Business (fibre) broadband in Swindon

Hi,

I have just taken on business premises in the Rodbourne area of Swindon and have been looking at getting a decent internet connection. Although I understand that the SSSWN exchange has been fibre enabled it would appear that in my area Infinity is not currently available. Another option would be to go for a Virgin Media connection which seems to have quite poor offerings for businesses in comparison to residential customers. I understand a 50MB business product will be available at some point in the future in a similar way to the fact that BT says Infinity might be available in my area at some point in the future.

It's pretty hard to make any concrete plans as to the type of connectivity to go for at the moment as I don't want to tie my business down to a standard DSL connection if a fibre rollout is a matter of weeks away.

Does anyone out there know where it is possible to get concrete information on cab rollout dates for Swindon or a contact email address at the SSSWN exchange so I can ask them directly? Alternatively, I am open to suggestions for any other business (fibre) broadband providers as to what my options are.

The postcode would help us help you. Is it an industrial area, or something like a shop in an non-industrial area. BT do odd things with industrial estates and the like.

You're bound to have a phone line. So there is no need to get "tied down" anyway. There are a large number of monthly contract ADSLx suppliers.

Importantly, what do you intend to use it for? If you want a website that is far better on a commercial host, and doesn't cost the earth. What sort of email address is your business going to have, or has? It's own domain?

Thanks for the reply. The postcode is SN2 2AZ. From what I can see your average ADSLx will supply speeds in the region of 6MB down and approx 1MB up in that particular area but when compared to what you can get fibre wise I just wonder if I would be better waiting for that instead.

I've already got VPS hosting separately but would rather control the whole lot and have a server on premises hence wanting to go for fibre in an ideal world. As my business is primarily software development & consultancy I am more than happy with setting up servers (email & web) and configuring hardware - it's more a case of getting the connectivity sorted. Fixed IP and the ability to create reverse DNS entries would be useful (primarily to ensure email works correctly).

Hope that gives more info...

Edited by deleted (Wed 04-Jul-12 23:22:31)

Hmmm .

There are two cabinets serving that postcode. The December 2011 data shows cab 156 having 4%, but not scheduled for Openreach fibre, and the rest on cab 81, FTTC due in phase 5a so almost certainly available long ago.

If you've checked using the BT Wholesale checker, with the phone number for the premises, and it doesn't show FTTC, you could be stuck! Unless the line has only been in for a couple of days, as the availability database takes a few days to update on a new line.

Some ISPs will be using the April 2012 data.

Thanks for the additional info. I've used the wholesale checker and it says the exchange is enabled and when I spoke to them earlier today they said fibre could be available in the premises within weeks. However, I think I have seen information online that said the exchange was enabled as far back as December 2010 so would be surprised if any cabs that could be enabled haven't been by now.

What resource are you using showing the breakdown by cab? I'd be curious to see it.

One of my biggest issues at the moment is getting a straight answer out of BT or Virgin Media is proving difficult at the moment.

Another option I have seen somewhere before is that O2 do business broadband where they say you can get up to 2MB upload speed, if that is the case it could be a good compromise for me.

December 2011 data.

No real chance of that 2Mbps upstream on ADSL2+, on the estimates for the postcode. The downstream needs to be at least 16Mbps for you to get significantly over 1.3Mbps upstream on that product .
_{Edit - added the word "upstream" after "1.3Mbps", to avoid any confusion.}

Edited by RobertoS (Thu 05-Jul-12 09:02:33)

That's great, thanks Roberto. I'd be interested to see if anyone else has comments regarding connectivity from Virgin too.