back to article BT reveals ultra-fast cable blowing plan for homes, biz

BT is talking up plans to bring its ultra-fast fibre-to-the-premises (FTTP) broadband network to more of its customers in early 2013. The national telco also reiterated that it would be offering faster fibre-to-the-cabinet (FTTC) speeds from this spring. FTTP hooks punters directly to the exchanges using fast fibre, rather …

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  1. Sir Runcible Spoon

    Sir

    This is all very laudable, but there are still large swathes of the country that cannot get > 1Mbps download speeds.

    I wouldn't mind paying for my link to the local cabinet if the local cabinet was fibred up to the exchange.

    1. Chris Parsons

      What baffles me is why anyone would downvote such an innocuous and sensible comment.

  2. probedb

    Just getting Infinity in Sheffield city centre would be a good start.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Infinity's OK

      But I was hoping to go beyond

  3. Sir Adam-All

    how on earth do you get on these trials ?

    1. Test Man
      Stop

      If I understand it, trials are ended. Now BT feel it's viable, come middle of next year you will be able to sign up to either FTTC or FTTP (either BT Infinity or reseller version) and anyone who is already on FTTC (again BT Infinity or reseller version) will be able to upgrade to FTTP. All for a price, of course.

  4. FunkyEric
    FAIL

    Good it wasn't just me then....

    Who thought it was all arse about face.....

  5. mrk
    Flame

    Please BT: we need range as well as/instead of higher speeds.

    I imagine I'll be just one amongst many similar comments, but when will BT learn that it's not just about increasing the top speed for those closest to the exchanges/cabinets.

    I'm on a rural exchange. We in the area are very lucky to be Infinity-enabled, but my property is outside the boundary defined by BT, which means I settle for ADSL Max. BT have not seen fit to install ADSL2 hardware in the change and the usual LLU suspects won't go near it.

    So now BT are talking about increasing the speeds for those already able to get a highly respectable service, instead of focussing on enabling services for a great proportion of the population.

    It's time they got better FTTC technology to increase the range covered by the service. If that's not possible they need to work on expanding the number of cabinets, or a more aggressive FTTP rollout.

    In the end, doubling some punter's speed from 40 to 80 is probably getting them the same money as before. Increasing the range surely will bring in more punters?

    1. Vic

      > Increasing the range surely will bring in more punters?

      ...But fewer "zomg" headlines.

      Which do you think matters more to BT?

      Vic.

    2. ElNumbre
      Facepalm

      Willy Waving...

      Unfortunately our Telco's are now locked in a battle to see who's got the biggest dick.

      Sorry, I mean who offers the best speed.

      Long + thin is not as impressive as short but thick. (in the world of broadband speed of course).

  6. geekclick
    Thumb Up

    I for one welcome my FTTP overlords!

    Have FTTC then copper to the house at the moment. I see 30mb/s down and 10mb/s up on a bad day, a move to double this would be most welcomed, even if I had to pay a contribution towards the cost and had that money go into a pot for future works for upgrading those in the sticks etc etc!

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Megaphone

    from super-fast to ultra-fast... RIIIGHT

    so we've now moved on from SUPER-fast to ULTRA-fast speeds. what next? SUPERCALAFRAGALISTICEXPIALIDOCIOUS-speeds? Then again, Mary Poppins is less of a myth for the majority of the country...

    1. seanj
      Joke

      Bloody Druidian....

      Everyone knows that after that comes Ludicrous Speed....

  8. Steve James 1

    Centre of London's West End and I can't get Infinity or Virgin cable. Someone needs to be told what century we're in!

  9. Oldgoat
    Unhappy

    1Mb?

    I dream of 1Mb performance from my 'broadband' connection. Be nice if BT put some effort into replacing some of the dodgy aluminium cabling lying around the countryside ahead of giving the privileged fibre connections.

  10. Jeff 11
    Stop

    Please, please stop calling it super-fast broadband.

    The term is a horribly vague one coined by political wonks and marketing drones and can mean anything between 24Mbit to around 100Mbit.

  11. Harry

    Re "But I was hoping to go beyond"

    I've never been there myself, but I'm told that if you go beyond infinity you might never look back.

  12. circusmole
    Thumb Down

    More BT bull$&!*. I currently have a 768KB/s broadband "service" from BT - it will not go any faster without endless dropouts. There are a couple of FTTC's within 200 yards of my house but BT tell me they have no intention, within the foreseeable future, of connecting me to one because "you are on the wrong side of the road"!!!

    BTW - I live in a well well populated area of a large town (around 170,000 population) in southern England - not in the sticks by any stretch of the imagination.

    1. IHateWearingATie
      Stop

      They're not doing it to spite you...

      ... someone somewhere has done the calculation and worked out that not enough punters will take up the product to make it worth the investment.

      Reading some of the posts on here sometimes, you'd think that BT were deliberately not upgrading to spite people. They're a publically listed company, under a legal duty to maximise returns for shareholders - if they're not doing you're cabinet its because they can make more money elsewhere.

      Now, whether BT should be under different regulatory arrangements to change their motivations, that's a different discussion.

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    the media init

    i dont think BT care wether punters can download more drivel quicker or not. They just want to loose the copper which is being stolen at a frightening rate . There will be idiots still ripping out fiber but thats the state of the education system for you.

    1. Neil Greatorex
      Headmaster

      "the state of the education system for you" AC@18:13

      Looks like you missed out completely.

      i wether loose fiber

      Probably a good encryption seed though :-)

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      The education system - have you seen your spelling?

      Anyway - stopping copper theft is unlikely to be the driver as only a small percentage of lines get upgraded. People who don't have Internet today are unlikely to want broadband regardless of how fast it goes. Businesses with multiple lines will only want one of them to carry data, not all of them. Payphones and second lines and alarm lines and private circuits - the list is quite long, none of these get upgraded to optic because they either won't work or because customers don't want it.

    3. DRendar
      Joke

      Hmmmm

      Your appalling spelling aside, you just gave me an idea of how to get both my parents' ADSL speeds up from <1Mb...

      Tractor + aluminum wired telegraph pole = new copper lines.

      Only Joking. I think.

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Hmmm

    I have a FTTC connection. I'm in Southern England in a not so large town. The speed checker shows 36mbits down and 1.6 up. This hasn't changed in months but what has changed is the actualt download speeds. In the past few days, a site which normally crawls along has suddenly gotten turbo charged and this was at 8pm! It is not the site as I tried it from work at 07:30 and it is still slow.

    The rest of my street are on Virgin and there are lots of complaints about speeds and throttling. My neighbours are hoping that their 'speed doubling' will help. Somehow I doubt it as they will just double the throttling.

    Anon just because I get enough spam from Virgin (Addressed to 'The Occupier') as it is.

    1. Will Godfrey Silver badge
      Happy

      The Occupier

      I just mark these "Return to sender. Name not known at this address."

  15. Ivan Headache

    >1M

    I was at a client yesterday in the Highgate area of north London. She has broadband supplied by TalkTalk. On a good day it runs at 1.2Mb/s. Yesterday it was running at 1.2Mb/s but with dropouts every few minutes. Speaking to BT, she was told that the best she would ever get in her location would be 3Mb/s.

    She has now ordered Infinity so I will report on the change once it's in.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      >1M

      if your client only get 1.2Mb/s in Highgate then the problem is most likely home wiring (though to be fair you never know with Talktalk - did you actually check the line speed vs the download speed?)

      Still - once she has Infinity at least Openreach will put a faceplate in to isolate the home wiring.

  16. Anonymous Coward
    Pirate

    Greedy...

    I'd love to get more than 2Mb but object to my ISP thinking they can crank up my subscription by £10 pcm simply because BT has finally joined the 21st century.

    That and they want a minimum 18 month contract (I have yearly but can cancel with 30 days notice) and

    -insist I must have their choice of router at an extra £40 - repayable if I leave early

    -£25 for an engineer to fit a faceplate I already have and hook up a modem I can install myself.

    -pay a fee if i leave between 12-18 months.

    Looks like I'm waiting until they start offering it as part of the standard package as they did with the 512Mb > 8Mb 'upgrade'.

  17. Van
    Thumb Up

    After more than 10 years of broadband, finally a faster connection than our european neighbours!

  18. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Everyone to the same place FIRST

    Why can't BT work on getting everyone to the same place BEFORE they start implementing the next big idea?

    My exchange isn't even on the FTTC list yet (possibly because we have Hobson's Choice for broadband).

    Surely 40Mb/s is quick enough for now?

    Get everyone to this speed AND ONLY THEN think about making some people faster...

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Because there's no money in that. Why would anyone spend lots of money upgrading the service of people who won't pay any more for it? Can you even begin to imagine how that conversation would go with the bank manager or investors? "Hello, I'd like a few tens of millions please". Sounds great, what's our return going to be? "Absolutely nothing. If anything, it'll be negative".

      If Citroen launched a car capable of 250MPH would you be saying that they should upgrade all existing, already sold, cars to be capable of 150MPH before the sell the new car?

    2. Ru
      Meh

      Business vs Charity

      Increasing the bandwidth of the slowest lines in the country will be hellishly expensive with practically no chance of any return on the investment.

      Increasing the bandwidth of the fastest lines by another order of magnitude is much cheaper because most of the infrastructure is already in place, and there's the opportunity to sell the product to lots of customers and businesses to offset the cost.

      I get moderately good ADSL at the cost of living in a town. You want better internet access? Move out of the sticks. Don't want to move? Then stop complaining. No doubt you'll have lots of excuses, but none of them will serve to justify telecoms companies expending billions with no hope of any return simply to get you faster torrenting.

  19. orb8
    Black Helicopters

    I wonder if when there is a 300Mbit/s service available, BT will still have a pricing option with a 40GB per month data limit :)

  20. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    fortunately my county (Lancashire) will be rolling out FTTC to 97% of residents and seeing as though i'm in a relatively populated cabinet and the exchange has 6800 residential homes i'll almost certainly be getting FTTC by 2014 :) I have virgin atm but i'd rather have £20 sky FTTC with no bandwidth caps or restrictions. I'd then use Vonage for VOIP and use a youview or sky anyview box for tv. Should save myself quite a bit of cash once i can get FTTC.

    1. TheManCalledStan
      Meh

      You need a sky package

      Sky is only offering FTTC to people who have or take one of their Sky TV packages (£25 at least)... So £25 + £20 + £12.50 line rental = £57.50 where are your savings?

  21. idris
    Headmaster

    "to the premise"?

    "Premises" means "property" because back in ancient times it was common to talk about the legal documents used when buying and selling property as if they were the property itself. These documents were full of smallprint and stipulations, or *premises* about the sale of the land. Thus a calling property a "premise" implies that there was only a single clause in the sale documents. Even if it were possible to sell property with a single stipulation, it still wouldn't necessarily mean there was only one building being sold. It might be a whole village.

    When talking about property, it's always "premises" even if there is only one building.

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