximum penetration by volume. I imagine they will do the majority of cabs in the area, but someone people maybe off a SCP or on a long d-side to the DP will still have issues.

Just have to wait for BET for those long line. 1MB at 11km and 512kb at 19km!!!
Posted by Dixinormous 7 months ago
Somerset - VDSL is not available via exchange-based MSANs it can only be done via cabinets.

For me also Teleworking can be quite a bandwidth heavy exercise, I regularly need to move large files around due to the nature of my work, some of it being examining large packet captures and system / core dumps.
Posted by yobrenoops 7 months ago
@Somerset

I'm regularly shifting 50MB files around. A 2MB connection would make that painful
Posted by chrysalis 7 months ago
AndrueC, different story for me £300+ spent on routers fighting line instability, 5mbit download depending on mood of line. Bursts of crc errors every now and then. Your comment proves a point I make that people with decent synchs wont care much for FTTC.
Posted by hoggig 7 months ago
Well, I for one am glad to see Durham in the list. It's a medievil city with the exchange in the centre of town, but most other than student lettings, 90% of people live in surounding suberbs 2 miles+ from the exchange.

After struggling with a connection between 512-1.5mbit depending on weather I can look forward to something that lets me use the internet properly. Think I'm less than 200 metres from the cabinet at the entrance to my exchange. Something to lookforward to next year :-)
Posted by johncon 7 months ago
I've mapped the exchanges on google maps for the "East of England" region here http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?hl=en&ie=UTF8&msa=0&msid=111239556918524515056.00046e5770ac0e76de601&z=10 .

More like "east of london" what about cambridgeshire, norfolk etc. Oh yes low population density in parts. Come on BT spread the fibre around a bit !!
Not surprising
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 7 months ago
Sheesh there's a lot of whining in a thread about them speeding up the rollout.

chrysalis - East Midlands has a low broadband signup rate and a large number of exchanges with capacity or line issues.
Posted by chrysalis 7 months ago
no s*** on the large number of line issues.

why dont BT do something about it?

when you got 4k properties on ONE exchange that cant even get a synch dont you think it will affect signup rates a tad?
Posted by chrysalis 7 months ago
dawn_falcon since you affiled with BT, I hope you not trying to tell me the east midlands area is going to be screwed over on this rollout, with the excuse you have just given me.
Posted by whatever2 7 months ago
last time i heard that H20 had 30 odd locations hooked up, no ISP's, no pricing... and there's been no news since, well no actual news, but lots of PR about how the group of businesses is doing this or that in the future, how wonderful it all is, oh and how they've decided to sponsor a racing car.

Smells like an operation looking for a shed load more cash to me...and it doesn't seem to be coming from the consumer aimed services that demand 100mbps... probably because there is none.
Posted by Quark999 7 months ago
H2O is just to small to have any real impact any time soon.

I'm not too bothered that Reading isn't on the list, but I'd like to understand the criteria behind these selections. I don't think they're based on anything but the local situation in terms of connections per cabinet etc.

In my mind, teleworking is about the only sensible way of maxing out an ADSL2 connection at the moment. Everything else would probably be torrents of some sort. Sure, the extra bandwidth can allow for extra services such as streaming HDTV - but they don't exist yet. So why would you really need that speed?
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 7 months ago
chrysalis - No, I'm not "affiliated" to BT, you're just affilitated to "I am rude and have to show it". And it's not an excuse, it's called statistics.

There are no unusually large numbers of notspots, takeup rates are simply extremely low. I'd expect the majority of the West Midlands to be in the second half of the rollout.
Posted by drteeth 7 months ago
<tears of joy>
At long last, my exchange is getting something sooner than the others. My line is carp and I can see the cabinet.
</tears of joy>
Posted by wirelesspacman 7 months ago
@chrysalis:

"when you got 4k properties on ONE exchange that cant even get a synch dont you think it will affect signup rates a tad?"

Is that really the case? Which exchange is it?
Posted by Dixinormous 7 months ago
Reading all this stuff it should be noted, in a big way, that this is 1.5 million homes of a 10 million home deployment in a 24 million home country. It's the very first phase. If we all want to complain every region could get a persecution complex right down to London itself with only a handful of its' over 180 exchanges being done.
Posted by Dixinormous 7 months ago
Regarding H2O - they have a very few apartments in Sheffield done and serviced via Ask4, there is no way in hell they are 'completing' anything by September, they don't appear to be doing anything in Bournemouth their first 'Fibrecity' not that they have anything apart from council services to connect that 30-ish homes to anyway.
Posted by AndrueC 7 months ago
@quark99:You won't max out an ADSL connection with teleworking. I'm one of five people working out of a converted barn in Oxfordshire. We're half of a software development team with the other half in Minneapolis. We have no problems exchanging data even though the office only has two load balanced lines - one of which is 3Mb the other varies between .5Mb and 2Mb.

We exchange source code, documents and use Remote Desktop to control each others machines. Right now we're administrating their servers for them.

Teleworking is not a bandwidth hog.
Posted by chrysalis 7 months ago
dawn if you not affiled how do you know takeup rates? :)

I am asking about east midlands not west midlands.
Posted by chrysalis 7 months ago
wirelesspacman leics central. arounbd 1/3rd of connected residental properties have red status on checker.
Posted by chrysalis 7 months ago
wirelesspacman I am one of the closest residental properties to that exchange (the closer ones are commercial) and I have a 49db attenuation. 49db attenuation on about 1/3rd outwards of the coverage. I have been told there is not a single residental line directly connected and the shortest residental line is just under 40db. Montfort the neighboring exchange is also hideously poor for loop lengths.
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 7 months ago
chrysalis - Because perhaps I have a friend at an ISP? And that'd be "midlands" in general...
Posted by cyberdoyle 7 months ago
quote: 'Posted by Dawn_Falcon 1 day ago
Sheesh there's a lot of whining in a thread about them speeding up the rollout.'
That's because they are not building next gen, they are simply extending the obsolete, and only in a few places. This will provide a bit faster/better for a few. It isn't the superfast broadband the govt brags about. Its just gonna be a bit faster for some.
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
cyberdoyle - how fast do you want?
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 7 months ago
Nuts. FTTC will deliver significantly faster broadband to those near the exchange and deal with an awful lot of the notspots.

The choice is not this or FTTH, which is economically unsupportable on a mass scale, it's this or no change.
Posted by amforbes 7 months ago
What pisses me off it's always England first the rest of the UK always take a second seat, I don't know why they can't have a roll out happening across the UK at the same time. Wouldn't be so bloody bad if I could get a decent speed like 4mb but most of the time I struggle to reach even 512K!

Damn you BT!
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 7 months ago
Plugged the ADSL modem into the master socket?

But yea, you're precisely the sort of person who'll likely see the most proportional benefit from FTTC. Complaining that you only get x speed, though...take it up with the laws of physics.
Posted by Dixinormous 7 months ago
England first?

Given that most of the UK population live in England and it's far more densely populated than the other home countries that's not hugely astonishing. I see a few exchanges from Scotland and Wales in the list and again should be remembered these are still very early days in deployment of the technology.

Once again 90%+ of London is uncovered by this first wave too!
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
See

http://mapalist.com/Public/PublicMapViewerShell.aspx?mapid=53188
Posted by GMAN99 7 months ago
"40% of homes will have access to fibre at the cabinet by 2012. They will still be fed by copper, so we are still a million miles away from next gen access" - cyberdoyle. Million miles? You mean a number of meters. You on the copper rant again....
Posted by GMAN99 7 months ago
Cyberdoyle you'll never be happy. If you don't think deploying a service that can provide over 100Mbits full duplex isn't next gen broadband then your next gen will never arrive. You just hate copper thats all there is to it
Posted by Dixinormous 7 months ago
GMAN those rates are really for fibre to the building, not node. The intial FTTN service is 40/5 with 60Mbit mentioned as a future progression.
Posted by GMAN99 7 months ago
Sure but VDSL2+ can do those rates in theory, whether they are offered is a different matter.
Posted by Dixinormous 7 months ago
That it won't on BT's deployment makes it a bit of a non-issue. While 100Mbit is achievable on twisted pair it only happens with fibre to buildings which BT's deployment isn't. Most of the country won't be within 300m / 900ft of their MSAN with the FTTN architecture.

No such thing (yet) as VDSL2+ by the way.

I don't regard it as next gen either by the way, it's a stepping stone just as GPRS was between GSM and UMTS, just as you didn't consider ADSL2+ 'next gen'.
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
What's the gen after next?
Posted by wirelesspacman 7 months ago
@chrysalis:

But as this is a cabled area, can they not get good broadband via Virgin?
Posted by AndrueC 7 months ago
@amforbs:That's often the penalty for living in a remote area. Before you damn BT consider that they are the only telecoms operator in the country to provide close to 100% coverage. Very likely a significant number of exchanges such as yours are operating at a loss to BT. Worse still the LLU operators are taking revenue away from them at the profitable exchanges..
Posted by AndrueC 7 months ago
The fact is that high speed broadband costs money. The longer your line or the further from a built up area you live then the more it costs. Until/unless you are prepared to pay more than us for the difficulty of providing it to you you're kind of stuck.

We end up subsidising your service already since you pay the same price. It's basically a matter of sharing out the cake and since it's more work getting it to you you're going to have to accept a smaller slice.

Sorry.
Posted by dragon1945 7 months ago
AndrueC my daughter gets 2.2 MB and is charged the same as someone getting 8MB. Who is subsidising who?
Posted by normancowan 7 months ago
Only one exchange in Northern Ireland - surely they could have added at least a couple or are we going to be the last as usual to gain any advantage in increased speed - I am still only getting under 1 MB!
Posted by Dixinormous 7 months ago
dragon - sync speed is irrelevant to costs from the BT point of view. She's paying the same line rental as someone in an urban area whose phone line may cost a fraction of that to provide and maintain.

The only cost differential there might be to her ISP, depending on how much she uses. There's who you want to speak to about that issue, not BT Openreach who provide the FTTC and phone line.
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
normancowan - which ones would you have chosen?
Posted by Marvin1 7 months ago
re: line length
yes, but line lenths are not always kept to a minimum as bt often decide not to run cables to a customers nearest exchange for quite dubious reasons.
e.g. my nearest exchange is just under a mile away yet bt ran all the lines from my estate into bolton, 2.8km (direct) away.

surely bt should be made to route lines to their nearest exchange otherwise we will never get any decent speed.
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
Line length was not important for just voice. Would you pay to get your line rerouted?

Note BT have rerouted lines in a few cases but involves a number change.
Posted by brucie245 7 months ago
Well, out of 98 exchanges only 2 in the South East!!!!!!! Don't let me here anyone say the SE always get looked after first :X And NO London doesn't count!
Posted by normancowan 7 months ago
Hi Somerset - what would be wrong with Belfast and Derry for a start? My exchange is one of the smallest in NI so it will likely be about 2035 when BT gets round to it! LOL
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
Which Belfast exchange?

http://www.samknows.com/broadband/search.php?q=belfast
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 7 months ago
Dixi - And you have to point out there are major costs which are typically averaged over all lines like customer support, in any case. There might be a bit of difference in bandwidth costs, but that's only one portion of the costs.

Marvin1 - BT, or pre-BT? And there are often good reasons for it...I'd also strongly suspect that you have a cabinet at the edge of the estate so...
Posted by Fellwalker 7 months ago
but how will this help us when BT traffic shape? I had a 7meg connection during the day that ALWAYS dropped to under 2 meg and often under 1 meg in the evening. Lets think, when am I most likely to use it as a private consumer?
It is of no use whatsoever to have FTTC and then advertise "up to 40 meg" if they do the same. It's their core that needs the capacity upgrade, not their branches that need the potential speed upgraded.
Posted by rfeb41 7 months ago
How mant of these areas are already served by Virgin cable???
Posted by bluesbros 7 months ago
My exchange is one of the 69 whoo-hoo!
According to what I have read-
"To make the most of VDSL2, operators will have
to move the DSL access multiplexers (DSLAM) out of the central office
environment and build a distributed network with smaller nodes that sit
typically less than 1500 meters away from end users."
Does this mean we will all receive similar speeds..??
Posted by cyberdoyle 7 months ago
Somerset - it isn't a case of 'how fast do I want' I was simply pointing out that this won't be the 'superfast' network the govt have promised. It is just a patch up job to get more revenue out of the obsolete copper network. Yes it will be a bit faster for those who get it. No it won't do anything for those who can't get it. I just think it would be more sense to replace the copper with fibre and the job is done. BT own the ducts. pull one out and put new one in. job done. For decades. Speed isn't an issue, the bottlenecks are the problem. No point in having a rolls royce on a dirt track.
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
What did the government promise for speed?

So pull out copper from ducts - and overhead cables? And into each home/premises. What would that cost
Posted by olisun 7 months ago
This may not be related but FTTH is being deployed in countries like India

http://www.indiantelevision.com/headlines/y2k9/july/july136.php

"As part of the pact, Sterlite will have to execute the contract within FY'10."
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 7 months ago
No, Cyberdoyle, the job wouldn't be done "for decades". What it would do is bankrupt BT and likely lead to all sorts of unintended consequences and slower speeds in a heavily filtered, government-run service. The bottleneck for most users once FTTC is rolled out will between the cabinet and the ISP...

And yea, olisun, to about 2 million users by 2012 (and then a dead stop), if they manage to do it: they've tried to get into the FTTH market twice before and failed. BT are talking 10 million by 2012 and expanding after that.
Posted by chrimbow 7 months ago
Im pretty sure a lot of hese exchanges are in areas where LLU and Virgin media operate. The focus should be pretty much in areas where are lot of people are struggling to get BB at all surely? Colwyn Bay gets my vote to go on the list :)
Posted by Baldrick2 7 months ago
Hi
Pretty new here so 'Hi all'
Can someone explain why FTTH is uneconomic since as far as I knew they've had it in Holland for 7+ years
Please don't flame, genuine question I promise
Balders
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 7 months ago
Baldrick - It's economical if you're rolling it out in small areas with a lot of signups allready commited or if you're putting it into new build property.

However, for general rollout it's terrible expensive.
Posted by Baldrick2 7 months ago
Dawn_Falcon 4
But surely it just the same as Cable & Wireless and erm...the other one (Atlantic?) did a few years ago for cable TV? Huge investment, long term benefits...
Obviously I'm only talking hardware here, not the backhaul etc which you'd expect to pay for in your monthly subscription
Posted by Somerset 7 months ago
The cable TV companies had a new product. 'Faster' broadband is not so compelling.
Posted by wirelesspacman 7 months ago
Also, the cable TV companies in the UK went bust doing it!
Posted by AndrueC 7 months ago
@Chrimbow:I think there's a bigger problem with North Wales. None of the towns along the coast (not even Llandudno where my parents live or Bangor) have LLU. Tbh it does puzzle me. All of those are busy active towns. Bangor is even a university town.

Either the Welsh Assembly is ignoring northerners (surely not I almost hear you say) or there's a backhaul issue. The problem with the latter is that surely it'd be easy enough to run some cable alongside the railway or even the A55.
Posted by AndrueC 7 months ago
Yah, rolling out NGA has several problems in the UK. I think that chief amongst them are:
* Price competition. Everyone competes to sell it for as little as puzzle. Never mind the quality - feel the price :(
* We already have an established Pay TV market for those (like me) daft enough to pay to watch TV. Without that incentive all you have left is bandwidth without a use.
Posted by AndrueC 7 months ago
'as puzzle'? Lol. Must be getting late. I meant 'as possible' :)
Posted by chrysalis 7 months ago
to wirelesspacman is cabled yes, broadband signal carrying cable? no. Is analogue cable, although VM say they finally after years of waiting by us residents plan to upgrade the service to digital so there is some hope I guess. Although I would prefer a quality dsl service, I would jump back on cable if it was available.
Posted by chrysalis 7 months ago
Dawn_Falcon not sure I agree if its economical where there is already signups, especially if the signups already have a high synching adsl2+ service. I would have thought the most potential is in areas with current low takeup and in areas where people currently have a pool synch speed but would get a large jump on a fttc service. Selling someone vdsl is easier if their adsl performance is aweful.
Posted by chrysalis 7 months ago
andruec our market is backwards, if we had a competitive wholesale market and a monopoly retail market, the retail isps would be charging high amounts for broadband but the product would be viable no shaping etc. and the wholesalers would be tripping over themselves to be the isp's wholesaler.
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 7 months ago
Chrysalis - If you've been lucky enough to be in one of the fairly rare low-subscription VM areas...then yea, it's great. Been there. But if you're in a high subscription one, you're screwed. Been there too, more times, and in shared houses so I was stuck.

And you'll see improvement across the board, so it's not /just/ low speed-connections which will benefit.
Posted by chrysalis 7 months ago
dawn I was in a high subscription area before, and have to say overall it was a better experience than I have now, why? I didnt spend £300 on routers trying to get a stable connection, have 10+ engineer callouts, have line dropout after dropout and was at least able to download fast in the early hours of the morning.
Posted by wirelesspacman 7 months ago
To Chrysalis: Thanks. Yes I had spotted that myself whilst doing a bit of digging over the last couple of days. From what I could see it might be even worse for those living in the village of Groby which (from what I can judge) has 9,000 people and scratchy adsl at best.

Out of interest (since I am one!) have any wireless providers ever shown an interest in your area?
Posted by Dawn_Falcon 7 months ago
Chrysalis, simply because you're having issues with a line now does not reflect on the actual quality of VM's service on overloaded areas. Also, £300 on /routers/? How was that ever going help in the slightest?
Posted by Quark999 7 months ago
AndrueC: Just wanted to point out that teleworking *can* quite easily saturate an ADSL2 upstream. It obviously depends on the workload, but try opening 1 GByte+ trace files, or editing multimedia files over a VPN connection. Working on source code and using RDP is probably THE least bandwidth-intensive type of teleworking. As always - your mileage may vary.
Posted by kawasakiMan 7 months ago
Dont tell me....the fast areas get even faster now !
Posted by amforbes 7 months ago
@kawasakiMan pretty much sums it up, so much for them doing something about the piss poor speeds in rural area.
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