41 new FTTC enabled exchanges

FTTC rollout has been announced for 41 "market towns" by Q1 2012

Full details here - http://www.btplc.com/News/Articles/Showarticle.cfm?A...

ALFRETON
East Midlands
Derbyshire

BALDOCK
East of England
Hertfordshire

BATHGATE
Scotland
Lothian

BILLINGE
North West
Merseyside

BISHOP AUCKLAND
North East
Durham

BLANDFORD
South West
Dorset

DALKEITH
Scotland
Lothian

DARTMOUTH
South West
Devon

DEREHAM
East of England
Norfolk

DEVIZES
South West
Wiltshire

DORKING
South East
Surrey

EDINBURGH MUSSELBURGH
Scotland
Lothian

EPPING
East of England
Essex

FAVERSHAM
South East
Kent

FILEY
Yorkshire and The Humber
North Yorkshire

FRINTON- ON-SEA
East of England
Essex

GREAT DUNMOW
East of England
Essex

HALSTEAD
East of England
Essex

HUNGERFORD
South East
Berkshire

KIDLINGTON
South East
Oxfordshire

KNUTSFORD
North West
Cheshire

MIRFIELD
Yorkshire and The Humber
West Yorkshire

MONTROSE
Scotland
Tayside

MORPETH
North East
Northumberland

NANTWICH
North West
Cheshire

NEWMARKET
East of England
Suffolk

OSWESTRY
West Midlands
Shropshire

PENRITH
North West
Cumbria

PONTYCYMMER
Wales
Mid Glamorgan

RAINFORD
North West
Merseyside

RIPLEY
East Midlands
Derbyshire

ROYSTON, SOUTH YORKSHIRE
Yorkshire and The Humber
South Yorkshire

SANDWICH
South East
Kent

SHEERNESS
South East
Kent

SHERINGHAM
East of England
Norfolk

STOCKSBRIDGE
Yorkshire and The Humber
South Yorkshire

STOURPORT
West Midlands
Hereford & Worcester

WALLINGFORD
South East
Oxfordshire

WENDOVER
South East
Buckinghamshire

WESTBURY
South West
Wiltshire

WIMBORNE
South West
Dorset

Edited by deleted (Wed 12-Jan-11 12:13:08)

Penrith, Cumbria

What will the sheep do with all that bandwidth!

50% wool, 50% Fibre...40c wash.

And that means?

haha sheringham wow, I think I seen it all now. This rollout is just crazy.

The sad thing is norfolk has many not spots and sheringham is not one of them, has its own exchange so just about all the town has max speed on adsl1.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 12-Jan-11 17:59:49)

it's not about not-spots, it's about customers for ISPs.

Yay good to see Oswestry on the list. Funny how it took sky and talktalk installing llu to get BT off there ass and upgrade the exchange from ADSL1.

Of the 41 exchanges announced, none met the qualifying level of 1,000 votes in BT�s Race to Infinity customer demand survey.

The highest finisher of the 41 is Wallingford in 345th place (7.07%).

14 of the 41 exchanges being upgraded polled fewer than 100 votes, with Billinge managing just 15 votes from 3,365 possible.

Data:

1. Race to Infinity Final Result (all 2,495 exchanges)

2. Race to Infinity Final Result (41 exchanges announced for upgrade on 21st Jan 2011)

Hi,
I think you have to take this press release with a pinch of salt and it looks good for BT. Just wish BT would get their act together and get exchanges that should have been live last year and still have not gone live.

not in this case it isnt, they wont find many in sheringham. also a long way from the nearest 21CN exchange so bit of a cable run to get it hooked up to WBC backhaul.

This list is about PR.

Edited by Chrysalis (Thu 13-Jan-11 09:13:42)

I have to agree with you, I personally have seen plenty of viable locations, but not upto me

Well all i can say for the roll out is money money money

Morpeth is one of the North East exchanges and is a fairly well to do Market Town so serious ability to recap investment here.

Of course the fact that 41 areas have some good news is overridden by people on the internet annoyed it has not come to their town yet. Perhaps there should be a 6 month public enquiry every time BT wants to enable some more exchanges for FTTC or FTTP, to decide on the fairest roll out plan.

5500 exchanges out there, so lots of unhappy people are bound to happen.

An exchange DOES NOT have to have WBC in it for FTTC to work, they can use an existing fibre (or new) in the exchange to backhaul back to another WBC exchange.

Penrith!!!!!

Carlisle is the capital of cumbria and the CITY where all the administration centres are, to be honist i think we should get it before they do.

Still its about time cumbria got something

With the greatest possible respect MrS, Billinge is on that list. It is a couple of miles from where I grew up (I was born there) so I know a bit about it.

Billinge reportedly got a grand total of 15 registrations in the race. Billinge is not a market town. It is hard to see why it is of interest here. Billinge Hill and the former Billinge Hospital are the two things it is most famous for (and it's not very famous). It also has a collection of communications masts at the top of the hill...

Sumfink odd here. If rollout is resource constrained (not enough money or people) this seems like an odd place to be on the list.

A very similar story could be told about Rainford, just down the road.

As stated elsewhere, remember that the Race to Infinity was a BT Retail activity, the deployment to 41 market towns was an Openreach announcement. It would be very odd if the results of the Retail competition influenced the total FTTC/P deployment - I'm sure other service providers would have concerns!

All the many comments posted here and against the news item show is that you can't please all of the people all of the time, its a sort of reverse NIMBYism. Of course it IS in my backyard so I'm happy anyway.

I presume, if someone could be bothered to look at this, that the 41 towns would have some degree of commonality. No idea what this would be - number of lines, population, density, geographc spread? Or perhaps a combination of these. This may help to explain why these and not some other, apparently more obvious, locations have been included?

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

5500 exchanges out there, so lots of unhappy people are bound to happen.

Being attached to one an exchange where there are no published plans I can agree about that!

I just hope that the fact that more exchanges have been announce menas that BT consider FTTC to be financially attractive, and so even more exchanges will follow.

they can but it of course costs money.

I will simply refuse to accept a little seaside town that is empty half the year, is a long way away from a WBC exchange is more viable than various areas that have been skipped.

Note that BT specifically mentioned these are market towns, if it wasnt for PR why did they feel the need to mention these towns in their own seperate announcement.

They still haven't decided to enable at least ONE of the THREE Norwich exchanges.
I really don't understand how they make these decisions...

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

Note that BT specifically mentioned these are market towns, if it wasnt for PR why did they feel the need to mention these towns in their own seperate announcement.

I thought it odd as well. Brackley is a market town and BT didn't feel the need to point it out when they announced our FTTC date last year. Of course we're also a market 3 exchange so we don't qualify as being 'poor, downtrodden and deprived of internet access'.

So yeah, I'd say BT are trying to milk the announcement for PR value.

Edited by Andrue (Fri 14-Jan-11 09:11:06)

Perhaps its because John Major has a weekend place on the North Norfolk coast and needs faster BB.

In reply to a post by evilpie1992:

Yay good to see Oswestry on the list. Funny how it took sky and talktalk installing llu to get BT off there ass and upgrade the exchange from ADSL1.

It seemed to be the reverse in Llandudno. BT announced 21cn would go live in March. About two months after that announcement TalkTalk announced their LLU would go live in February. Curiously TT's LLU closed for new orders within a couple of weeks and from what my parents have heard no one of their existing customers was invited to move over. The really annoying thing is that TT removed the discount on their IPStream service because the exchange now offered both.

I don't really understand why Burton-Upon-Trent is not on the list with 32k+ lines, which most can't even get a 2mb service, exchange did well in the race to infinity,

massive industrial town which has been completly ignored.

So yeah, I'd say BT are trying to milk the announcement for PR value

Hardly a hanging offence for any commercial organisation!

Not based on the size of change but demand in the area/uptake of broadband and current service options like LLU & cable.

Ima go with density. Just a hunch.

did BT work by the logic zero demand in a not spot means not worth doing the area?

Sheerness a market town ???

SHEERNESS ????

There are many descriptions one could apply to Sheerness, but "market town" sure isn't one of them.....

Well I'm over the moon about this - couldn't quite believe that my exchange (Epping) has made it onto the rollout list.

Not that Epping is particularly rural, having its own London Underground station, bordered by the M25 & M11, and being constantly stretched by housing developments. Also we already have a Virgin Media 50Mbps option (although I'd never go with them) and ADSL2+ via LLU (shortly to be via BT wholesale too).

So yes, we are a 'market town' (i.e. there is a market held weekly) but it's a bit far to suggest we are deep in the middle of nowhere!

Still, not complaining about being on the list

the Sheringham FTTC rollout is a further snub (from BT) to the people that set up the North Norfolk Broadband (wireless) project in 2003