Broadband News

See if this stops people from moaning about London getting everything. There is ONE exchange on this list in London getting FTTP - less than West Midlands, Manchester, Glasgow, Edinburgh, Cheshire, Northumberland, Devon, Essex, Yorkshire, Hampshire, etc.

17 in Surrey...

How far is this towards the 2/3?

Hello? Yorkshire calling BT, it's the biggest county in the UK dont you know :-(

I would say this is most of the way to the 2/3rds.

However I am still smarting over that Liverpool, Manchester, Glasgow and Edinburgh will all have more FTTP than London. I know why Openreach are doing it, it's damn cynical, doesn't mean I can't sulk about it though.

Great, still no Ibstock and stuck with ~2Mbit :-(

@CudworthExchange I hear ya... Can't believe Rawdon isn't on the list AGAIN :(

Still no Bridlington or anything in Yorkshire... Thanks BT... NOT!

I count 2 in Wales. 2.

Nothing for me again...

From my experience it only counts if BT confirms your cabinet will get upgraded. Living in Basingstoke we got FTTC early, but still less than 50% of the customers are on upgraded cabinets, despite the exchange being updated. :-(

@CudworthExchange one of my mates has just been connected to Digital Region Broadband in Cudworth, he's using DRBSY. Getting about 35meg Down or thereabout!

Yea... BT really do seem to dislike Wales. Funny that..... I'm sure it has nothing to do with rural area's and profit

I see the centre of Leicester is completely ignored again! Whilst the more "affluent" outlying suburbs are to be enabled.
Id live to know the thinking behind BT's rollout here.

Praise be it's a miracle! Etwall is on the list. Unbelievable. I shall ignore for the moment the possibility that they won't do the cabinet in my village. It's on the list!

Why the hell r they doing the mumbles and not the rest of Swansea that just doesnt make sence.

South Yorkshire has FTTC via Digital Region project, which may explain a lack of Yorkshire exchanges - just a thought

Boscombe. Classic BT, wonder if their going to use the sewers as well for FTTP.

Just look at all those exchanges in Cornwall....

I agree about BT disliking Wales, especially the North, it's like living on the moon

BT don't like Lincolnshire either

Nice - that fits in with my estimates for Brackley. That gives Be 18 months to figure out how to leverage FTTC.

Is there any East Yorkshire ones at all to be done before 2012 does anyone know?

Still no Oswestry :( A least give us ADSL2+ lmao

So is that now a total of 551 exchanges to be upgraded to FTTC/FTTP by the end of 2011 out of the approx 5600 exchanges in the UK? I guess those 551 exchanges cover about 66% of the UK population?

They might do, but the devil is in the detail - that might mean "66% of population covered" if everyone connected to all of those exchanges can get it, as opposed to "66% of population connected to an exchange which offers FTTC to someone".

Knowing BT it will be 66% of the population connected to those exchanges which SUPPORT FTTC/P

I wonder if any of those 551 exchanges are market 1 exchanges?

I'll venture a guess that "ROYSTON (Hertfordshire)" is in Hertfordshire, not in Cambridgeshire :-)

FTTC deployment is usually decided on capital & installation costs when compared to returns. E.g. a FTTC @ somewhere between £15 K & say £45 K. Hence only half of Basingstoke as reported by mbailey. This probably also means whoever installs a FTTC first will be the only one as in Yorkshire.

"This probably also means whoever installs a FTTC first will be the only one as in Yorkshire."

Please explain further :)

I'm really agreeing with Andrew's thought above. The economics seem in BT's thinking quite marginal and I'd be surprised if they didn't try to retain market share be it only 80 houses in Erbistock or the much larger Virgin areas.
Am I correct in thinking NYnet will cover more of Yorks?

BT are just finishing FTTC installation here in MYLOF exchange, had 2 calls in 2 nights from BT trying to sell it. It seems I am on 1.5Mb with AOL and could get 16Mbit with FTTC! Which was a surprise to me as I'm already getting 16.4Mb over old copper with Be.

the east midlands pattern continues, all majot cities skipped, enabling countryside village and small towns.

I checked all my localish ones and also judging by the amount of surrey I would say now for sure is a strong link to affluency, are the tories telling these guys where to rollout?

I see the Scottish Highlands don't exist as usual...oh well guess I'll just have to make do with my 16 meg ADSL2+ LLU connection :)

Had to laugh that Bridgeton in Glasgow is getting FTTC when a recent study found out that only 23.3% of the population on that exchange have internet access, how does that work out?

EMETWLL
Market 1
3,855 residential premises
102 non-residential premises.

BREADSALL
Market 1
4,657 residential premises
106 non-residential premises

EVERSLEY
Market 1
4,427 residential premises
227 non-residential premises.

@ zadoc,

Perhaps this illustrates yet another quandary for the providers? Although Be / O2 could presumably buy FTTC services from BT Wholesale, why should they reduce their margins when they have invested heavily & are paying a significant sum for LLU access in the exchange ?

Correct Walter, but as time moves on they are left with no new product to offer so at some point they will have to offer something

Mapped here: http://tinyurl.com/btfibrerollout
KML file: http://tinyurl.com/btfibrerolloutkml

Makes depressing viewing tbh.

Those numbers for EMETWLL are well out of date. Samknows has been showing 3,800 lines for years and years despite the exponentially growing estate in Hilton which must have taken the lines over 4000 ages ago.

Surely and exchange like Etwall makes sense for BT to do. There's no LLU presence and never will be, so FTTC it sweep-up all 4000-odd lines. The outlying villages from Etwall exchange have terrible broadband quality, they'll be tearing BT's arm off for FTTC.

If it's not your exchange it does not matter which ones are in the list...

@Lunarjetman - sent you a PM about this but I agree the numbers served by Etwall must be higher than that. It's interesting to note they marked it as including some to the premises provision. As for LLU there IS one other provider now - Talk Talk are offering an unbundled service but naturally unless you're in Etwall it's comparable to BT Wholesale.

@Somerset - very true!
I find it amazing that our exchange IS on the list. All we need now is to have our cabinets connected to it as well ;p

...edit on last post - naturally I mean FIBRE upgrades for the cabinets...

"If it's not your exchange it does not matter which ones are in the list..."

Yeah very true, my exchange is not on the list so naturally i think that list is crap and made me more annoyed.

And it still makes me laugh at people on here ooh there's only 1 new exchange in London blah blah well us in Cumbria have no cable company and nothing listed for ftth or fttc so no bloody choice again thanks british telecon.

We are in the northwest true northwest unlike Manchester etc and there is nothing.. What a joke.

@chrysalis "I would say now for sure is a strong link to affluency" - must admit that's what struck me reading down the list and trying to find some pattern which ties them all together.

djay - which exchanges would you like enabled? What would you do if you were BT?

Mark - presumably those which get the most customers for the ISPs.

BT follow ROI. Wouldn't surprise me if they are targetting affluence.
I'm surprised they deemed our exchange attractive enough - we only have Talk Talk LLU so it was mainly a captive market for wholesale.

Cornwall sorted:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11435640

djay - any LLU in Cumbria?

@Chrysalis: "the east midlands pattern continues"

Oy! Don't knock it :)

@djay:"thanks british telecon".

Are you also going to 'thank' the other three or four telecommunications providers in the UK that could be rolling something out?

EasyNet and VM have the clout and experience to roll-out FTTC.

Talk Talk probably could as well although I'm not sure if it has the experience in the local loop.

djay - maybe Cumbria should do a scheme like Cornwall.

I sent an email last night to Ian Livingston about FTTC in my town and i actually just got back a good email from Bill Murphy (not sarcasm).

@MarkHampshire

> I'll venture a guess that "ROYSTON (Hertfordshire)" is in Hertfordshire, not in Cambridgeshire :-)

I pondered about that one too but I just copied BT's list. :-) Maybe they classify it differently for some of their region based stuff

No sign of our exchange (or even or the 2 physically closer exchanges that we are not connected to).
Still knobbled at 800k and not likely to improve

@rjgw
Looks like 4 in Wales to me?

@Cudworth
7 more in Yorkshire?

Gah! Cowley (SMCO) still not on the list... All of Oxford (bar Cowley) and all the towns in Oxfordshire are listed. Doesn't make sense, it was listed as a potential Operational Pilot location for FTTC. What's made it suddenly unattractive?

yes finally a date for my exchange nice one september 2011 for me yay only i have noticed my exchange is getten fibre to the cabinet/ premises does it mean all houses in the area are getten it to the door or is it just some houses

Oswestry only allowed bad drinking water, maybe some fibre in that

Wonderful, some places get even higher speeds, we can't even get a date for adsl2 yet. Obviously living in a place smaller than a city but bigger than a hamlet gets you ignored by BT. If the EU is going to start giving out money it should insist on it being spread fairly.

As per all of Cornwall.

If you don't ask the EU for money you don't get it. They gave it to a specific project they didn't just want to randomly spread it around the entire UK.

If your local area can't be bothered to pursue BT and other sources of funding you should be getting on to them - Cornwall went to the EU for funding for Cornwall, nowhere else.

I wonder what inner city area would get money from the EU, (wrong) assumptions are made that problem areas are only in places like cornwall and wales.

Well still no listing for my exchange which serves the most customers business and domestic and is the biggest exchange out of the 4 that are local, but according to a bt open reach engineer it will be getting installed, so maybe their listings are not 100% accurate

@ Tobykim. Thwe "Real" South West is as bad Pembrokeshire and Ceredigion have nothing beyond ADSL1, I get so annoyed at being told by people that our rural exchange is probably too small then see exchanges with less than half the lines getting one or two BT upgrades - and lets not go into LLU.

Maybe instead of a price hike in excess of 20% for bandwidth as was imposed last year on IPSC we should see a 20% CUT to reflect the lower level of service... thats how it works in other industries... so why not here?

Cumbria will not get fibre for a long long time. I'm not sure there are even any ADSL2+ (or ADSL2) enable exchanges in the county, a couple of places are on the upgrade list for spring next year. TalkTalk (only just arrived) and Sky/Easynet are on LLU with a few exchanges. TalkTalk has just put flyers through advertising 24M broadband when it is not even possible on the current set up. They could be testing the water but it really is false advertising.

Local rag had to get involved in getting some of the area upgraded to from narrow band in the first place.

I checked today's list of 159 exchanges and checked back over the previous lists. Either BT needs some basic geography lessons or they're simply trying to make it look like they're spreading the upgrades out by placing exchanges in the wrong region.
They're using a cover-all name for an area that includes mine, namely that of 'Yorkshire and The Humberside' but so far none of the exchanges supposedly in that region includes any in N. Lincs, N.E. Lincs or Lincolnshire. Not the most densely populated area of the country I will agree, but people do live and work here!

The Chippenham, Wiltshire exchange, according to the list 9 months ago was due "late summer". I'd say this is autumn and they only now seem to be installing cabinets!! Don't think much to their planning timescales. Don't hold your breath waiting.

Great, I suppose this is the first step. But if you live a long way from the exchange (in the country) i bet the speed will not improve much.

@madreddog Sorry but I think you'll find that the government defines Lincolnshire as being in the East Midlands rather than Yorkshire & Humberside.

I have known that my exchange & cabinet has been upgraded to fibre for four months now and that others in the area are being offered "BT Infinity". I used to get 0.43 mbps and in July this dropped to 0.32. No explanation or solution offered. The BT Tech Dept say my line is capable of 5.3kbps down with Infinity(a massive speed increase)but will NOT connect me nor will they explain why. It seems that to those who shall be given more & those who hav'nt will be ignored. I am a most disgruntled BT customer !!

Nice to see Irby getting upgraded, I remember the campaign we ran very well leading to the upgrade in 2002. I'm very relieved we don't have to run another one!

@ g-bhxu 6 days ago
'BT don't like Lincolnshire either'
You noticed that too huh? :-/
Apart from parts of Wales, I think rural Lincolnshire was one of the last place to get Broadband, so no surprise we arent on any lists now... not holding my breath, well done for everyone else getting fibre though, enjoy! :-)

So Scotland left out in the cold yet again. Do BT think we use smoke signals or something. It looks as if I won't need the internet by the time they get to us north of Aberdeen. I'll just have to come back and haunt the buggers.

Loughborough, the second largest town in Leicestershire, is absent. But the neighbouring village of Quorn is included. Methinks they have more influence, perhaps what they do now the hunt has "stopped".

I see still no mention of hayle exchange,anyone know anything ?

How many of these were actually connected on time? Mine is now more than 6 months late and highly likely to slip again.

(supposedly now to be connected in June 2012, but with less than a month to go, no sign of any groundworks in the area.)