Too Far away from Cabinet FTTC?

Hi, I can not get any broadband at the moment, as I am too far away from the exchange. I have high hopes for FTTC. My exchange is Kilrea in Northern Ireland. All of the cabinets for the village have been enabled for FTTC, however when I go to check the bt wholesale checker it doesnt list FTTC being available to me. Am I too far from the cabinet to get BTs minimum of 15meg, can I not put a manual order through?

Thanks.

BT generally won't accept an order if the estimate is 15Mb or below, even though the checker is often way out on the estimated speed.

Check your number at http://adsl24.co.uk/checker/ - does it give FTTC availability and speed?

If so, we are able to accept an order straight away.

James

Edit * I see you checked the wholesale checker and this doesn't show FTTC as being available. This is likely to be because it's really too far a line from the cab, or of course BT's database is just inaccurate which would not be the first time.

Edited by deleted (Wed 06-Apr-11 22:46:43)

BT generally won't accept an order if the estimate is 15Mb or below

Thought they dropped this to 5mbps?

It could also be that there's a backlog of updating information in the checker. NI has been fortunate to get a rapid rollout so things might be lagging.

That's a sort of "Ask in the right place trial", not available through the website.

Aquiss and ADSL24 at least will take orders as low as 5Mbps, and I think all the others will take orders for the 15Mbps product on estimates of 11-12Mbps upwards, expecting it to exceed 15Mbps at installation time.

Is that speculation or based on peoples experiences of getting marginal sub 15mb predicted lines on the standard BT Infinity package. From postings I have seen it is quite apparent that the BT Checker is very very conservative with its estimates but I thought that the ISPs, especially BT, kept quite rigid to the "15mb is the minimum" mantra. BTW BT Checker showed my prediction for the first time today - 14.4mb, d'oh and woohoo at the same time

Certainly vivaciti and I maybe Xilo/uno and AAISP have accepted 15+Mps orders where the quote has been above 11Mbps, though there has always been the stipulation that if the speed found by the OR engineer at installation time is below 15Mbps then the installation is aborted and the changes reversed. The chances of yours being below 15Mbps are minimal.

Also if you look at my list, you will see two suppliers who accept orders for the 5+Mbps OR product. (I need to update that list. Plusnet now supply FTTC and BT have an unpublicised 5-15Mbps product - Broadband Option 3 with Fibre).

Thanks for the reply. I was wondering whether BT Infinity would even look at processing a sub-15mb order, even a marginal one like mine. Suppose I'd have to ring them to order when the time comes as I assume an online order would get bounced based on the BT Wholesale database figure

no m8 they wont even entertain it, when you have an estimate under 15mb and youcall infinity, the estimate dosent even show on their end it just says not available, i know ive tried as i had an estimate of 14.3, your only option is to try and get onto the bt broadband option 3 with fibre, but not many people at the call centre know this is even available yet, i had to email ian livingstone to get this package, his email is in a few posts on the bt foums.

Cheers, already have a useful contact in Ian Livingston's office. I'll try that when the time comes and then hopefully with a connection stable above 15mb I can get myself transferred onto an Infinity product. By 30th June when my exchange is due to go live I'm hoping the trial will have become a product and it'll be easier to deal with the BT Infinity team directly on all matters