BT's Race to infinity gone really pear shape now?

Not sure if this is the right place for this posting.

There are now 6 exchanges who appear to have 100% support for their exchange on the BT race to infinity website and there can only be 5 winners!

Is this voting really credible?

I know when I did some campaigning in my local area there were several people who will object to voting under any circumstances. Some thought they didn't want or need fibre and others simply wouldn't disclose their personal data on a website I can't believe the same doesn't apply to these areas. Not even 1 person has objected. Unbelievable!

Other thoughts

- Not one person away from home for the whole period?
- All the exchanges got the last hundred votes in the last few days. Rather convenient that none of those people were away for xmas wasn't it!

It will be interesting to see how BT deals with this situation. They could enable the 6 exchanges but this would be unfair to other campaigns if 'cheating' has been going on.

Clearly the campaign league table was destroyed by apparent false voting. Is it really fair to other areas that played by the rules, and simply gave up in the face of such ridiculous voting patterns, to let the cheats win?

If it was just BT's money being used for the fibre roll out then if BT want to ignore the current situation on voting it is up to them. However the government is now putting money up for fibre roll out. BT will argue it is their money being used for 'winning' exchanges but difficult to justify this when public money is being invested at the same time!

P.S. I must declare an interest. I spent £250 of my own money on leaflets and posters locally as I thought avoiding my area being left out was important. I don't think anyone could claim to not know about the campaign locally . However most simply can't be bothered to vote as the campaign is so obviously flawed. I feel cheated by BT and feel like an idiot now wasting my money, and time, on a flawed exercise.

Edited by deleted (Thu 30-Dec-10 17:19:52)

is as I have said a few times, smaller exchanges were always going to win this 'race'.

far easier to cheat a few hundred votes than 10s of thousands.

even not taking cheating into account smaller communities have an advantage as easier to do campaigns etc.

It was always going to be a con, if this was any other company they would reset the scores for a user cheating and entering evry post code in there area, as you said not all people in an area would vote yes to getting an upgrade on their exchange

I think they wont care, BT did this campaign knowing that most likely smaller exchanges would win and they will now enable these exchanges. It may or may not be profitable in operational terms but they will get good publicity for it which is what this is a PR exercise.

Response from BT:

Thank you for your email dated 30/12/10 about BT's Race To Infinity.

I am sorry to hear you are unhappy with the voting system that BT are using for the Race To Infinity.

I can assure you that we are doing all within our control to ensure that the votes registered are all legitimate and we are checking each vote to ensure it has not been raised incorrectly. You see in order to place a vote you do have to input a phone number regardless of whether it is a BT number or not. If for instance a 3rd party registers your number without your knowledge then there is very little that we can do. Please be assured that all votes within the 75% to 100% will all be checked to ensure they are correct. Your feedback has now also been provided to our Race To Infinity team.

I trust that my response will assist you further with your query.




Are we really going to give these idiots millions of pounds of public money to upgrade smaller exchanges. I expect it will be used to upgrade the exchanges serving the country residences of MP's and BT execs rather then being used to provide a service to real customers. Isn't it great to live in a country of idiots and corrupt politicians.

Locally I am sure BT will continue to make obscene profits out of my medium size exchange and use it to subsidise smaller exchanges. (This isn't an opinion but a fact supplied by a BT contact with access to amounts spent on individual exchanges) At the same time those in larger towns and cities see cheaper prices and better services. Don't you just love OFCOM's pathetic price controls which have created this situation.

I think I can speak for one of the "100% exchanges" in this farce, sorry, race (ie Madingley). There has been no cheating here, our votes are genuine, and have been won by massive poster & door-to-door campaigning, visiting every address served by the exchange. There has also been a mutual & friendly rivalry with the next door exchange, Caxton, also one of the 100% group.

Problem is BT does not seem to know the total number of premises connected to each exchange - the published numbers are quite clearly wrong. Yes there are properties not inhabited, and a few residents not willing to register their vote, yet even now votes are still being registered by all the 100% exchanges! Bizarre, but the problem really is on BT's side

BT is in danger of creating a huge PR disaster from this

A great job if you can actually get the volunteers to go door to door. A lot of hard work.

I am not surprised that the numbers don't add up. I had a long conversation with someone at Openreach in November about how they got the line data. In the end he never did get a real answer from his colleagues. We have a large MOD base/college in the village and couldn't make the numbers add up unless they had lots of lines on the exchange being counted. He was unable to explain how they could tell the difference between lines running off an internal 'switchboard' system and those actually running direct from the exchange. His recommendation was to check using sam knows but that website doesn't differentiate between the two types it appears!

Sadly around me the majority couldn't give a stuff about helping. They want the faster services but want to pay peanuts for it. As might be expected most have some cheap ISP that is vastly overloaded at peak times and hence very slow. I have given up explaining how broadband works to such people now.

P.S. I assume you actually got the support of the local parish council. Mine are so backward they couldn't see the need for an upgrade and are currently pursuing littering litigation against me for putting up posters! Such is life. They have yet to persuade the district council to press charges. How nice it is to live with such backward people.

In reply to a post by kenb:

P.S. I assume you actually got the support of the local parish council. Mine are so backward they couldn't see the need for an upgrade and are currently pursuing littering litigation against me for putting up posters! Such is life. They have yet to persuade the district council to press charges. How nice it is to live with such backward people.

Very much so - all 4 PCs involved (there are 3 and a bit villages covered by the exchange) have been highly supportive. As you would expect in an area just outside Cambridge there are also a lot of savvy people around to push the campaign forward.

I will speak for another one of the "100% exchanges" Whitchurch

our town council also pledged suport "money" for a campain to bring super fast broadband to whitchurch as well as donations from local businesses.

we had teams of door knockers collecting votes on signup sheets and these votes where submitted online or by txt mess , we also had polling stations in a local pub and library , the firm who are running vote for inifity for bt where given the ip / email address / mobile number of the places / people who was collecting votes so these are logged as legitimate source of votes and not some one trying to cheat the system , the signup sheets are also saved as proof.

our exchange serves whitchurch and over 11 rural villages over a wide area as well as one of the largest schools in hampshire

why should smaller exchanges not get fttp / fttc.....

In reply to a post by kenb:

Locally I am sure BT will continue to make obscene profits out of my medium size exchange and use it to subsidise smaller exchanges.

Well since the smaller exchanges have been paying top dollar for the lesser services for the past ten years, perhaps it's time the medium to large exchanges paid their way too.

How obscene are the profits on your exchange? Can you elaborate on the pricing scheme?

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Well since the smaller exchanges have been paying top dollar for the lesser services for the past ten years, perhaps it's time the medium to large exchanges paid their way too.

How obscene are the profits on your exchange? Can you elaborate on the pricing scheme?

If you could explain how small exchanges subsidise large urban ones that would be great.

If you could also explain why LLU operators choose to operate in urban exchanges rather than the smaller exchanges which are subsidising these urban exchanges that would also be good as it makes little sense, if the smaller exchanges are where the money is, wasting it enabling subsidised larger ones.

Also a bonus would be some explanation why BT largely cater to urban exchanges with WBC rather than the smaller exchanges which are subsidising them, as again wouldn't they want to follow the money?

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

If you could explain how small exchanges subsidise large urban ones that would be great.

Markets 1, 2 & 3. - Pricing in rural and semi-rural areas is higher.

More info: http://www.kitz.co.uk/adsl/broadband_access_market.htm (the map sums things up)

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

If you could also explain why LLU operators choose to operate in urban exchanges rather than the smaller exchanges which are subsidising these urban exchanges that would also be good as it makes little sense, if the smaller exchanges are where the money is, wasting it enabling subsidised larger ones.

LLU has to compete with non-LLU. As such it has to be in places with high concentrations of people for the price to be competitive.

I didn't say the small exchanges are "where the money is". I said that smaller exchanges having been paying top dollar for a lesser service. If pricing was based on speed of service (1 meg, 2 Meg, 8 Meg, 20 Meg), most people would probably get a far better service, as ISPs and wholesalers would strive to speed said services up.

For someone in an urban area with a fast connection to whinge at all amazes me.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Also a bonus would be some explanation why BT largely cater to urban exchanges with WBC rather than the smaller exchanges which are subsidising them, as again wouldn't they want to follow the money?

See my previous comments, RE: top dollar / lesser service / markets 1, 2 & 3.

We're not talking about rural areas getting 20 Meg or 100 Meg. We're talking about them getting something better than 0.5 Meg or next to no BB at all in some cases. Obviously the setup costs will be higher (hence why many are not getting decent speeds), and many in rural areas understand and appreciate that, but why should one person pay the same or more money for a lesser service?

If you take the analogy of a road and a delivery truck, once the road is built (network installed) the maintenance costs are less than the initial cost (in the case of networks, far far less). However there's no fuel costs, vehicle wear and so on, so why should the Markets 1, 2 & 3 even exist? Perhaps the rural people are paying for their service more than the urban people are.

What next? The argument that rural areas don't even need broadband, since the people must be slow-witted bumpkins? It's a 'them and us' situation, and when those with the better deal whinge about it, something's amiss.

I would doubt anywhere has 100% takeup of broadband on phone lines, so the concept of 100% taking FTCC is silly.

I think it's about 50% of lines that are ex-directory, don't see all of them giving up their number to door knockers either.

Again could you explain how rural / semi-rural are subsidising urban please?

You appear to be basing it on the presumption that because the retail prices are higher for non-LLU and there's a marginally higher wholesale cost in Market 2 / 3 there's subsidy there, in doing that you're assuming that it costs the same to provide services in market 1 as market 3.

EDIT: Just one way in which this is not the case is demonstrated here. Less expense at Tier 1 MSAN sites as no long distance fibre, which has to be rented from Openreach, along with the required switching kit, transmission kit, etc, to get to the Tier 1 sites, just an ODF.

I believe it entirely appropriate for people in urban areas to complain as in many urban areas people are relatively more poorly served than those in similar environments in other countries while we have relatively good availability and our average performance in non-urban areas is actually quite good relative to our competitors.

In many capital cities in Europe there is widespread fibre to homes and/or cabinets, London is not even 1/4th covered by FTTC, there are more homes as a % passed by FTTP in Paris than FTTC in London. Compare this with like-for-like rural areas, you'll likely find that the services offered in the UK in 'Market 1' areas are of similar or better price and quality to those in many other places.

Your service is more expensive from BT Wholesale because it costs more to get backhauls to exchanges, there are less customers to amortise the cost of hardware between. This pricing is set by Ofcom and is based on the costs to provide the service, the actual difference is relatively minimal given its' impact on retail pricing.

The bigger issue is that there's no LLU. There's no LLU because LLU operators don't see a business case, to get LLU many Market 1 exchanges would require subsidy.

The map looks grim, doesn't it? The majority of the population are Market 3 though.

I'm not saying you aren't right to be complaining, I would be, but to suggest that rural areas are subsidising urban ones because they pay a couple of pounds per line per month more for the line rental part of their ADSL is crazy. If there were subsidy there the regulated cost+ pricing would be lower and other operators would set up their own wholesale LLU operations.

Edited by deleted (Fri 31-Dec-10 16:40:39)

Thanks to the internal systems of BT you will never get figures in black and white. I don't actually think they have them as they only look at the top line which is probably reasonable when you are running such a large company.

What I was shown were those costs to put in the ADSL equipment and upgrades, guestimates ( thats how they do it apparently!) on data/operational costs. Set against this were fees coming in. Again guestimates as they don't reconcile numbers down to individual exchanges very well, or at least thats the data the person I spoke to had. BT is a very large beast and often one department doesn't know what another is doing!

As take up rates have been far higher then expected revenue has been far higher then expected. They have been making returns of 75% a year approx on capital deployed which isn't a bad return! Even if some of the figures were slightly out it is clear it has been a good investment for them. Certain costs are hard to find such as R&D.

Why has no one else come in to exchange. There are high fixed costs for another operator as they can't use BT's infrastructure in the same way.

Overall if you look at BT's accounts broadband has been a company saver for BT. Without it they would have gone under I am told. Global (IT) arm has been a disaster for them and without broadband they would have been very short of cash flow.

Of course what I was told might be a load of rubbish. Given the nature of BT even if you think you know what is going on you almost certainly don't!

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Again could you explain how rural / semi-rural are subsidising urban please?

but to suggest that rural areas are subsidising urban ones

Yet again, I didn't say that, nor did I infer it. I said that rural areas pay more for a lesser service. What the bean counters do with the cash is their affair. My concern is that as FTTx takes off, many rural areas don't even have ADSL+2, and there's no sign of it happening soon on many exchanges. Why should rural areas pay more for a lesser service? If it's only a couple of quid, as you put it, then why are urban area people moaning about the same amount, considering the service they can get?

All I want is for everyone to have a reasonable service at a reasonable price. You make it sound as if I want the urbans to pay for the rurals or that I said the rurals pay for the urbans. What's wrong with everyone getting, say, 4Meg down / 1 Meg up as a standard minimum? Some rural folk would love that, and many seem to think they should pay through the nose for it. In some case there will be an initial outlay, but the costs after that should not be any more than urban areas (unforseen maintenance aside).

Ofcom do not serve the rural areas, and BT are milking them into the bargain with the lack of competition.

I never said smaller exchanges were subsidising urban exchanges.

What I said was that medium size exchanges (those stuck on the original 20C network) are having to pay their costs and the costs of many tiny exchanges which cost a fortune to operate because of their small user base. Urban exchanges don�t have to provide this cross subsidy.

The problem isn�t one of BT�s making but OFCOM�s.

When LLU came in it was obvious LLU would cherry pick the most profitable larger exchanges. OFCOM�s response was to deregulate BT on these exchanges so they could compete with the LLU operators. It was obvious at the time that this would leave those on non LLU exchanges paying higher prices for a worse service. Of course OFCOM sold it as urban exchanges getting a �discount� rather then medium size exchanges paying a premium as no one should pay a premium in this country for a basic service.

As a result many on the 20C network, i.e. medium size exchanges, are paying far more then their fair share as they have to provide a large �subsidy� to meet the costs of the many tiny exchanges which will never be profitable under any working model. Urban exchanges on the 21C network don�t contribute, as they are in a different market, and as a result the money they generate can be used to provide better services to remain competitive with LLU in their area. If BT don�t do this the market will be taken away from them by the LLU operators cherry picking again.

I accept backhaul costs are higher for medium size exchanges for LLU operators then in many urban areas. Therefore LLU won�t go in these as it would involve putting in new fibre or renting off BT at high prices which are not market competitive.

For BT themselves I am not convinced backhaul costs are that much higher as adequate ducting etc is already in place to smaller exchanges. When ADSL went in how many roads were dug up to put in new fibre? Not many. Have new ducts been put in as demand for ADSL exploded? Not where I live. Existing ducting was used and therefore the marginal extra cost to BT to put in the backhaul must be very low. It could even be cheaper in rural areas as there is often a higher cost of operating in urban areas which are much more crowded and complex to operate in.

BT have probably pulled the wool over OFCOM�s eyes and convinced them operational costs are higher so they can milk the larger non LLU exchanges for as long as possible. They are desperate for cash flow as some of their other areas are struggling, Global IT, and they have a massive pension cost to pay. OFCOM don�t want to make waves as long as the majority don�t have to pay.

FTTC and FTTH is an interesting technology as it changes some of the cost landscape
Much of the back haul is now already in place. As a result it should be no more expensive to put in the infrastructure for FTTC or FTTH in semi-rural then in urban areas. Housing density in many small market towns mirrors that in urban areas. To my eyes green BT boxes look the same size in urban areas as they do in many smaller towns and larger villages. (The ones in my village look very full and in places extra ones have been added.) They probably serve the same number of people as well. Therefore there should be no big cost differences in installation costs per line

Obviously on many rural/town exchanges there are often outer lying areas not found in urban areas. Reaching them may be very expensive on a cost per line basis so why not just NOT put in FFTC or FTTH for them. If 60, 70 or 80% of an exchange can be converted cost effectively lets get the majority done. Sorry for the remainder but we have to do something to rebalance the imbalance developing between semi-rural and urban areas. If a subsidy is needed for the remainder take it from all broadband users (BT, virgin, LLU or A N other providor) not just those unlucky enough to be on the same exchange!


As the discrepancy grows small businesses are being penalised because of where they are based by BT. Either everyone pays a fixed price or the price should reflect the cost to provide the service.

What we have is a crazy system which, whilst it meets the needs of majority in urban areas, leaves a significant minority paying too much and a much smaller minority getting a very large cross subsidy from this minority. Utter madness in my opnion.

Edited by deleted (Fri 31-Dec-10 18:23:02)

how many ISPs have regional pricing in their retail products ? Arguably it is the ones without differential prices who are benefiting in the urban areas as they get a wholesale discount they don't pass on.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Yet again, I didn't say that, nor did I infer it. I said that rural areas pay more for a lesser service. What the bean counters do with the cash is their affair. My concern is that as FTTx takes off, many rural areas don't even have ADSL+2, and there's no sign of it happening soon on many exchanges. Why should rural areas pay more for a lesser service? If it's only a couple of quid, as you put it, then why are urban area people moaning about the same amount, considering the service they can get?

All I want is for everyone to have a reasonable service at a reasonable price. You make it sound as if I want the urbans to pay for the rurals or that I said the rurals pay for the urbans. What's wrong with everyone getting, say, 4Meg down / 1 Meg up as a standard minimum? Some rural folk would love that, and many seem to think they should pay through the nose for it. In some case there will be an initial outlay, but the costs after that should not be any more than urban areas (unforseen maintenance aside).

Ofcom do not serve the rural areas, and BT are milking them into the bargain with the lack of competition.

Just as a reminder you said:

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Well since the smaller exchanges have been paying top dollar for the lesser services for the past ten years, perhaps it's time the medium to large exchanges paid their way too.

So if medium and large exchanges aren't paying their way something must be picking up the tab, smaller exchanges by process of elimination.

Though I did miss a bit of a post.

In reply to a post by camieabz:

Obviously the setup costs will be higher (hence why many are not getting decent speeds), and many in rural areas understand and appreciate that, but why should one person pay the same or more money for a lesser service?

This would be something that applies much more to line length. However another question could be why should one person pay the same as another person for a service even though it costs more to provide it to them?

Ofcom are a regulator not an ISP. They aren't being taken for a ride by BT - if they were line rental in areas where the line is some 5km pole mounted monster with the pole shared with about 3 other people would be higher - if they were provided a service at all.

If you want the same service as urban areas, regardless of price of providing the service, a subsidy from those cheaper areas to serve is exactly what you would be asking for.

You may have to pay more for a lesser service because it probably costs more to provide the service to you. Less economies of scale, higher maintenance and backhaul costs.

Urban areas, regardless of ADSL2+, have a ton of areas which are heavily speed restricted due to distance from the exchange. That's the major source of complaints from urban areas. Urban areas are not some panacea of ultra high speed, low cost services. As I mentioned according to the broadband quality surveys it is the broadband provision in rural areas which props up the UK's ranking by compensating to some extent for the relatively poor state of many urban areas.

The main reason why urban areas have better services is simply competition. The costs of unbundling exchanges vary due to backhaul ranges, just as the cost of providing ADSL over BT Wholesale varies, if there's no competition it's because OLOs don't see a return in the exchanges, I've no idea how to remedy that in a way that's legal and doesn't involve spending tax payer's money.

thats a logical reason at least thanks, 100% still seems crazy tho unless BT's numbers are out by a big %.

thanks for saying what I think ignition.

Rural areas are defenitly well served in the uk, I know a fair few people abroad outside of towns in other countries using either dialup or sattelite as thats the only choice they have.

the long slow line thing has been very misleading put out as a rural area thing with people like prince charles even backing it when the reality is rural areas are more likely to have to pay more but otherwise are able to get a good service as some urban area in general.

Comparing me to my parents, I have a choice of half a dozen LLU suppliers and cable broadband, the reality is tho no matter which adsl supplier I choose 6mbit will be about the upper limit on good days (making 21CN and LLU adsl2+ not relevant) and cable here is severely oversold performing on average below 6mbit. My parents are BTw only but have a nice short line and 8mbit service. Apparently they dont pay much for it either, my dad says he has the adsl as part of his orange mobile package.

This area big city with 30k+ properties gets under 1% on this race to infinity so probably never see FTTx this side of 2020.

O2 and Sky are two I can think of off the top of my head.
I was quite happy with O2 until they changed their Access product and massively increased the price

I have ended up on AAISP, and still pay more because my exchange is on the 20C network.

O2 and Sky are two I can think of off the top of my head.

Their price differentials are only between BT and LLU I think ? (as opposed to BT only regional pricing like Plusnet).

In reply to a post by bgriffiths:

I think I can speak for one of the "100% exchanges" in this farce, sorry, race (ie Madingley). There has been no cheating here, our votes are genuine, and have been won by massive poster & door-to-door campaigning, visiting every address served by the exchange. There has also been a mutual & friendly rivalry with the next door exchange, Caxton, also one of the 100% group.

Problem is BT does not seem to know the total number of premises connected to each exchange - the published numbers are quite clearly wrong. Yes there are properties not inhabited, and a few residents not willing to register their vote, yet even now votes are still being registered by all the 100% exchanges! Bizarre, but the problem really is on BT's side

BT is in danger of creating a huge PR disaster from this

I am sorry but any exchange claiming a 100% will have had the votes fiddled. That is pretty much 99.99% certain. The take up of Broadaband is not even anywhere near a 100%.

Some liies as well will be outgoing or inccoming only lines. Some will be burglar alarm lines and some such as small businesses and retail stores will have no need for Broadband and some simply will not want Broadband

I am sure BT will be fully aware that exchanges claiming a 100% will have many fale votes

BT will know exactly how many active lines they have on an exchange at any point in time

The voting system is easilly fiddled particularly with small exchanges. The system could have been made reasonably secure by requiring the account number as well as address & phone number. Just requiring the phone number & address leaves it wide open to false registrations.

Edited by deleted (Sun 02-Jan-11 10:06:30)

why didnt BT do a hard number rather than %?

so eg. 5001 votes beats 5000 no matter how big the exchange is, I also agree with you needing account numbers. But as I said before I think BT arent too fussed as I think this is just a PR stunt in response to pressures about their rollout.

elsewhere in this thread one of the "100%" exchanges said they had not registered all of the lines but had still got 100%, casting doubt over the nature of the percentage figure - percent of what.

In reply to a post by yarwell:

elsewhere in this thread one of the "100%" exchanges said they had not registered all of the lines but had still got 100%, casting doubt over the nature of the percentage figure - percent of what.

One would assume a 100% of actual lines(not PABX & DDI numbers) but any figure of much over 60% has to be seen as highly suspect. In any case a normer subscriber would not know the actual number of real lines.

The average takeup of Broadband across the UK is 60% but is lower with the smaller exchanges. Takeup of Fibre is likely to be a lot lower but only very limited data on takeup is available at present the only certainty is it would be a lot lower then for Broadband probably about 70% lower.

The system is wide open to fiddling the figures and clearly that is what has been happing as you point out you can nver get anywhere near a 100% in fact if you got over 50% you would be doing very well. Just applying a simple sanity check tells you that. THere is not one exhange anywhere in the UK tha gets anywhere near a 100% take up of Broadband

It appear to be a marketing gimmick by BT. If they really wanted to know the likely take up of Fibre there are far better ways of comming up with a figure. THe starting point would be the percentage take up of Broadband on an exchange. You would then look at how many are going for the higher end packages ie higher speed & higher download limits. It is this second group that would be most likely to take up fibre

In reply to a post by yarwell:

percent of what.

I think that's the real question.

The campaign is being run by BT Retail, who I would expect to only have information about their own customer numbers on each exchange. They would have no idea of the number of LLU (including WLR + Wholesale Calls) customers with services from other providers.

So is 100% the total number of BTR lines (which in theory could return more votes than this number)?
Or BTR broadband customers?
Or a guess at the total number of BB/PSTN lines?
Or something else?

figures plucked from same db as samknows uses?

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

I am sorry but any exchange claiming a 100% will have had the votes fiddled. That is pretty much 99.99% certain. The take up of Broadaband is not even anywhere near a 100%.

Some liies as well will be outgoing or inccoming only lines. Some will be burglar alarm lines and some such as small businesses and retail stores will have no need for Broadband and some simply will not want Broadband

I am sure BT will be fully aware that exchanges claiming a 100% will have many fale votes

BT will know exactly how many active lines they have on an exchange at any point in time

Serious acusations there!

For the purposes of the "Race to Infinity" vote:

Current take up of Broadband - irrelevant, many cannot get a decent broadband, so don't bother
No need for Broadband - irrelevant (even if true)
Not want Broadband - irrelevant (even if true)

BT may well be capable of counting the wires, but for whatever reason chose instead to use the number of addresses (so the burglar alarms etc theory is also irrelevant); it became clear fairly early on that this was woefully underestimated (possibly simply out of date, as our villages have seen rapid expansion over the last couple of years, as has Caxton exchange with its new town of Cambourne)

A shambles indeed.

I have made a comparison of the BT Race to Infinity league table positions for 19/12 & 31/12. It is quite noticeable that the top 6 exchanges have all managed to register a significant no. of votes in the final days which, given the time of year, is a notable achievement if they are genuine votes.

There are two extreme examples which must cast some doubts:
1. Whitchurch registered an extra 590 votes to bring them up to 100%; &
2. Castleton (Gwent) appear to have lost 738 votes as they were registering 1190 votes on 19/12 but only 452 votes on 31/12.

Therefore, some doubt must be cast as to the veracity of the administration and the competition in general..

On a separate matter, I know of a small village in rural Wales with a tiny exchange (only 189 lines) which doesn�t qualify for the main BT Race to Infinity competition. However, they have still been able to register more than 75% of its phone subscribers as being of interest and therefore BT will fulfil its pledge to talk to them about available options for installing high speed fibre optic broadband. This could backfire on BT should there may be quite a few more very small similar exchanges who have achieved this 75% landmark on the basis that it is much easier to do campaigns in such smaller communities.

Sorry you are correct. Price differential is LLU based rather then strictly regional pricing.

At times hard to perceive the difference as the introduction of LLU into an exchange signifcantly changes the market on an exchange. OFCOM base their analysys on an exchange basis as LLU makes such a difference to competition and hence investment by BT in an exchange. Obviously some people will stick with BT come what may, even if the LLU operator is cheaper and equivalent or better. That is their choice and BT are quite right to charge a premium price if customer wants to buy their branded product as in any other market.

Are there any exchanges that have, or are down to get, fibre that don't have LLU?

Are companies still doing new LLU in exchanges?

If not I guess one can easily identify those that won't get fibre by 2015. No LLU providor no fibre, as BT have no financial incentive to put up the 50% matching funds, or whatever financial investment that is needed, to get fibre to customer. Other companies might be interested, but with such a small market will they be interested?

OFCOM's report in 2008 put exchanges without LLU as covering 16.4% of premises. I guess there has been a few more LLU exchanges since then. I seem to recall comments that extra government funding would still leave 10% not covered by fibre. Strange how numbers are close to each other. Have BT already decided not to use any fibre hub put in by government money to areas with LLU and told government this? I am probably just being paranoid as always!

Edited by deleted (Mon 03-Jan-11 09:23:08)

In reply to a post by kenb:

Are companies still doing new LLU in exchanges?

C & W are apparently doing a reasonable new rollout, see here, and TT seem to be adding to theirs.

I don't think everyone's efforts were a waste of time - far from it, for many reasons:

- BT and the Government need to get some kind of feedback - anything is better than nothing.
BT needs to prioritise its roll-out like any commercial concern and the Govt need to subsidise rural communities. But how do you find out?

- Many people hate BT for its poor service on existing broadband and phone policies.
(BT drags its feet because it was denied to enter the Video market many years ago.)
So if BT dared knock on a door there would be fireworks...
Also many people junk BT's email shots.
How can you break through to communicate with your (BT) disgruntled clients?
The Answer- Get some locals (like me & you) to champion your cause.
But I see there is NO mention on BT's website about the 'losers' but BT will learn the hard way if they ignore the sheer efforts of the exchange/locations who do not even get an 'Honorable Mention / Listing' on a BT website sometime soon (aka ASAP).

Either way this puts more pressure on BT to act for ALL UK LOCATIONS as we are light years BEHIND Japan, Taiwan, South Korea et al who COMMITED DECADES AGO to invest in fibre-optic before year 2000. It would be make more sense to invest (as in the 1930's USA Hoover dams projects etc) in UK infrastructure like fast broadband to help small businesses generate jobs and growth (its a No-Brainer)! Unfortunately New Labour backed expensive consultants mega failure IT projects and legislated against small businesses (IR35 etc) for the last 13 years.

Many people who declined to vote for 'Infinity' were either ignorant of fast broadband, or computers or the Campaign, didn't have it, or just were the 'No-Speak to Strangers' or (obviously) not at home varieties. (One Receptionist / P.A. said she would give it to the I.T. Dept - when they return in January 2011...)
BT are you listening?
Government are you listening too?

The consequences of not providing fast broadband is that ALL THE UK loses out economically & financially for years to come in this competitive world.
If BT fails to deliver soon its continuing Monopoly should be broken up and Ofcom totally shaken out & re-focussed as it too is not delivering. The whole thing is a complete mess, not just one of its campaigns.

(A Retired IT Systems Developer with Economics Degree, who used to bail out Big Businesses...)

See Main Site Results article.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 03-Jan-11 10:26:38)

Thanks for that info on LLU.

I see BT have declared their winners and now there are 6. Cheats win after all then, as I simply don't believe after removing any dubious all 6 remained on the same %. Obviously did nothing to remove votes and those that have been honest have been penalised for it.

If BT are going to take us for mugs then so be it. Personally I will now be campaigning for a boycott of BT retail products locally on the basis that they support cheats. A nice big banner on the fence of their exchange in the village should get the message across!

Did anyone else spot the exchange that a few days before the race closed was showing 103% registrations?

BT have picked some market 1 and 2 exchanges for FTTC and likewise skipped over many market 3.

This rollout isnt following that pattern.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Did anyone else spot the exchange that a few days before the race closed was showing 103% registrations?

Coffins have broadband on that exchange it seems

Thanks for that info. I only did a limited scan of their rollout schedule locally to see if I could spot a pattern

Maybe there is no pattern? BT never did understand their costs when I had dealings with them. My assumption they could design a rollout to maximise their profits was maybe a bit optimistic of me.

Perhaps it is just simply a pin in map somewhere? Nope that wouldn't work as it would hit mostly rural areas.

Be interesting to see how government end up working with them when they put public money in. Now that is going to involve some interesting accounting. I wonder how much BT can persuade the government is a reasonable rate for a BT engineer to connect a couple of wires!

I'm a campaigner for one of the 100% exchanges (Madingley).

I see BT have declared their winners and now there are 6. Cheats win after all then, as I simply don't believe after removing any dubious all 6 remained on the same %. Obviously did nothing to remove votes and those that have been honest have been penalised for it.

To win this competition we have mobilised a massive (and I do mean massive) effort to systematically encourage people to vote. We have invested many man hours, initially on background awareness campaigning (flyers, posters, banners) then attendance at local events (fayres, gala's etc) and finally into a crazy door to door campaign. This was backed up with a database that allowed us to record precisely which people we had spoken to on the doorstep, those who had already voted and those who hadn't. We were also able to see those who were out when we called and these addresses were targetted in second, third and fourth sweeps of the villages. We have knocked on, and spoken to the resident of, every house, garage and lean-to in the villages. Every one.

How do we get to a figure greater than 100% (or even equal to 100% - we had people who declined to vote)? We believe it's down to BT's data which is not quite correct. We had votes culled (oh yes, BT were checking all the votes) for addresses that we know to be valid (we spoke to the owner on their doorstep). We have kept records (and I know that other exchanges have too) to prove our votes are valid.

@kenb: I know that it's easy to call winners 'cheats' but I have to wonder whether you even bothered to do more than print a few leaflets. I'm sorry you feel you have wasted your money - if that's all you did then your assesment is probably correct. In essence this competition was about human effort, pure and simple - at times it felt like madness on the streets in the dark and deep snow. Have the good grace to acknowlege you were just beaten by a better organised and motivated team. Don't label us cheats tho...

Mark H

I expect there is a pattern but its not clear as in previous rollouts.

My 2 latest theories are there is a relation to affluency in the area and that they avoid areas with high concentrations of leased line customers.

Caxton is in my patch so I'll let you know what happens

You seem to assume I believe all those who took part in a campaign that reached 100% are cheats. I truly believe that many in the campaign teams put a great deal of effort into getting the votes in, both in the winning campaigns and others.

To get to 100%, or anything like it, is not normally going to happen, unless of course there was some form of 'pressure' applied to vote or 'else'. If pressure was applied then I imagine we would have already seen comments on here about pending prosecutions for harassment against those who didn't want to vote and kept being approached until they �agreed�.

For it to happen on six exchanges, particularly given the way the votes came in the last few days over the holiday period, is simply stretching credibility to far for me.

Again I am not saying it is the local campaigners that put in the votes but maybe someone locally was just a little too helpful on their computer for you. Your database would have made it easy to target the objectors for a quick vote on their behalf! (The whole idea of a database is interesting as I was advised that the DPA would apply if such a database were built for the campaign, but exact position depends on what data you hold.)

My campaign involved slightly more then printing a few leaflets and I don't think there is anyone locally who didn't know about it. If for no other reasons then there was a pink ribbon on every telegraph pole and lamp post in the village along with numerous banners! There are always people that object to anything. I met several canvassing and however eloquently you put your case they would have objected on principal, that�s assuming they even spoke to you in the first place.

Further, for instance, my father died in December after a long illness (sad but for the best after he had several strokes. He had a �good innings�). I assume there are seriously ill people in your area? Did you get their vote off their sickbed? What if they were in hospital how did you contact them? What if they couldn�t communicate? Unlikely to have six areas where none of this applied, all of which happened to be way ahead of other campaigns.

Either false votes came in, or BT got the number horribly wrong in some exchange areas. If the numbers were wrong how come the exact numbers of votes were cast in five cases? Aren�t BT as likely to have included unknown terminated lines as missed active lines?

If you change the scenario and it was declared 100% of people voted in a local election would you find the result credible? Political parties put a great deal of effort into getting voters out but 100% is unbelievable. I know elections aren't a great comparator, as it isn't simply a yes vote you look for on an online system, but the principal remains the same.

Personally I struggle to see how BT failed to get the numbers right. I spoke to people on the Infinity team with queries over a large military base in my patch, and other matters. They assured me the data came from Openreach, (person I spoke to claimed to work for Openreach), and not BT Retail. As Openreach have to know about every active line on the exchange difficult to see how they could get it wrong. LLU makes no difference to managing the individual copper cables out of the exchange as Openreach have to know it goes to an LLU box not their own kit.


The lack of info from BT currently is compelling for me. You don't go from 5 to 6 winners unless your systems are seriously flawed and you know you can't sort out the mess. As for the suggestion that BT will now look at the top 10 maybe that�s BT being nice, or maybe it is yet a further admission by them they know something went wrong. 75% was the qualifying line for discussions why change it after the event?


It may well be the top 6 would have won anyway. Difficult to say as the number of votes cast on the top campaigns put others off from trying. Their door to door experience was so different in their areas to make it pointless carrying on with their campaigns as they would never get enough votes. Maybe it was just local demographics, and not false voting, that initially made the leaders the leaders but the fact remains 100% was the end point and to me that isn�t credible.

Having raised the issue time to move on.

I was only really interested to help struggling SMB�s and was simply astounded when BT took no action over the incredible results being displayed on their website.

Keeping BT out of high speed internet locally may be a blessing in disguise. There are other options to be pursued and there is no guarantee BT/ISPs will actually be able to deliver on their fibre promises when people final switch to the service in large numbers. BT being BT I am sure a fair usage policy, with ever stricter rules will make the service less good then it seems.

I do however feel accountable to those who voted locally and spread the word. At the moment I have seen or read nothing to say that BT�s campaign didn�t go pear shape. I have to write an article for the parish magazine soon and need to explain how the race finished. At the moment my suggestion will be they look at providers other then BT Retail for their telecoms services, as BT haven�t cast themselves in a good light over this matter. Probably make no difference to BT retail but if enough people did it (350,000 votes cast) I imagine it would have some impact on them and they might think a little bit more before they organise campaigns based on dodgy IT systems.

In reply to a post by kenb:

Again I am not saying it is the local campaigners that put in the votes but maybe someone locally was just a little too helpful on their computer for you. Your database would have made it easy to target the objectors for a quick vote on their behalf! (The whole idea of a database is interesting as I was advised that the DPA would apply if such a database were built for the campaign, but exact position depends on what data you hold.)

Such happenings should come to light when BT do a follow-up approach for individuals to take on FTTx and find that they never registered.

Not sure BT can actually do that!

If you opted for no further communications when you voted then BT can't use the data for marketing purposes. I contacted the Infinity team at the start to confirm what their plans were for the data. They said they wouldn't contact anyone who opted out, which is what the opt out said I believe. I wanted to be sure as it made a difference to the wording I use in my local campaign, i.e. if you vote BT won't contact you.

Of course by wording the opt out like this it also made it very hard for BT to spot dodgy votes.

In reply to a post by kenb:

Either false votes came in, or BT got the number horribly wrong in some exchange areas. If the numbers were wrong how come the exact numbers of votes were cast in five cases? Aren�t BT as likely to have included unknown terminated lines as missed active lines?

If you change the scenario and it was declared 100% of people voted in a local election would you find the result credible? Political parties put a great deal of effort into getting voters out but 100% is unbelievable. I know elections aren't a great comparator, as it isn't simply a yes vote you look for on an online system, but the principal remains the same.

Personally I struggle to see how BT failed to get the numbers right. I spoke to people on the Infinity team with queries over a large military base in my patch, and other matters. They assured me the data came from Openreach, (person I spoke to claimed to work for Openreach), and not BT Retail.

????
I haven't been particularly interesetd in the Race to Infinity project as it doesn't affect us. I do agree that 100% of an unspecified population is idiotic, but not impossible due to exactly that lack of specification.

However on the specific point above, I don't see how someone on the Infinity team can possibly work for Openreach. Infinity is nothing to do with Openreach.

Again - without remembering the detail, in theory if BT Broadband wish to roll out Infinity to an exchange that doesn't have Openreach FTTC then all they can do after analysing the results, and bearing in mind they are the biggest customer of both OR and Wholesale, is request FTTC to be installed by OR and relevant backhaul be provided by Wholesale.

I can only report what I was told. if you sent in a email it went to BT retail initially but was then rerouted. The email itself isn't much use as it just says it came from BT but doesn't state which area. the email address it came from was [email protected] which doesn't mean anything to me.


My query was quite specific and maybe that is why I spoke to somone in Openreach, or if he actually wasn't Openreach he spoke to someone who was. I still have the initial email and could contact the guy to confirm who he works for, but I am not sure what value that adds. The real detail of the actual query wasn't answered by him but by someone else in Openreach and then passed to me in a phone call.

Possibly I was mistaken, but I don't think so, as I was surprised at how much time they spent on the query. Two 30 minute phone calls and several emails internally to confirm.

When you organise a promotion like this I don't see how Openreach can't be involved. When BT retail opened the competition to everyone clearly their own systems weren't going to be able to provide all the data they needed.

My query related to a large university/military base in the village. Number of lines quoted for our exchange exceeded number of dwellings by a large margin so some, but not all, lines on base were being counted. I wanted to know which lines were in and which out so campaign could be targeted properly and keep to the competition rules. With hindsight I now realise I shouldn't have been so precise. I should have just got anyone with a direct dial line on the base to vote. I would have got loads of votes very quickly and just taken a chance on whether BT retail eventually through them out in the end. I guess they probably wouldn't, and even if they did the initial massive show of support would have helped to get others in the villages to vote to keep us high up the charts.

Strictly BT retail and Openreach are separate but in practise such divides never are perfect in a large company. Individuals have contacts on the other side of the fence and will use them I have found. Obviously puts other ISP's at a disadvantage but not much you can do about it. ISPs can raise queries with BT themselves, via account managers or such like, and their staff often have contacts in BT anyway.



As to how BT retail gets FTTC out there your method seems correct. Presumably BT retail pick up the bill if take up is way below that required to cover costs as there are some rules about ISP nominated exchanges and take up rates required to avoid costs being passed back.


I may be looking in the wrong places but can find very little that explains how BT decides which exchanges get which services. I would have thought a regulator would be all over them to make sure they want using their control of the exchanges to abuse the market in some way but maybe FTTx is too new for the regulator/government to catch up

Ken B

I concur with you 100%. We (Wingham Exchange, Kent) worked hard for votes (though it was like drawing teeth at times!) and a fat lot of good that did when you see that the top 6 got 100%. However the next nearest got "only" 78%. There were if you believe BT (which i do not) 360,000 votes cast in total so it would be interesting to know the statistical probability of the 6 wnners all having 100% and the next being more than 20% behind. This is classic BT scam, sham and even a scandal. We should have super fast broadband as a service by right. Though we entered the competition the whole process smelt of classic Soviet propaganda for BT was always like competing reluctantly for something that we pay for our through our line rental.
It is a bit like the government saying that the top 5 (or 6) county councils who win a competition will get free education and the rest can go jump.
This really is a national scandal
Geordie Hayward

How on earth can you get the top 6 exchanges getting 100% and then next getting 78%.
Classic Soviet style voting
The whole process is a total, sham, scam and scandal.
We shoudl needless to say get BT infinity by right which of course you do if you live in a big city which the majority of people don't

Were not talking about big exchanges here, were talking a few thousand lines, its far easier to get community backing at those exchanges than a large town with 20000+ (a lot like mine) we managed 2%.

You don't need broadband to vote. Some people purposemy not take it up because of speed, singling out those without broadband isnt fair on a community.

In the run up to the final stages of this competition, I have performed hard copy comparisons of the final votes registered on the league table with the position as at 19 December 2010.
In doing it this way, it is quite noticeable that the top 7 all managed to register a fairly significant number of votes in the final days of the competition. One exchange even managed to register an additional 590 votes which, given the time of the year and the fact that these were probably from those that were not initially interested in the first instance, is highly questionable.

However, what caught my eye was the fact that Castleton (Gwent) had managed to lose 738 votes in the same period. I have hard copy printouts which indicate that its registered votes on 19/12 were 1190 (7th in the league table) but by 31/12 these had been reduced to 452 (37th in league table).

I thus concluded that the veracity of the competition would seem to be questionable and emailed my concerns to the organisation running the league table which claims it is unofficial and not affiliated with BT. I was very surprised to receive the following response:

�The data for this comes from BT so they are the best people to ask.

Obviously there was some cheating involved in the competition and hopefully BT have since verified the results.

Thanks for using the website�.

Quite an astonishing admission here but it�s all rather academic now that BT has supposedly completed an audit of a number of votes cast during December and announced the winners of its Race to Infinity competition.

Don't see why it is a "right" to have a service paid for by investment funded by private sector shareholders at their risk?

Suggest you read elsewhere about the "100%" levels of registration - broadly it seems to be down to the increase in properties in the exchange area, remembering that it is a vote per property within the exchange area, not per working exchange line.

Rather than looking at this so negatively, surely better to think that nobody is any worse off as a result of the exercise, and that 6 towns or villages are now better off. Hardly a "scam, sham and even a scandal"!

Easy to be positive when you already have BT Infinity.

In reply to a post by Broadbean2:

it is quite noticeable that the top 7 all managed to register a fairly significant number of votes in the final days of the competition. One exchange even managed to register an additional 590 votes which, given the time of the year and the fact that these were probably from those that were not initially interested in the first instance, is highly questionable.

Never let the facts or lack of understanding get in the way of a good gripe eh?

The later votes were almost certainly texted votes. These were handled by a third party company and transmitted to BT for manual entry (!) into the system. As a result, a large backlog of text votes were only entered in the latter stages of the competition, by BT (or their agents). We noticed that a lot of our texted votes didn't appear for a week or more.

In reply to a post by Broadbean2:

However, what caught my eye was the fact that Castleton (Gwent) had managed to lose 738 votes in the same period. I have hard copy printouts which indicate that its registered votes on 19/12 were 1190 (7th in the league table) but by 31/12 these had been reduced to 452 (37th in league table).

Sigh - again if you check the facts, you'll see that many exchanges (the winning ones included) also lost votes in a badly managed culling operation early one morning. BT offered little/no explanation for this and we know that perfectly valid votes were culled. The fact that we were able to recover these votes by asking people to re-vote only confirms this. Perhaps Castleton's votes were not so valid in the first place - I don't know - you'd have to ask them why they weren't able to recover many.

In reply to a post by Broadbean2:

I thus concluded that the veracity of the competition would seem to be questionable and emailed my concerns to the organisation running the league table which claims it is unofficial and not affiliated with BT. I was very surprised to receive the following response:

�The data for this comes from BT so they are the best people to ask.

Obviously there was some cheating involved in the competition and hopefully BT have since verified the results.

Thanks for using the website�.

Quite an astonishing admission here but it�s all rather academic now that BT has supposedly completed an audit of a number of votes cast during December and announced the winners of its Race to Infinity competition.

Assuming you mean http://racetoinfinityandbeyond.veadas.net/league
then it's just a hobby site run by an individual scraping the voting data from the BT website. No "astonishing admission" since it's nothing to do with BT...

Hope this helps.

Mark H

Either BT got their initial target numbers completely wrong for some exchanges, or there has been some "creative voting" (Soviet style someone said).

As anyone who understand the statistics of voting with a public population, 100% (or even close) is impossible.

And the fact that the percentages fall off so dramatically after the first few, also should sound warning bells.

I hope a full (and transparent) investigation takes place and is published

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

As anyone who understand the statistics of voting with a public population, 100% (or even close) is impossible.

Anyone who understands statistics will never use the word "impossible".

In reply to a post by orly:

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

Did anyone else spot the exchange that a few days before the race closed was showing 103% registrations?

Coffins have broadband on that exchange it seems

As I said before BT's database of premises is seriously flawed. Campaigners in Madingley visited every address covered by the exchange, and there were more than the 2132 given by BT as the total. I reckon BT's list is simply out of date; I don't know about the others, but both Madingley and Caxton have had large new developments built within the last few years

In reply to a post by billford:

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

As anyone who understand the statistics of voting with a public population, 100% (or even close) is impossible.

Anyone who understands statistics will never use the word "impossible".

Doesn't "never" mean it is impossible that it should happen?

In a no. of local run website campaigns that I have seen, people wishing to see where their exchange is listed in the competition were encouraged to click on a link entitled �Race to Infinity & Beyond� which takes them to http://racetoinfinityandbeyond.veadas.net/league.

So, from what you are saying, this was not the official BT league table as the voting data was also being shown on BT�s website. Alas, I cannot verify this now as the competition is ended but will take your word that it was so.

Needless to say, I think you will acknowledge that some false voting has occurred in this competition which resulted in BT having to cull votes from the totals registered by a no. of exchanges. Now I am not accusing your community of such malpractice and am amazed that you had the resources and time to recover your perfectly valid votes and get people to re-vote in what many would deem to be a very busy time of the year.

Now in case you are wondering, I have nothing to do with Castleton (Gwent) � they are about 100 miles away from me. Nor am I having a gripe. I am just merely trying to establish the facts and whether it has been a fairly run competition.

Happy New Year

I'm thoroughly fed up with BT. I live in an urban area 4km from my local exchange (Margate) and I have to suffer with a connection of less than 2Mbps because they refuse to acknowledge there is a problem with the line. That they seem to be able to invest in tiny village exchanges whilst leaving people in cities and towns on slow connections is unbelievable.

I am from Castleton!

As far as I'm aware, the local 'awareness campaign' amounted to one local councillor promoting the competition in the pubs (can't quite see him fiddling the figures!). Oh, and someone said there was something about it in the local rag. Certainly the competition had no visible local presence until a few posters starting appearing in the days before Christmas - at pretty much the same time that the vote count plummeted from 1,100 to 400!

If someone had been faking hundreds of registrations before the cull (where would they get the information?) I'm pretty sure that a large proportion of the culled submissions would have then been resubmitted (modified as necessary to comply with BT's raised verification thresh-holds). In fact, after the cull just a few dozen votes were added before the competition closed.

I'm comfortable that the 1,100 votes was a massively over-stated position, that no misguided individuals had input them and that the dramatically-reduced 450-ish total is about right.

So where did the extra 700 votes come from?!

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

I'm thoroughly fed up with BT. I live in an urban area 4km from my local exchange (Margate) and I have to suffer with a connection of less than 2Mbps because they refuse to acknowledge there is a problem with the line. That they seem to be able to invest in tiny village exchanges whilst leaving people in cities and towns on slow connections is unbelievable.

This is a different subject really, but that speed does sound like a line problem not a distance one. If you can find your line stats and post them, see here for help, (preferably register and start a new thread with them), then we can see what your line attenuation is. That's what determines the feasible speed and we can compare it with the actual.

If the speed is low we can see if there is anything to be done.

So I think you will agree better in a new thread . Helping you is nothing at all to do with tye race to Infinity.

I suspect the rogue votes were something no more sophisticated than someone with a phone book given this lists the number + post code. I read on another site that checks were made to see if large number of votes came from single IP addresses, which were then checked in case they were genuine as some people were legitimately inputing votss for those without internet access.

The comments regardoing Castleton seem to suggest that the vote validation process was rather more efficient than some are giving it credit for being.

I know the feeling.

Its about PR and perhaps even some political reasons for this.

2% of a 30k exchange still amounts to 300 users, anyone designing this demand league would have been well aware the likely winners were going to be small community exchanges.

I expect you have business's using lucrative leased lines in your area.

In reply to a post by New_Londoner:

The comments regardoing Castleton seem to suggest that the vote validation process was rather more efficient than some are giving it credit for being.

...it may or may not have been efficient - there were no published Rules and Regs (a bizarre oversight) so there shouldn't have been a vote validation process - beyond any real-time checks as the vote was being cast - at all!

there were no published Rules and Regs

I seem to remember a few, such as needing to reach over 75% threshold, having more than 1000 lines, one vote per household etc?

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I know the feeling.

Its about PR and perhaps even some political reasons for this.

2% of a 30k exchange still amounts to 300 users, anyone designing this demand league would have been well aware the likely winners were going to be small community exchanges.

I expect you have business's using lucrative leased lines in your area.

Well yes, they are also likely to be cheaper to enable, it probably takes a lot less cabinets for BT to pass 1,200 premises than an urban sprawl of 15,000 premises.

So 2% of a 30k exchange and 50% of a 1.2k exchange are a completely different proposition. Leased lines irrelevant, deployment costs in terms of fibre runs, etc, very relevant.

As a reminder this enterprise was promoted by BT Retail, these guys have a fraction of the leased line revenue of Wholesale or Openreach to lose.

In reply to a post by New_Londoner:

there were no published Rules and Regs

I seem to remember a few, such as needing to reach over 75% threshold, having more than 1000 lines, one vote per household etc?

I think the poster was referring to the actual voting process.

It does seem weird that on the first voting page the input information was verified (so the returned screen might stop you from progressing to the second screen by saying, for example, "This line already voted for" or similar) but if you got to the second voting page whatever you put in resulted in the returned screen "Congratulations, you've voted!" (or whatever it was).

Surely the process should have been either 'Rules and Regs Lite' and all the verifying done in real-time (as the first page was) or made it very clear - in the Rules and Regs - that votes would be subject to subsequent examination and verification. (With the 'Congratulations you've voted' message replaced with a more sober 'Thank you for your submission which in the coming days/weeks will be verified before it may be added to the votes cast etc'.)

(Slightly ot, I haven't yet seen any conclusive/authoritative statement which makes clear what input fields were subsequently verified.)

A bit of one and a bit of the other? That's not a process.

In reply to a post by New_Londoner:

...one vote per household etc?

I remember them too.

In the context of the Race, anyone like to define "household"?

I know but its only an artifical division. Ultimately its the same company.

or does openreach have its own seperate shareholders?

swings and roundabouts on the cost.

less cabinets yes, but also lower population density, ie more spread out houses, less multi storage flats etc. probably still overall cheaper but of course much less growth potential.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 05-Jan-11 09:33:35)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I know but its only an artifical division. Ultimately its the same company.

or does openreach have its own seperate shareholders?

swings and roundabouts on the cost.

less cabinets yes, but also lower population density, ie more spread out houses, less multi storage flats etc. probably still overall cheaper but of course much less growth potential.

fewer!

In reply to a post by somerset:

fewer!

They're not using ducting through the sewers are they?

2% of a 30k exchange still amounts to 300 users,

and they say educational standards aren't slipping

600 users spread over multiple cabinets would be less attractive than 600 over 2 or 3, surely ?

Also the Openreach offer to all CPs to FTTC enable an area is based on percentage.

sorry yeah bad maths.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I know but its only an artifical division. Ultimately its the same company.

or does openreach have its own seperate shareholders?

swings and roundabouts on the cost.

less cabinets yes, but also lower population density, ie more spread out houses, less multi storage flats etc. probably still overall cheaper but of course much less growth potential.

Doesn't matter, more than the 288 lines per cabinet means an extra cabinet is built so there's more fibre and hardware. Due to the construction of network all that matters is the number of PCPs, what's actually behind them isn't the issue and population density isn't such an issue, unlike how it would be with FTTP, as there's nothing being added past the PCP.

Growth potential isn't such an issue either, a new build again means new hardware addition that has to be done.

Regardless even BT are quite aware that FTTC is an interim and a step towards FTTP so looking at longer term growth potential isn't a major issue.

BT Retail were running this in accordance with Openreach set rules and regulations, these regulations don't take account of % of business lines.

Oh and of course, the major, major point.... this was a publicity stunt. Don't for a moment take it seriously.

How does BT know an account number for a line that is LLU or WLR is real?

Question is this

Openreach had some 25 or was it 28 exchanges that ISP's could nominate.

BT Retail has been the only to stage a stunt - what about other providers? Yes there was finanical commitments that might arise, but if competitors are serious then they need to be seen to be doing more.

A firm could simply stage a lottery draw, but I doubt any will. They will largely wait on BDUK funding, and then it will be BT plus a few smaller teleco's chasing for that. Odds of VM or TalkTalk bidding is small.

I am very glad that this thread exists. Because it does, I've just registered myself onto the forum.

I have recently tried to interest one of the national dailies in investigating this competition because I think the results stink. So far, they have not shown any interest - they haven't even replied to my e-mail.

What have I done? What follows is largely a clip from what I sent the newspaper.

I have had a good look at the results webpage and it contained some real anomalies. First of all, there were six telephone exchange areas where identically 100% of the possible connections had voted. This meant for example that in Madingley which has 2,132 connections -every one- of these had had somebody use it to enter the competition and vote. Of these six exchange areas, five were selected as winners by BT. (This must mean that the one exchange area that got 100% of the votes and did not win must possess some fairly disgruntled people). [I know that this is now out of date and BT has made the sixth site a winner]
I now come to my observations which make me think it is extremely likely that underhand things have been going on.

I find it extremely difficult to believe that any campaign could actually get 100% of those addresses that have Internet connections to actually vote. For a start, there are going to be people who are working abroad or staying in a second home abroad for the duration of the competition and these people wouldn't have voted. Also there have got to be people that haven't heard about it.

I suspect that some sort of technical means, the sort of thing that could be arranged by a telephone engineer with the right knowledge, has been employed. Leading some support to this hypothesis is the fact that two of the exchanges, Madingley and Caxton are not only adjacent to each other but are both on the outskirts of Cambridge. It is well-known that Cambridge has and is being used as a flagship and testing site for the rollout of BT�s superfast broadband. Is it just coincidence that not one but two of the winning sites, each with a score of the magical 100%, is slap bang where BT would most like them to be?

Furthermore, looking at the overall population of places and votes several things are interesting. The place next to those that scored 100% of votes had a score of 78.8%, quite a gap from 100%, I think that this could indicate that this place had tried very hard, but by normal means. The very fact that there is a cluster of six places with scores of 100% and then a gap of 21% strikes me as in itself an anomaly.

Another fact, my business partner lives in an exchange for which a vote count of zero is recorded in the results table. However he registered a vote in that area. He is naturally baffled by this. This is in spite of the fact that where he lives is a sizeable conurbation. That indicates that BT can't collect the data accurately. As there is a long list of telephone code areas (about 2000 I think) with no votes recorded, one has to presume that there are many other similar errors.

If you wish to see the results of the voting yourself go to the following webpage
http://racetoinfinityandbeyond.veadas.net/league

However, when I tried to access this webpage a couple of days ago I could not get a connection to it (and I tried three times). This makes me suspect that BT might have taken it down. However right now the page is still in Google's cache so if you type the following into Google
bt race to infinity league table
and then click on the "cached" button on the first thing that comes up you will see the results. I have kept a local copy of these results by cut-and-paste.

I think this whole thing stinks and seeing as hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of benefit are going to accrue to the winning sites I am most unhappy about it going to sites where I think cheating has almost certainly occurred.

Good luck in getting the newspapers interested.

You won't find much interest I fear as the papers are currently much more interested in bashing banks rather then BT.

My MP is Ed Vaizey who is supposed to have an interest in telecoms from a government perspective. He won't respond to emails on the subject either which is rather sad, but what I expected as he is a complete waste of time when it comes to local issues.

It is obvious something went wrong but no one is interested.

At best campaigners who spent money could try suing BT but there is little chance of success as laws covering the area are very �vague� I have been informed.

I am quite tempted to lob a small claims court claim in just for the sake of it, but have yet to investigate whether a claim even comes under the small claims court jurisdiction and whether I risk costs against me.

Given the state of UK courts the likelihood of a judge finding in favour of the campaigners is zero. It doesn't involve illegal immigrants or sex discrimination and hence they will have no interest in applying the law fairly/imaginatively. However BT might settle out of court just to avoid the hastle of small claims court proceedings.


The real cost to BT is that have got nothing out of the campaign. Local campaigners have raised awareness of a service BT can't/won't provide to their area now. Promoting BT infinity to areas that can't obtain it is crazy marketing. Locally several people are switching from BT as they are now aware that BT aren't investing in their exchange and have been made aware that other ISP's can match BT's service for less money by local campaigners. Others may see it differently but I just don�t see what BT hoped to get out of this farce.

In reply to a post by Arcticfox49:

I have had a good look at the results webpage and it contained some real anomalies. First of all, there were six telephone exchange areas where identically 100% of the possible connections had voted. This meant for example that in Madingley which has 2,132 connections -every one- of these had had somebody use it to enter the competition and vote. Of these six exchange areas, five were selected as winners by BT. (This must mean that the one exchange area that got 100% of the votes and did not win must possess some fairly disgruntled people). [I know that this is now out of date and BT has made the sixth site a winner]
I now come to my observations which make me think it is extremely likely that underhand things have been going on.

I find it extremely difficult to believe that any campaign could actually get 100% of those addresses that have Internet connections to actually vote. For a start, there are going to be people who are working abroad or staying in a second home abroad for the duration of the competition and these people wouldn't have voted. Also there have got to be people that haven't heard about it.

Madingley & Caxton did NOT get 100% of all possible votes, as has been explained ad nauseam in this thread. Moreover you claim the voting population is "100% of those addresses that have Internet connections". That is WRONG. Premises without internet were quite entitled to vote.

Both exchanges cover villages which have udergone huge & rapid expansion over the last couple of years, and it seems that BT's database of addresses is way out of date. That was established long before the end of the competition by our "doorstepping" team, who visited every address (so everyone knew about it!). The only reason all 6 winning exchanges show 100% is that the league table software cannot show >100%

The sheer scale of our campaigns had to be seen to be believed - all the parish councils were on board, even our MP, a Government Secretary, took time to turn up at the local Morrisons to show his support.

If the results look weird blame BT not us - it is their fault & their PR disaster

of course its weird

I am not saying there has been cheating, however the 100% yes vote for FTTC isnt a practical or realistic result. It would be a near miracle to even get 100% to vote on the issue never mind vote yes and give out their address etc.

However that to me is a side issue to the point that the whole thing itself is a farce and unfair to larger exchanges because it was % based.

Does anyone have a leaflet I could adapt to encourage my local rural community to register an interest in FTTC being laid to our village. Our exchange is due to be enable on 1st March 2012, and I have read on the BT site that rollout is influenced by interest shown, however our village 5.5KM from exchange is not on rollout plan.