Virgin has FTT for farmers' P

Virgin Media has named 10 communities to receive its ultrafast broadband service of 300 Mbps, part of its £3bn fibre-to-the-premises investment. Sadly for city folk, those areas remain fairly backwater, with four of the communities to receive FTTP located in rural Scotland. ® Type arms of an old typewriter

[ZootCadillac]

This is good news

and likely only made possible after BT were ordered to allow access to their infrastructure to the competition. This of course includes ducting but more importantly in this case also includes the telegraph pole network, making cabling rural areas much simpler.

As for it being rural areas then good luck to them. It's what people have been clamouring for. I live on the outskirts of Greater Manchester in between the city and a vast rural farm area. I am a VirginMedia customer. Does not bother me in the slightest that someone has the option of faster speeds than me. The 200Mb/s service I get now is more than adequate for my needs.

It's been too long coming and is appalling that private enterprise is managing this when BT are failing to do what they have been tasked with whilst given a huge chunk of the public purse for it.

[Commswonk]

Re: This is good news

It's been too long coming and is appalling that private enterprise is managing this when BT are failing to do what they have been tasked with whilst given a huge chunk of the public purse for it.

While agreeing that it has perhaps been too long coming I think your criticism of BT * is misplaced. Yes BT was given lots of money to roll out broadband I think you would find (if you checked!) that it rolled out what it was supposed to roll out. Whatever BT was given it was used to provide "reasonable" broadband to a lot of people, not very good broadband to a comparatively few rural dwellers. Obviously farmers and other "isolated" communities getting decent broadband is a good thing, but it was inevitable that majority requirements would be addressed before those of the minority.

Accusing BT of failing to do what they have been tasked with whilst given a huge chunk of the public purse for it is simply a false and IMHO unwarranted accusation.

* Disclaimer: I have never worked for BT; neither am I a shareholder. I have no pecuniary interest in the organisation whatsoever.

[Tom 7]

Re:Re: This is good news

My local exchange went FTTC. The village the exchange is in went from around 17Mb to 30Mb (I dont think anyone wanted to pay for 70 - they didnt need 30 anyway) .Those of us outside the village had our cabinets re-assigned. Mine was a couple of miles from my house and is now 6 miles of copper away at the exchange. So the whole area is now FTTC but those in the village are a bit better off, those outside the village are no better off. BT put in about 20 yds of fibre and got a huge wedge from the council.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Re:This is good news

Yup. "My" cabinet is "FTTP" - everyone within spitting distance of it is eligible for infinity and beyond or whatever but almost without exception aren't interested. What they have already is fine, thanks. Meanwhile my village is about 2 1/2 miles from the cabinet. "FTTPoD" for us (which DOESN'T REALLY EXIST) then. ADSL speed was slightly less horrific before they started pissing about. Lucky to hit 300kb/s now. (yes that's a "k" and a small "b")

Will they blow a fibre out our way? Like hell! Something to do with not having the wherewithal to power the terminal from their existing copper wires, apparently.

Still, GPO Plc received a handy bung of hapless taxpayers' money for slapping their advertising stickers all over the cabinet. So "the system" is clearly functioning perfectly.

[ZootCadillac]

Re: This is good news

BT only rolloed out Openreach in areas where it was commercially viable. For rural areas and villages where they deemed it too expensive the communities were offered the opportunity to pay for it themselves with a 'community fibre partnership. Think about that. Some communities got fibre paid for by taxpayers because it would make BT money. And then some taxpayers got fibre because they paid for it themselves. Again. It's ludicrous.

Even before the BDUK programme was announced BT were tasked with getting broadband to hard to reach areas yet because copper is useless over distance for ADSL they just didn't bother.

They took, or will have taken, £1.2Bn from the public purse to do a roll-out job that nobody else would bid for because they knew it was not viable. But BT took the money. They didn't do the job.

Now Virginmedia have access to the telegraph pole network and ducting of BT they are back in the rural business. They didn't bid for the broadband roll-out contracts because they had no access to BT infrastructure at the time. Now they have they are running cable by pole to rural areas and serving high speed broadband.

They are doing this with their, or their investor's money. If they can do this ask yourself why BT could not do it with the public's money?

BT are supplying 39% of the investment for this programme and are getting 100% of the profits. That they get to pick and choose only profitable areas sickens me, as it should any taxpayer.

If my accusation is false let BT sue me. MP's stood up in the house and claimed the taxpayer was being ripped off as far back as 2013.

*same disclosure by me. I'm nobody but a taxpayer and virginmedia customer.

[Anonymous Coward]

300Mb/s is available over their standard network for many areas already. It's called the Homeworker+ package

[Snowy]

Hmmm...

and the communities to receive its ultrafast broadband service of 300 Mbps, part of its £3bn fibre-to-the-premises investment are?

[ZootCadillac]

Re: Hmmm...

I was unsure also, so got these snippets from the FT:

"Ultimately, Virgin Media is seeking to connect 17m premises to the network by 2019, in what would be the largest investment in UK broadband infrastructure in more than a decade......

.....Virgin Media has already started to roll out fibre to premises in Cambridgeshire and Leicestershire, with work soon starting in West Yorkshire, Devon and East Sussex. In the past year, Virgin says it has laid enough new cable to stretch from Land’s End to John O’Groats".

and this from Recombu:

The ultrafast fibre connections will deliver top download speeds of 200Mbps and 300Mbps to an unspecified number of homes and businesses in West Lothian, Renfrewshire, Leicestershire, West Yorkshire, Inverclyde, Buckinghamshire, Surrey, Hampshire and Dorset.....

....The first rural communities that will benefit from Virgin Media’s FTTP rollout are:

Kirknewton (West Lothian)

Houston, Crosslee, Craigends and Brookfield (Renfrewshire)

Bridge of Weir (Renfrewshire)

Ratby (Leicestershire)

Wilsden (West Yorkshire)

Kilmacolm (Inverclyde)

Stoke Poges (Buckinghamshire)

Lightwater (Surrey)

Hartley Wintney and Phoenix Green (Hampshire)

Oakley (Dorset)"