BT announces "superfast" broadband to the biggest South Lakes exchanges...

BT announced yesterday that they were cherry picking 2 exchanges in the South Lakes and would be enabling them for FTTP/FTTC. 


Read more at cartm3lbr0kenbr0adband


BT Press release:

16,000 MORE HOMES AND BUSINESSES IN CUMBRIA TARGETED FOR

SUPER-FAST BROADBAND

Dalton-in-Furness and Kendal included in major expansion of BT’s £2.5 billion

super-fast fibre broadband programme;

Cumbria Chamber of Commerce welcomes investment

More than 16,000 more homes and businesses in Cumbria are poised to benefit from super-fast broadband as part of a major expansion of BT’s roll-out plans.

Dalton-in-Furness and Kendal are among the latest communities to be included in the company’s £2.5 billion roll-out of fibre broadband. It will take the number of Cumbria homes and businesses being passed by the new super-fast network to around 48,000.    

The latest upgrades are due to be completed during 2012.

BT’s local network business Openreach is driving forward plans to make super-fast fibre broadband available to two-thirds of UK premises by the end of 2014*. The innovative network features a mix of fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and fibre to the premises (FTTP) technologies.

Speeds are vastly superior to those previously available to many UK homes and businesses.

FTTC, delivered to street cabinets, currently offers download speeds of up to 40Mbps with 10Mbps upstream. Openreach has said it will roughly double these speeds next year. 

FTTP, where the fibre goes directly to homes and businesses, offers speeds of up to 100Mbps, rising to 300Mbps in the spring. This compares with 6.8Mbps, the average actual speed of all UK broadband according to Ofcom’s latest research published in July 2011.

Mike Blackburn, BT’s regional director for the North West, said: “This latest major investment is a tremendous boost for Cumbria. Super-fast broadband will be welcomed by families throughout the area because it will help improve their quality of life and leisure and open new doors through online learning and fast access to information and services. And it’s also going to provide a huge fillip for businesses and the Cumbrian economy. At a stroke, small and medium sized firms will have access to big business speeds at much lower costs allowing them to find new markets, boost their competitiveness and create new jobs.

“Faster upstream speeds are a boon for flexible and remote working, slashing office overheads and improving employees’ work-life balance. Large graphic and video files can be sent immediately online instead of being physically delivered to customers on hard disk. And high quality voice and video calls will enable businesses to save time travelling to clients without losing direct customer contact.

“We are making rapid progress with super-fast broadband across the UK. More than six million homes and businesses can now access the high-speed technology and last month we announced that two-thirds of UK premises will have access by the end of 2014, a year earlier than planned.

“And we’re not forgetting the final third – largely rural areas which we have always said will require a partnership approach with the public sector to provide access to the new technology. BT has the strength and experience to deliver challenging projects – as we are doing with major faster broadband initiatives in Northern Ireland and Cornwall – and we are determined to be at the forefront of taking the technology to the final third. We’re also testing new technologies to improve speeds where fibre broadband won’t be available because it’s important that as many homes and businesses as possible have access to fast broadband and its benefits.”

Rob Johnston, chief executive of Cumbria Chamber of Commerce, said: “In these challenging economic times this is great news from BT and its importance to the economy of Cumbria cannot be underestimated.

“Access to fast broadband is absolutely vital for local businesses and households. In today’s crowded marketplace it’s absolutely essential for businesses to keep up with, and, where possible, move ahead of, the competition.

“It provides access to new markets with the potential of new jobs, as well as helping to safeguard existing ones. We welcome BT’s announcement as it represents real progress in the move to get this sort of coverage countywide.”

Internet users with a fibre broadband connection can do much more online, all at the same time. A family can download a movie, watch a TV replay service, surf the net and play games online simultaneously. The latest chart hit can be downloaded in around two seconds, a CD in 30 seconds and a feature length HD film in 10 minutes.

Upload speeds are the fastest in the UK, with large video and data files being sent almost instantly and posting hi-resolution photos on Facebook, takes seconds.

Unlike other companies, Openreach offers network access to service providers on an open, wholesale basis, supporting a competitive market. For further information on Openreach’s super-fast broadband programme visit www.superfast-openreach.co.uk

Notes to editors

* BT’s deployment plans are subject to an acceptable environment for investment. 

Due to the current network topography, and the economics of deployment, it is likely that a small minority of premises within the selected exchange areas will not initially be able to be served by fibre-based broadband. However, Openreach is actively looking at alternative solutions for these locations.

Contact

For further information about this press release please contact Emma Tennant in the BT regional press office on 0800 085 0660. All our news releases can be read at www.bt.com/newscentre

About Openreach

Openreach is responsible for the last mile of the UK access network – the copper wires and fibre connecting homes and businesses to their local telephone exchanges.  Openreach provides communications providers with services and products associated with that network.

About BT
BT is one of the world’s leading providers of communications services and solutions, serving customers in more than 170 countries.  Its principal activities include the provision of networked IT services globally; local, national and international telecommunications services to our customers for use at home, at work and on the move; broadband and internet products and services and converged fixed/mobile products and services.  BT consists principally of four lines of business: BT Global Services, BT Retail, BT Wholesale and Openreach.
In the year ended 31 March 2011, BT Group’s revenue was £20,076m with profit before taxation of £1,717m.
British Telecommunications plc (BT) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of BT Group plc and encompasses virtually all businesses and assets of the BT Group.  BT Group plc is listed on stock exchanges in London and New York. 
For more information, visit www.btplc.com


So that means that all the 14,275  residential & 1170 non-residential properties served by the Kendal exchange (LCKEN) and all the 5607 residential & 221 non-residential properties served by the Dalton-in-Furness exchange (LCDTF) could in theory be able to get "up to" 100mbps over FTTP and 40mbps over FTTC. 


That's a total of 21,273 customers - yet BT only mention 16000. 


The other 5,273 must be covered under the "notes to Editors" 


So a quarter of the customers served already won't be able to access this as they will be too far away from the existing cabinets and exchanges!


But why Dalton? Why not Ulverston (LCULV) which has a higher population density and 6838 residential/438 non-residential customers? It's no more rural than Dalton. But wait - both of them are urban and have LLU enabled exchanges already! And Ulverston has a higher employment & spend capacity than Dalton...  So that blows the argument for enabling Dalton - unless there is a better business uptake from all the major manufacturing companies and award winning SME's based in Dalton. 


Oh, I forgot - there aren't any!!!!

Epsiode IV - a new hope or a complete FUBAR?

Looking at the "new" Rural Community Broadband Fund handbook this week, I got to thinking about what it all means for us simple bumbling poor people with don't live in London Village and don't have everything provided on a gold, platinum & diamond encrusted plate.

Not everyone who lives & works in London Village gets this treatment of course - there are the proles who have to make their way through the myriad of interconnecting tunnels that apparently link London Village to the hovels in the sticks that these people are forced to call "home". Some of these poor proles (apparently) are suffering the same lack of broadband that we simple folk suffer from living in the back of beyond (but who don't have an Olympics to run and beam out to the world next year).....

So, back to the RCBF handbook. You read it, panic, read it again to try and grasp what the heck it's trying to say, panic again, try and work out how much it will cost you as a community using the enclosed "data book", panic again, ring everyone you know and ask "do we live in the last 10%", go to the pub and then bang in a EOI having done the maths on the back of a fag packet down the boozer with the village idiot's dog at the last minute.

Laughable I hear you say! 

Well lets work it out.

You have 61days to put an EOI together, minus the Christmas & new year period (including Christmas eve & new years eve), minus weekends ('cos who works on a Saturday in gov. and the posties don't deliver on a Sunday...),so that leaves you with 46 working days to come up with an EOI that will be accepted.

But in those 46 working days, you have to attend Christmas functions with work, shop for presents and visit your relatives..... So you can knock another 10 days off that figure which leaves 36 working days.

36 working days!.

Then you have school plays, carol concerts and babysitting whilst your other half goes off and does the works Christmas do's, their shopping and whatever else they have to do. That's another 15 working days gone, which leaves you with 21 days.

21 working days! 

So far you've lost 40 days of the EOI period, and that's just one member of a group working on it! Factoring other members of a group in will give similar outcomes.... and that doesn't include trying to find an alternative venue for your meetings when the one you normally use is hosting some Christmas function or other.... By now you will probably be looking at a time scale of 10 working days if you're lucky.

10 working days!

Wow. That's a long time. Or a short time. Or no time at all.

You call a meeting of your group. It snows, and nobody can make it because the rural unclassified and minor roads are blocked by ice & snow because they haven't been gritted (typical rural area). You lose another day.... You try again. The village hall you booked can't open because the oil delivery can't make it to top up the tanks that run the heating system because the roads haven't been gritted etc (we don't have mains gas in rural areas as it costs too much to connect everyone)..... You try this again & again, then have a brainwave! We'll have a Skype meeting! Only problem is, no-one else can use Skype as they live in the last 10% and don't have broadband! So now you have just 5 working days left.

5 working days

That's 1 working week! 1 working week to get a credible EOI together and sent off in the post. You have 1 day in the week that everyone can meet on. 

1 working day

You all meet in the pub. Why? It's the only place that has food & warmth after the Asda & Tesco delivery drivers suffer the same fate as the oil tanker driver.The village pub has LPG gas tanks for cooking and a proper log fire. And beer. Real ale with a head on. Not that flat or gassy stuff they drink in London Village......

This is why you will end up banging in a EOI having done the maths on the back of a fag packet down the boozer with the village idiot's dog at the last minute........

I can only hope that this never happens, but have a feeling that it will in some areas. Why the EOI stage 1 was put out at this time of the year is beyond me, as it will do more damage to peoples chances of getting the broadband they desperately need in really rural areas that do suffer because they are so rural & remote.