BT infinity

JC_Derby

Is there anyway of asking someone at BT when or if they are likely to upgrade the exchange nearest to us. ive looked at all the plans for the roll out and its never included. is there an email address?
Previously all ive had is the bog standard, we will let you know when we are coming to your area....

skylight

Infinity?? I wish!

Living in a large commuter industrialised town in the South East, and the best our exchange can manage is a whopping 2mb. I'd love the average 6mb!

But good question, and by replying I can bump it so that I too can email with the same upgrade question for my area.

Mark_In_Hampshire

You can ask....

A number of people managed to download the entire rollout plan from BT's website before they realised their mistake and made it private.

If you post or PM me your postcode I can tell you.

(Reserves the right to delete this if I come back later and find I have 100s of private messages!)

JC_Derby

having moved from Derby where i was on Virgin (20meg i think at that time) to a smaller place, its difficult. Though i do have a 6.5 meg line speed, sometimes its a pain. Unfortunately no virgin where i am, with no plans to come to there either. (due to cost).

skylight

Luckily, you can only have 50 pm's at a time....................... :A



I have PMd you anyway - thanks

Mark_In_Hampshire

Answers sent.

By the way:

First check the BT availability checker. You can get to this from www.thinkbroadband.com > Availability Checker > BT Wholesale Checker

Try your phone number first.

The FTTC service runs at between 5Mbps and 40Mbps down.

However BT will only offer "Infinity" - which is their brand name for FTTC - if 15Mbps+ can be achieved.

If it cannot (e.g. the line from the cabinet is getting on for 2km) then you may find a positive result on the checker, but with slower quoted speeds.

You can then order that from someone else supplying FTTC who *will* provision it while BT continue to tell you it isn't available. What they mean is "Infinity" isn't available.

Not of much interest to those with e.g. Virgin cable, but surely of interest to those with naff phone lines struggling with 1Mbps.

macman

Depends on your exchange-some will probably never be upgraded, in the way that some will never be unbundled.
I thought that Infinity involved not so much an upgrade in the exchange itself, but the laying of fibre to the new street cabs that are connected to that exchange?

Mark_In_Hampshire

That's exactly it, yes. Only the run to the cabinet is upgraded.

Thus, if you live so near the exchange you don't actually have a cabinet, you can't have it as the equipment can't go in the exchange.

If you live too far away from your cabinet, then the service may not be viable and if it is, it degrades over distance like ADSL does hence the "up to" speeds.

So if you're on the end of say a 4km long phone line from the exchange and the cabinet is 300m from you, then you might currently be getting say 2Mbps with ADSL and should get 40Mbps with FTTC.

If the line from the cab is 1500m then the speed is 22Mbps, and so on.

One more point: the fibre run does not need to be fed from the same exchange as the rest of the phone line does. It can come from another exchange even though the telephony part remains unchanged.

Trinitrotoluene

Mark_In_Hampshire wrote: »

Answers sent.

By the way:

First check the BT availability checker. You can get to this from www.thinkbroadband.com > Availability Checker > BT Wholesale Checker

Try your phone number first.

The FTTC service runs at between 5Mbps and 40Mbps down.

However BT will only offer "Infinity" - which is their brand name for FTTC - if 15Mbps+ can be achieved.

If it cannot (e.g. the line from the cabinet is getting on for 2km) then you may find a positive result on the checker, but with slower quoted speeds.

You can then order that from someone else supplying FTTC who *will* provision it while BT continue to tell you it isn't available. What they mean is "Infinity" isn't available.

Not of much interest to those with e.g. Virgin cable, but surely of interest to those with naff phone lines struggling with 1Mbps.

Interstingly enough the BT Wholesale site says WBC FTTC is available in my area (which contravenes everything I have ever read/looked up from Sam Knows/Think Broadband). My exchange LCLYT has not even been given a date for FTTC which is exceptionally annoying as I only currently connect at 2 meg.

Mark_In_Hampshire

The fibre run does not have to be from "your" exchange. It could be from another one (differently routed to the telephone wiring).

Given this, and that not everywhere in an "exchange" area is enabled, the concept of "enabled exchange" is a little meaningless.