BT names first 29 exchanges for fibre rollout BT has released new details of its fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) rollout, including a list of the first 29 exchanges to be upgraded to offer faster broadband in early 2010. Engineers will run fibre optic cables between the exchanges and street side cabinets, closer to homes and businesses. Downstream speeds will be improved to …
We are connected to Belfast Balmoral, but we're right at the limit of the current line length restriction since we're out in the sticks.
I wonder if BT will be installing fibre to our little hamlet then, or is it just to those areas where there will be sufficent take-up?
I won't hold my breath...
Anyone know what they plan to do with the cabinet modems? I'm wondering will they be multi function ADSL / ADSL2 / VDSL2 so existing user equipment keeps going or if they will force a migration to VDSL2. Knowing BT they will probably be ADSL only, with VDSL2 upgrade in 2020 (dependent on lengthy offcom study of course).
(From another esteemed organ): Steve Robertson, chief executive of Openreach, the division of BT responsible for the delivery of the plans, said: "...................it is great to announce this initial set of locations."
Nah, mate. 'Great' would be to tell everyone when the majority of Britain will have access to fibre. Good would be when you tell us that half of Britain will have it. 40% is, at best, an okay start.
Do you think it's great when your wife, partner, significant other says tonight you'll be having 40% of some really hot, kinky bedroom exercise?
Big fucking surprise North Yorkshire wasn't given FUCKALL again. We live by the sea between Whitby and Scarborough and routinely get fuckall from anyone.
I wrote to the secretary of the chairman some months ago asking if our village could be one where they conduct trials for high speed broadband rollout and they didn't even have the manner to reply.
I bet they'd write to me if I didn't pay by twatting bill eh BT?
Paris, because everyone has had a go apart from my village which gets left out of everything..
The numbers would appear to be roughly in line with population. Your knowledge of geography would appear to be a bit faulty as there are two Welsh exchanges on the list.
Scotland have 10.3% of the exchanges (8% of UK population)
Wales have 7% of the exchanges (5% of UK population)
NI 3% of the exchanges (3% UK population)
England 79% of exchanges (83% UK population)
So perhaps a little more attention to facts on your part and a bit less bleating about discrimination would be in order.
29 exchanges, 3 of them in Scotland.
Scotland's population <10% of the UK population, therefore the number of exchanges per-capita is better in Scotland than the rest of the UK.
Wales and NI can be agrieved if they want, but not sure how you can set <1/2 of an exchange up.
The exchange in Edinburgh that has been chosen is the one in an area not currently covered by Virgin Media, which makes sense - BT want to sell the whole media stuff through Home Hub, far more likely to get take-up where cable doesn't already exist.
Chingford, Edmonton and Enfield aren't in London, unless you subscribe to the view that anything within the M25 counts as London. Which is incorrect.
Unfortunately I'm not covered in the first roll-out, as I live in rural Bedfordshire. But I don't really care as I've got a choice of 8mb ADSL and 50mb cable.
However, I've noticed that so many people complaining above are also from traditionally remote, sparsely-populated areas. If you want to have the amenities associated with living in a city, move to a city! (But not Birmingham, they don't have it yet!) I don't hear city-dwellers complaining about the lack of fresh air and access to horse manure.
... My exchange has been Red for contention since January, the latest move of the goal posts predicts end of March for a fix - at which time BT will calmly move the date further back yet again. Its not like this is a rapidly expanding area either, so either the equipment is failing at a fantastic rate, or (IMHO more likely) BT just cant be arsed to spend the money to service the clients of their wholesale "Partners"
This news doesnt excite - with no LLU here BT have a monopoly here that they are happy to abuse. I doubt if we will see FTTC here in my lifetime - especially as they cant keep on top of current maintainance now!
The problem we have compared to other nations is that we have a much greater "make-do-and-mend" attitude towards national infrastructure than other nations. Nations like Japan have spent Billions over the last 30+ years keeping their telecoms networks up to date whereas ours is a mish-mash of 40+ years of haphazard expansion with little thought. BT are quite rightly asking why should they stump up the cash for fibre without being allowed to control the charge other operators pay to use it. It's a PLC and thus has to make money. If the Govt was serious about fully connecting the UK to broadband interwebs then they'd do as they've done to the railways and nationalise the cabling infrastructure and let BT, virgin, CPW etc. run their services on that infrastructure.
Just moved to Bratislava in Slovakia, the WHOLE city is wired up for 70 megs, 1 to 1 contention,
70 megs = 24 euro a month
They have had these speeds for 6 years. I was using bit torrent yesterday (for completely legal content of course! :-) and had a downlpoad speed of over 32 megs a second.
My old NTL "12 mrg" line gave me around 1 meg on non windy nights at 4 a.m. if I prayed to the intertube gods.
I mean I'm in bloody eatern europe, BT and VM and NTL just won't spend any money on infrastructure until they reall really have to.
barstewards
I won't get it in this phase, but this is better news than I had hoped for, they are actually rolling out quite a significant number of exchanges. More than any trial would.
I can wait even if my broadband drops it's connection twice a day, often when I use it the most. As for Suffolk, it is a surprising omission, because they normally test new technology out there due to BT Adastral Park research center being there.
They have obviously picked technologically and statistically interesting locations, the criteria were probably not very political, but there are limitations that are obvious:
# Fiber availability (does the exchange have enough connectivity *spare*
# Cost/ease/safety of street digging / civil engineering
# Broadband demand/usage rate
Hanlon's Razor always applies.
Bob
I'd give in to that temptation if I were you. I've been with Virgin/ntl in South Wales since their 512Mb was launched nearly 10 years ago and it's been near perfect. With the 20Mb service I get in excess of 2200k/sec every time (where the source is able to accomodate such speeds). I did have problems with a language barrier during a support call a few months ago but as the network is solid and fast who cares?
I do feel for you guys in the sticks with little more than a dialup connection. They should sort you out first and bring you in line with the rest of the country before leaving you even further behind.
"I was trolling along, on moonlight bay, dah de de de de de de dee,...."
Seriously though, is FTTC intended to replace the existing copper multicore from the exchange to "your nearest roadside cabinet" or is it going to be supplementary to it, thereby enabling ET, sorry BT, to proffer a two-tier service?
I have to agree with a great many of the posts here, it should be rolled out in more 'rural' areas first, with preference given to those areas with either no broadband, or piss-poor connections.
But that wouldn't be 'economically viable' I suppose.
Finally, my apologies to our Welsh reader. How could I possibly have missed "Taffs Well - Rhondda Cynon Taf"
"iechyd da"
BT deserve to be bailed out like HBOS, Lloyds... just for lack of enthusiasm
Taken back to being owned by the public and then let gordy splash out some ca$h on upgrading the entire UK as some side project for 2012 Olympics! And get the UK's telecoms backbone upto a modern standard with fibre ran into everyhome in the UK wether is it rural or not! Then on this give everyone a VOIP phone with the option to keep the old PSTN whilst it like Analog TV is switched off over 5 years...Its the way to go for the UK economy blah blah blah......
"BT's Openreach division will handle the rollout. It will be required to offer wholesale FTTC access to BT Retail's competitors on equal terms.".... worked for BT back in 2001 when it was rolling out ADSL and I expect that BT will only play fair once they get caught or are blown the whistle on!
I live in the Calder Valley!* Hell yeah, bring it on!
Thing is, though, if you're going to run the fibre optic all the way to my bloody street, why not run it TO MY HOUSE? Seriously, just invest in an area, run fibre to everyone. Everyone under the sun will sign up, you make a mint, and once you're showing a profit, you move on to the next area for rollout. Get on with it!
*Which, by the way, is scenic, not rural. ;-) There's a chuffin' great motorway going through it, for one.
Somebody else posted here first that i found bloody usefull becaus ewe are going to be moving soon.
Next time i will move according to exchange locations Only
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/SDHRSHM
Thanks to AndyC for the Link
To Anybody if your gonna go Virgin, you will need to be able to pass the following test
I dont rape the ISP bandwidth
I dont Game.
I only Use my Internet for text based Email
4 of my mates are on It and everything one Hates it with a passion
and another 6 are ex users and say best thing they did was leave.
As much as i get pissed with BT for not sorting out my area, I am pleased with the reliability of the service in 5 years i think it has dropped connection twice.
But on the other hand i am sorely tempted to start sending letter bombs to their tech call centers till they move them back to the UK
No, they won't let you change your exchange. They won't even let you pay to upgrade the length of cheap aluminium cabling left in the ground since the forties, that every visiting engineer says is a big part of the problem, in addition to the sheer distance to the exchange.
We still get our internet from standpipes in the street.
Well, here I am in La Madeleine, just north of Lille, in the land of red wine and more kinds of cheese than you can shake a stick at. 12Mbits over ADSL2+ (attenuation something like 120dB!). Fibre available in the area, 100Mb/s down for 40 euros a month.
Yah boo sucks to you!
Paris. Because. Why else?
you can have 10g or 40g fibre to the cabinet but of the last 100 meters to the property is still crappy shared and thrice sliced bellwire then you're still going to get crap broadband.
I cant wait until 5 companies try to cram their active kit into the street cabs, the active ones
are already noisy and hot. now they'll be worth smashing open to nick the contents.
a new job opportunity for those in the poorer areas?
Briggus (translation Brighouse) isn't all that bad, nor cold for that matter.
I also used to live in the Calder Valley - Lancky side of Halifax as a matter of fact before moving o'er the pond.
In the Sowerby area, we just had 512kb max because of the distance to the exchange through LLU.
For us 1Mb or 2Mb would have been quite nice. I guess that is why they are piloting in this kind of area - there is quite high demand but everyone is so spread out compared to the city.
Can we have a cloth cap icon please?
where it says the internet in one country should be screwed up by one monopoly supplier.
Time we all looked at getting wireless mesh working in our areas.
Then we can all get 100MB connections so pointless media companies can send us ever more impressive and contentless flash presentations!
Why the hell should BT fix the existing crap? they are finally saying the current infrastructure is beyond repair and giving up on it. IMO that's the only sensible action they can take. Tis a shame the 2nd biggest City in the UK is skipped but that probably as its well covered with cable. not that I'm covered by that though :(
Still, a multi gigabit connection at work keeps me happy :)
Every BT office I've been to in the last 2 years had more of our 'offshore' cousins than UK workers.
With the >10000 agency staff cuts in the UK this year, I have a suggestion:-
Perhaps they should change the name to IT and install 21CN in India?
Otherwise I can confirm there are many contractors on the bench in the UK who could do the work these chaps are shipped over to do.
I can't help but notice the smell of cooked books in all of this.
Did a speed test on BT broadband and it seems that BT's average is 2.18 Mb/s
Concluded: shock! horror! If BT do not do anything then they will have met the 2 Mb/s target and, of course, bonuses all round if you please?
The roll out areas neglect neglected areas and shock! horror! the roll out areas have lots of cables in there anyway? Flummoxed the public again chaps, bonuses all round if you please?
Why not 50 Mb/s by 2010, for each household irrespective of city/rural using a combination of delivery methods?
Where's the verve? The vie? The excitement?
All i smell is cooked books (again).
Perhaps those of us who work with the people you so offensively euphemise as "our 'offshore' cousins" find it a more pleasant and productive experience than dealing with racist ingrates who do nothing but whine about their entitlements.
My experience of BT-based agency contractors (having been one in my time) was that while they were very happy to take the money (although it was never enough, was it?) and the added security of being a disguised employee, they spent most of their time badmouthing the company and whining about what little work they were asked to do. On one very notable occasion two had to be sacked because a fight broke out. One contractor's snoring was disturbing the guy who was trying to play a game in the corner of the same office.
Glad to see the back of them. I value my Indian colleagues far more than those British dipsticks.
Presumably the taxpayer funded OFCOM will now check to see how many taxpayers are still without even a basic broadband service and decide not to do anything.
Not that it matters: all this rush for speed is truly sad.
Where we are, there's no connection to the exchange because the elastic can't stretch that far and the only engineers we ever see in the streets are employed on lighting the gas lamps at dusk and turning 'em off at dawn around the same time as the knockerupper man comes tapping on our window.
It's grim oop norf.
Well, they may be rolling it out for those in the suburbs, but those of us who live in the city centre get naff-all. No cable here, and I'm stuck with ADSL that pretends to be ~6mbit, runs at about 4, gives me huge latency spikes and generally drops out entirely once or twice per night!
"you can have 10g or 40g fibre to the cabinet but of the last 100 meters to the property is still crappy shared and thrice sliced bellwire then you're still going to get crap broadband."
The connection from cabinet to house is a dedicated connection. The cable itself isn't much different from cat5 cable and that's rated high enough for fast lan quality (with no shielding), definitely at up to 100 meters.
Cable (e.g. Virgin) however is another matter. They use fibre to cabinet also (not to home as many believe), but the remainder to the house is shared coax like antique old thin Ethernet, with the downstream signal broadcast all over your neighbour's cable and the modem filtering out the traffic specific to you. Upstream is a little more dedicated but a limited resource, but it's still going over cables that are essentially joined to your neighbour's houses and are vulnerable to dodgy signal quality due to poor installations and unterminated connections in their houses.
You're missing the point.
I'm not racist and made no racist comments, unlike your generalisation of IT contractors. No doubt the standard of contractor has been raised since you left BT, as the one's I worked with were professional and competent.
My point is that while in a recession, wouldn't it be nice for a company like British Telecommunications to give work to British companies/consultants? Obviously this could be applied to many UK companies who continue to offshore.
Most of the offshore people I work with are extremely talented and I value their friendship as well as their skill set.
Hopefully they'll continue to keep BT working until the share price goes up enough for BT to want agency staff back again. ;o)
Thanks for sharing your viewpoint though.
Would just like to add to Bangalore Exchange's comments that all the BT contractors I have come across in my time there have been extremely professional and competent. Good luck to all of you who will be on the outside come next Wednesday and many thanks for all your hard work. You will be missed.
I'm glad that the majority of BT-related debate on this site has always focused on the corporation, and not the people - there's not much any of us can do on a micro level to influence the Phorm debate for example - we are all IT people at the end of the day who work hard to do the best job they can usually in extremely difficult circumstances.
This story keeps timing out, it's taken a dozen attempts for the page to complete (just this one out of all the ones I'm looking at so far). Could this be the most popular El-Reg story so far. So much so that the page is timing out? Show's people's priorities if it is. I can imagine everyone mailing the page to all their mates to check if they're on the list.
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