FTTP Launch, York: Just York Central or wider?

I am currently recommending our office to get a leased-line in despite the high cost because the best ADSL we get out here is ~2Mbit down and ~0.8 up (my FTTC line at home can push data out more than four times faster than the connection here can pull it in) and the bad connectivity is increasingly affecting our efficiency in serving the clients. I am currently working under the impression that Fibre-to-the-anything is not going to be available here for a couple of years as there is no FTTC date for the exchange (http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/MYACO).

I've just read http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/i/4806.html which could change the balance of my argument considerably (or at least might make signing up for longer than a year to save money a bad economy) if FTTP is likely to be available here soon.

Does "York" in the list of areas that are getting the early launch cover just premises served by York's central exchange (which is the only one with FTTC in the area right now, though one or two other local exchanges have activation dates for FTTC in Q1/Q2 2012) or will a larger area have FTTP on offer? Or will we just not know until November, after the launch?

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/i/4318.html a little more detail

Look up your postcode in http://www.google.com/fusiontables/DataSource?dsrcid...

A column on the right will show FTTC or FTTP, there may be newer spreadsheets out there.

That sheet doesn't list our area at all, or its exchange at all for that matter, so if that has any reasonable accuracy I'm safe to keep assuming we'll not be getting FTT* here any time soon and make recommendations on that basis.

Thanks for the link.

This one
http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/MYYO

Aye, that is the exchange I'm on (York Central). The office is on the near-by MYACO though (http://www.samknows.com/broadband/exchange/MYACO).

My parents are on Dringhouses but copper is over 7km

Been better since they moved from TT (TiscalI to PlusNet

The office is with Demon. I don't know the line length with any great accuracy (we are up by Poppleton, and connected via the Acomb exchange), but I doubt that we'd see any significant benefit from simply moving ISPs.

We'll just have to wait for Fibre products to finally arrive in the area or get our own fibre installed.

Parents are in Askham Bryan

Typical logical BT to route the lines under the East Coast Main Line to Dringhouses instead of to Acomb

BT's layout often makes sense when you look at it from the pre-data voice-only age.

Back than line length was not nearly as significant as it is now, so the lines were laid in a way that made them easy to maintain rather than with regard to length. Running alongside a train line means you don't have to close roads to perform installation/repairs/maintenance as you would if the lines instead followed roads, and you don't have to worry about someone building stuff (houses, new roads) on top of where the lines would be routed through if you planted then in a straight line under fields instead of following the edges of existing infrastructure, and so forth.

I'm out in YO32, and from the spreadsheet, my expected uplift is 15.13 ... BT give a date of 31/12/2011 for my cab.

Given the expected uplift you can see what miserable average BB we get, and only just out of York.

I am with O2 at the moment because the BT option only gave me around 135-160K because their line management s/w simply dropped me back in a few hours of getting anything near what would be classed as BB (1 - 1.5 meg). And just to say thanks BT, the OR folk spent most of a day testing and checking the line - right back to the exchange - did lift and shift - reset s/w and profiles etc ... installed new master socket ( I added an ADSL Nation frontplate as well). In the end, they said the line was as good as it gets - and actually, was one of the best they had seen in a while!!!

That said, I do get around 100-200 disconnects every day. The longest continuous connect would be around 30-45 mins. I do get 3.5-4.8 megs, with a NM around 3. At the moment this is OK as I get interrupted web access for a minute or so while a reconnect takes place, but I can live with that.

e.g today, I got 4 disconnects between 11:50 and 11:56 ... but have been OK now for 20 or so mins.

Trouble is O2 may not have a FTTC option in place by the time BT are selling their product. Plenty of OR vans around at the moment (more or less one on every street corner at the new cabs - in the cab and also pulling cables (ducts done/dug over the last few months. But, still see diggers around doing holes and trenches!).

So, do I opt for Infinity, or do I try my luck with eg PlusNet?

Fingers crossed that the other areas of "outer York" get some TLC from BT and FTTC. Our BB out in the sticks kas been pretty awful for some years. The best and most stable I ever had was on a fixed speed 512k line, but with so many websites using flash etc then this BB speed is just too slow. And as for OD TV services etc, well forget it - even now the lines are too unstable at the required speed.

I just get so annoyed at all the TV ads saying catch up, use this and that "i-player". It's just not good enough.

Rob