BT to fibre up another 163 exchanges, coy on exactly where

BT has indicated another 163 exchanges will deploy fibre in 2013 as part of its £2.5bn broadband upgrade for two thirds of the UK. The national telco said the rollout will lead to more than one million homes and businesses witnessing hordes of BT Openreach engineers laying high-speed optic cabling mainly to street cabinets. …

[Lxbr]

Said to be up to 80Mbps

"with downstream speeds said to be up to 80Mbps" - no need to be mealy-mouthed about it, I'm about 50m from the cabinet and get 80 down and 20 up. It's perfectly possible if you are close and the copper to the cabinet is in good condition.

[AndrueC]

Re: Said to be up to 80Mbps

I'm nearly 500 metres from the cabinet (pretty average) and get 78/20. My modem claims I could get 30 up if it was allowed. I reckon most people will get somewhere above 70 and and a fair few will indeed get 80.

[Dr. Mouse]

Re: Said to be up to 80Mbps

"I reckon most people will get somewhere above 70"

The vast majority of "BT Infinity" customers do get very high speeds.

However, a big part of this (if I have been given the correct info) is that BT refuse to allow anyone on "Infinity" who they are not certain will get a decent speed, instead pushing you onto a different product. It is used as a way to fiddle the figures for their Infinity product.

That said, many more will get the higher end of the speed range purely because people tend to be closer to their cab than their exchange.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Said to be up to 80Mbps

On Tuesday 25th September at 14:50 AndrueC said "I reckon most people will get somewhere above 70."

My area was upgraded a few months back. I switched to fibre last week (the up to 76Mb BT package). I'm pretty impressed with so far. Due to my location BT estimated that I'd get about 25/6. My actual 'speeds' are 56/14 which was a pleasant surprise. (Are BT deliberately conservative with their estimates or did they hook me up to the 100Mb by mistake I wonder?)

The bonus is, it costs not a penny more than my previous standard broadband package, which ran at 9/1.5 :)

An no, I don't work for BT or any of their other companies.

[Spudders]

How about...

enabling the fricking cabinets attached to the exchanges, rather than just a small percentage.

[AndrueC]

Re: How about...

Same reason as ever: RoI. Cabinets aren't cheap to install - on a typical exchange they probably represent the bulk of the cost. If a particular cabinet doesn't have enough properties it might not be upgraded in the first wave. And of course if it happens to be in a conservation area that can be a problem as well.

[Tom 260]

Re: How about...

Oddly enough in my area they've already plonked the cabinets in along the conservation area (14/15th C cottages) last month, but not yet near the 60s/70s houses that make up the bulk of the village; the scheduled date for the exchange is this month, so there's still time, and I understand they are running up to two months behind schedule in some regions anyway.

[The Serpent]

Due to have the switch flicked on my local olive drab monolith this weekend. That said, it was due end of July until they changed their minds four days beforehand, so there's time for a repeat.

[johnnytruant]

Me too. You're not EACOS, are you?

[micheal]

Does that 75% and 25%

Include EVERY home or just the ones located near BT Main exchanges?

Lots of Norfolk still get only dial-up as they are more than 4Km from their exchanges, will this improve?

or does the 25% and75% still only mean in major cities and towns of 5,000 or more homes?

[Big_Ted]

Re: Does that 75% and 25%

Its a big ripoff using 75% 25% as its 75% of home/businesses not 75% of the country, almost all of Scotland and Wales will not see Fiber from BT, so no to you I'm afraid your best bet for the future in flat Norfolk is 4G.....

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Does that 75% and 25%

Maybe not Wales as the Welsh Government is separately funding high speed braodband rollout to be started in Q1 2013 and completed by 2015.

This will give 80Mbs FTTC or 330Mbs FTTP to 96% of Welsh properties.

http://wales.gov.uk/about/cabinet/cabinetstatements/2012/ngbcontract/?lang=en

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Does that 75% and 25%

I know of an exchange with close to 11000 lines that is STILL on ADSL Max... Fibre will only come if BtTare paid to do it out of pubic funds, and then still expect to charge full price despite having invested much less of thier own cash in the AREA

'Tards

[Shawn Grinter]

Hah!!

Well they've deferred upgrading my Exchange (Worthing West) twice - first it was Jan 2012, then July - now it's Sept.

I'll believe it when I see it.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Hah!!

If it was Sept, it's now Dec. The checker has been updated.

[Irongut]

Re: Hah!!

Same here in my part of Glasgow. Delayed 3 times and now looking like we won't get fiber this year. There are plenty of homes and businesses in the area so why do BT insist on getting fibre to villages before us?

[PaulWizard]

Re: Hah!!

3 times! My exchange (Greenhithe) has been deferred every quarter (usually 2 weeks before the end of it, like just now, End of September now end of December) for the last 2 years!! It's just BT's way of keeping people from going for another solution, cos theirs is "just round the corner". There aren't enough rude words available to call them!!!

[Danny 14]

Re: Hah!!

sounds like the ducts are blocked. Look for TRO popping up digging the road along the ducting paths. This is a sign they are actively working on getting to a cabinet.

[incompetent BT]

BT and their announcements

BT said they will upgrade my exchange ( SE1 london so not out in the sticks ) by 2011 Dec then it got delayed without explanation to 2012 dec and now it say by the end of 2013

so I think it is just all promises , smoke and mirror.

also they have no intention to provide LLu services in their exchanges in the foreseeable future, all this from projects that partially funded from our taxes and EU money ??

[AndrueC]

That 75/25 split sounds wrong.

The 75% is correct but the remaining 25% doesn't sound right. I thought BT was doing:

75% FTTC

15% FTTP

10% Gawd only knows.

The article implies everyone will get either FTTC or FTTP and I'm pretty sure BT have never said that.

[blackcat]

And the rest of us?

My local exchange isn't even unbundled. I get stuck with 'up to 8meg' and limited downloads.

[Paul Boocock (UK)]

Re: And the rest of us?

Try the Post Office. I'm in a limited up to 8mbps area (No LLU) but get unlimited downloads and a decent router from them!

[HMB]

Re: And the rest of us?

Post Office unlimited is a pile of FUP.

[Richard Tobin]

What they don't mention...

... is that they have also delayed many already-announced exchanges. My exchange was due to get FTTC in summer of 2011, but every three months, a week before the deadline, they put it back three months (and yes, today it's changed from 30 September to 31 December). So these 2013 announcements should be taken with a pinch of salt.

[Lost in Cyberspace]

Re: What they don't mention...

Was 2010

Was 2012

Now 2013 ish

Mightily pissed off. My connection has slowly decreased from 3.3 to 1.9 at the master socket, new equip, while the next road round gets 5.5.

I could do with this.

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.openreach.co.uk/orpg/home/products/super-fastfibreaccess/downloads/sffa_exchange_lists/coming_soon.pdf

Coming soon exchange list, hidden in plain view.

[Danny 14]

nice find

[Modjo30]

How about

Concentrating on enabling the cabinets around the exchanges already with the upgrade instead of headline grabbing, we are a small office on a business park in the middle of Bedford, the exchange has been ready for over a year, most of the cabinets in our street that are connected to homes have been upgraded yet we're all stuck with 3mb download speeds and they have no date for a planned upgrade they can give me, come on BT i've been on 50mb at home from Virgin for 2 years and you can only offer 3mb to a business? What year is this? 2004?

[Gradgrind]

Have you tried asking one of BT's resellers like Sky or TalkTalk they might have a list of exchanges er possibly not that it will help as its the cabinets that have to be enabled and not every cab off an exchange is fibred up

[orb8]

Any chance we can just have DCTTH (decent cable to the house) BT, instead of FTTC? Replacing 30 year old wire would sure be a start in improving our broadband, instead of trying to squirt many more MB's through the old crusty wires.

[Fuzz]

Crusty old wires

Don't quote me on this but I'm pretty sure that if your connection from your house to the pole is the old style single pair cable in a figure 8 arrangement then openreach will swap it out as part of the FTTC installation.

All the cables from the pole to the cabinet and the cabinet to the exchange should be fairly modern anyway.

[johnnytruant]

Re: Crusty old wires

"All the cables from the pole to the cabinet and the cabinet to the exchange should be fairly modern anyway."

Depends on what you mean by fairly modern. When the BT engineer installed my new pole-to-house cable last year I remarked that "at least it's copper all the way from my front room to the DSLAM now" to which he replied that no, it wasn't. It's still aluminium from the pole to the cab and there on to the exchange. BT claim they don't have any Al cabling left, but according to this chap that's not strictly 100% true. Fortunately I'm only 300m from the exchange so it's not a big deal.

[Anonymous Coward]

Bah

We were meant to get Fiber down in weymouth before the olympics. Now we're getting split information, there are still posters about everywhere saying we already have BT Infinity as of a few months ago, on BBC they're saying they planned to start work in September after the paralympics are over (I haven't seen a single openreach van) and on the BT site we're "December 2013"

I just want a decent speed of broadband god dammit.

[gskr]

Well looks like the 2 remaining exchanges inside the M60 ring (Greater Manchester) are now on the map as "Future Exchanges" - including mine (yay!)

No guarantee they'll do my cab though.

[CatoTheCat]

BT Infinity - oh the irony.

"Bringing us all together for London 2012"

httpp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4dPjSBL2VOo (or just search YouTube for the above title)

One of the 'falling stars' is heading towards the roof of my house.

Guess who is stuck with 6.5Mbps ADSL2 then.....

http://www.theregister.co.uk/Design/graphics/icons/comment/meh_32.png

[Stu J]

For fuck's sake

Still not on the list. It's like living in the dark ages.

[TJ1]

Enabled date slipping by 3 months every 3 months?

If you currently have FTTC, what speed are you getting and what speed did you get on ADSL? It'd be useful for many of us to know if 50% of ADSL theoretical maximum can be translated to approximately 50% of VDSL theoretical maximum.

Like many others I see today that the line-enabled date that was 30th September is now 31st December. That's the 5th time its changed:

30/09/2011

31/12/2011 (changed 20/12/2011)

31/03/2012 (changed 26/03/2012)

30/06/2012 (changed 26/06/2012)

30/09/2012 (changed 25/09/2012)

31/12/2012

The ADSL Max speed is 5.5 ~ 6 Mbps with an SNR of 8~12 db. On that basis I figured we could expect at least 40Mbps on VDSL (shorter length of copper, 50% of theoretical maximum).

I emailed [e-mail] to ask about the line last week and today got this reply:

"Thank you for your interest in our Fibre Broadband deployment. We are deploying one of the fastest and largest commercial deployments in the world. Our commercial deployment will have extended to 66% of the UK by the end of December 2014. We aim extend this to 90% of the UK, in partnership with other sources of funding, e.g. local and National government.

Unfortunately, we are technically unable to provide fibre broadband to your premise because of the excessive length of line between your premise and the fibre broadband cabinet"

So when the local exchange is enabled but the line-enabled date keeps slipping it could be because O.R. have decided the line won't handle VDSL at a sufficient speed.

[HMB]

Meanwhile back in Market 1

More customers are still stranded on ADSL 1 as BT can't be arsed to even move them to the 21st Century Network which gives uses ADSL2+.

What the hell? They don't even have to touch the wiring and I bet the DSLAM is already ADSL2+ compatible! That or they were idiots when they ordered it in 2005 or whatever.

[Mike Flex]

BT's "Where and When" website...

... merely tells you whether the exchange is enabled.

Fat lot of good that is if BT CBA to upgrade your local cabinet.

[Ragarath]

Re: BT's "Where and When" website...

Hi Mike,

Use http://fttc-check.alc.im/ this tells you if your cabinet is due for upgrade and in what phase. Mine is in 9b which I have read is due beginning of 2013. But as always the phases are not exactally well known and I found getting info on them hard.

[Ragarath]

Re: BT's "Where and When" website...

Just as a note I looked at the PCP to Postcode list and the main exchange was phase 7b and that was only done in July so I am not too hopefull for a begining of 2013 for my phase 9b.

You never know though BT may suprise me.

[Mike Flex]

Re: BT's "Where and When" website...

> Use http://fttc-check.alc.im/

Thanks,

"Not part of a phase"

Ah, well.

[HipposRule]

Was No current plans...

.... now future. yeay!

[tonyyaman]

BT Suck its about time that fiber was run to all houses my download speeds are not good between 16 and19.74 some days i get no megs stop being tight bt u have won all the contracts to cabinets so do the houses same

[Pigpen]

My response from BT today:

"The exchange seems to be enabled, however it appears the cabinet in the street is in need of further upgrading. These upgrades look to be completed by the middle of next year."

Genius