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Rural Scotland sees 8 further exchange upgrades
Wednesday 03 February 2010 14:23:14 by John Hunt

A further 8 telephone exchanges in Scotland will see benefits from an upgrade programme which will increase capacity following a deal between the Scottish government and BT. 71 exchanges were announced in December 2009 that needed extra capacity to allow more broadband connections to be added and these 8 will increase the number to nearly 80.

"The huge popularity of broadband has led to demand outstripping capacity at some of our smaller rural exchanges, so this is good news for consumers and businesses who can't currently benefit from the technology. This latest announcement means we will be working with the Scottish Government to upgrade nearly 80 small exchanges across Scotland over the coming year."

Brendan Dick, (Director) BT Scotland

The first of the exchange upgrades are expected to be complete in March. The 8 new exchanges that will see upgrades are New Luce, Kinlocheil, Applecross, Glenelg, Colintraive, Orton, Drumbeg and Whitsome.

[ Topic: Wholesale | 7 comments | link to this item ]

Comments

Posted by mikeblogs 7 months ago
What's the nature of the upgrade? ADSL2, backhaul? FTTC cabinet?

Posted by pje1979 7 months ago
Just capacity I think.

Posted by seamore 7 months ago
When will the exchange in Fort William be upgraded to allow residents of Caol to receive broadband.
I pay the same amount or sometimes more than the people in Fort William and I am only able to get 56K, this is so unjust, upgrade the Fort William exchange to serve more people.

Posted by 21again 7 months ago
Some of the exchanges have capacity issues and some need to be upgraded to provide ADSL Max.
Many of them are supplying from 80 up to just over 200 premises.

Posted by otester 7 months ago
@seamore

Thought about 128Kbps ISDN for the mean time?

Posted by hectorgraham 7 months ago
seamore, I have just done a check and it looks like three and o2 both have mobile broadband coverage in your area (Fort William/Caol). So if there is no more room at the exchange then you should be able to get this, at least as a temporary solution until the exchange is upgraded.

Cheers, Hector Graham (hectorgraham).

Posted by hmarston 7 months ago
I can confirm that the 3 mobile at Fort William is good enough for Skype. If only it was as good elsewhere in the Highlands - the signal had faded away at the west end of Loch Eil.

Henry