Openreach to heap faster broadband on UK's media-heavy hubs BT Openreach has declared it is installing yet more full-fibre broadband connections around the country. In an ingenious move, the infraco is putting these into the most media-heavy spots in the nation: London and Salford. networks UK.gov tips £400m into digital investment pot READ MORE In addition to keeping the chattering …
Virgin Media's stranglehold on the West Midlands will continue
Well, Sutton Coldfield is West Midlands so far as everybody who lives there is concerned, and Coventry, Birmingham Central, Birmingham North, Brierley Hill, Great Barr, Acocks Green, Erdington, Wovlerhampton & Solihull are getting some flavour of FTTP or G.fast roll out.
Considering much of the West Mids already have the choice (whether we exercise it or not) of Vermin Media, I don't think most of us can complain too much. Not to mention that Hyperoptic is building presence across the West Mids, and Vodafone has announced ggigbit plans with Cityfibre in Birmingham & Coventry.
I dunno about 'up north' but down in Surrey and Middlesex the boundaries tend to vary whether you are talking about council borders, parish borders or 'postal sorting office' districts..
This is further confused by a large borough taking the name of a town within it..
the worst is the 'laziness' of people calling a HUGE borough like
'London Borough of Richmond Upon Thames' *just* 'Richmond' when referring to a small town within it..
(LBRUT is more than 22 sq miles in area, and about 40 miles end to end!)
More confusion when people turn up to Richmond station, and are then told they meant Ham, a small town near Kingston!!
And of course there some companies say they are in 'London' for snob value..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/London_Borough_of_Richmond_upon_Thames
Up to 1,000Mbps
Hold your horses. This is Vodafone. Their advertising and operations have relied for years on the fact that "up to" includes the number zero. I'm sure their broadband will be of similar quality to their shonky mobile network, with its rip-off pricing, shite service and mendacious marketing. They might have to work at it to make a FTTP system crap, but Vodafone will find a way, probably through over-selling and over-subscription.
Vodafone are so poor they make Vermin Media look honest and good value.
Blame OFCOM for that. I have Gigaclear at home that runs 1Gbps native and then traffic shapes down to whatever people pay for (+ 10% for the lower speeds). So my connection has to run at 1Gbps, but OFCOM made Gigaclear change all their literature to say up to 1,000Mbps.
This the two-faced OFCOM that say it's fibre, if there is fibre anywhere in the system!
Ah yes... dear Wallington where where United A*seholes cabled all the streets surrounding Roundshaw but not the estate itself, so that winter we had weeks of trailing mud around from pavement excavations for no gain.
It was at that point I raised a finger to the concils dish ban ... borrowed a very long ladder and stuck a dish on the thrid floor (above deck level).... those flats might have been run down... but the concrete was tough.
Where I am now we get ignored for good stuff by the twonks in Cardiff bay over 100 miles away... The only full fibre we are likely to see comes in packet form.
There was a flurry of activity, manhole covers were lifted, ducts cleaned out and new connectors appeared on the top of poles.
All part of the fibre rollout we were told.
Still no sign of anyone stringing fibre for those last few yards to the houses.
Just as well we have Virgin.
We had fibre roll our down our road. The ISP's didn't know so they didn't inform the people who had asked to be informed if fibre became available. After about a year I found on a comparison web site that BT but no other ISP's were offering fibre, so I was the first down our road to get FTTP. Now all the
ISP's are offering it.
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The story names "Greater Glasgow" as one of the benefiiting areas. Hahaha.
I live in "Greater Glasgow" - have had an EO line since moving in to a nearly-new house. No plans at all in the pipeline for that to be rectified, it seems.
I've got a Virgin cabinet outside the house, but I actually want real broadband with options for fixed IPs and all that.
I Live in Huddersfield.
I have been using Virgin since it came down our street. (20 years ago ?)
Originally called Cableonline (Using Dual ISDN), Then it change its name to NTL, Now it is Virgin (although I think the real "Virgin" have nothing to do with this company now)
Started off with Dual ISDN, 64k * 2 a long time ago, Finallly changed to "Broadband" 500k - Wow. That was a sea change. Now I am on 200mb Broadband, Ithink Fibre to the cabinet and coax to the house.
All in all for all these years (probably nearly 20) it has been relatively trouble free and the speed I pay for is the speed i get. Not the cheapest but considering the speed I get I can live with it. Now I know there are people that have a much worse experience that I do with Virgin. But thems the breaks. We just seem to have been lucky here.
I am soooo glad I am not stuck with using bell wire for internet.
The part of Sutton Coldfield I live in only has VM fibre. BT havent bothered to get fibre to my cabinet. The map for fibre first rollout out indicates i'm still yet to get fibre from BT. So they are rolling out upto 1gb to parts of the town, when others don't even have basic fibre yet? Yeah cheers BT, nice one.
Let's hope they train these people better than their current crop. Had G.Fast installed, had to tell the engineer he needed to give me a G.Fast modem and he neglected to use the UTP RJ11 cable from my master socket to the modem. That latter mistake knocked 20mbps off my speed until I found the wire in the packaging he'd left. He'd also swapped the pair my line was running on as he'd supposedly found a fault. It was meant to run the same route but I'm getting considerably less than my estimate (160mbps rather than 252). So not impressed with my experience, still can't get more than VM's top speed either which grates.
As I've said before, poor quality internet and urban blight, seem to be one and the same. Interesting that the economic effects of the areas concerned bear no relation and have even more of an impact with the lack of banking facilities on the voids between the ears.
We have business parks with barely ADSL and mobile signal. I put a request in for an upgrade, via an enterprise contact for one such area, including land access and much else for free, repeated requests. Not a button.
My last encounter with Openreach took over five years to get a circuit installed, possibly a record. One of the conduits had to be achieved by going through the subcontractor in reverse and the other issue was again it stops when it rains and the pole is rotten. #allroadsleadnorth
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