I think the fact that you only cite exchanges is somewhat misleading as to the overall delivery program. Its far worse than it appears.
Your first statement is fully accurate. Your second is conjecture, and you are fully welcome on here to express your own opinions.
As you note elsewhere, this discussion has gotten heated - mostly because of previous discussions that have become equally heated. Bob_s2 is of the opinion that BT's project is going badly, and throws the number of exchanges up as evidence (usually only as a number or list, but no link to show where he got the numbers). The source of his/her grievance seems to be that many individual cabinets don't hit their initial targetted dates.
The heat usually comes when other posters show different statistics, and their sources... and I'm part of this second bunch. As someone else points out, we're only feeding the troll - but the only other option is to let the unjustified statistics (often provably wrong) and the consequent unjustified conclusion stand unchallenged.
What they are doing is enabling maybe only 50% of the cabinets in any given exchange.
The figure has been actually more like 80-90% of lines, but what this equates to in percentage of cabinets isn't clear. Some lines on each exchange have no cabinet, and (as yet) have no access to FTTC, which makes a direct comparison hard.
This 80-90% figure tends to match the experience of the exchange areas I've seen installation work take place.
So they essentially take credit i.e. get a tick in the box for an "enabled exchange" .... but as they havent upgraded all the cabinets only 50% of the people will actually benefit.
When the marketing department first announce that an exchange is enabled, there will be very few cabinets ready. BT themselves said that that the exchange will go live when 10 cabinets are ready, but some posters on here say it has happened with fewer.
However it is certain that BT continue to install and activate cabinets in an area well after the initial activation date for the exchange. Some of the cabinets just happen to be later in the same phase, while some are delayed for months - power installation, duct blockages, and roadwork notification delays all play their part in adding delays to any one cabinet, but the global programme carries on unabated while the problems are dealt with. Some cabinets are "in-filled" in later project phases - presumably they were unviable at first, but then become viable.
Anyway, we agree that the announcement of an active exchange is indeed only a marketing-based "tick box" and publicity-generation exercise.
And we definitely agree that it bears no resemblance to the actual progress of the national rollout.
My opinion is that these press releases are the ones that appeal to Joe Public most - because he only cares about *his* broadband connection, and only really knows the town he resides in - probably not always knowing the exchange name, and almost certainly not knowing the cabinet number. An exchange is the most "relatable" bit of information.
It looks like they are doing this to hit KPI's and basically following up with another phase where they capture the other 50% at a later date.
If you think that an announcement of the activation of the exchange is a KPI, or even the key KPI, then you are right.
However, BT also have a tendency to make two other types of press release that show the progress - but these are of interest to telco professionals & politicians more than the man in the street.
These announcements are for the number of premises passed, and for the expected end-date of the rollout.
I tend to follow these numbers...
Clearly the KPI is flawed and more worryingly they are "way off" their schedule.
We know the UK has around 28 million lines, and 26 million premises, of which 2 million are business premises. Very roughly.
BT say they have 80,000 cabinets. So we also have a very rough figure of number of lines, or number of properties, per cabinet.
We know they are targetting somewhere between 16 million and 19 million properties in the rollout so far (16 million commercial, 3 million in BDUK projects won so far, but the latest press releases seem to confuse these numbers a little).
So when BT announce that they have passed 12 million properties, we have an idea about how the rollout is going nationally. When we see them sustain 1 million properties per quarter, and peak higher, we can estimate how they are doing against their end-date. We can see the average number of lines per cabinet, and get a feel for the number of cabinets being converted.
When BT announce that their end-date is a year earlier then planned (end-2014 instead of end-2015), we get a feel that the rollout is indeed "way off chedule", but actually in a good way. When they later announce that the end-date is another 6-9 months earlier (Spring 2014), we get a feel that things are progressing well.
So which KPI gives us the best feel for whether the project is going well or badly?
Havent they been given a fortune by the goverment i.e. you and I to get all this sorted?
In this part of the rollout (ie the commercial rollout to 66% of the population), the money is all from BT - about £2.5 billion. None from the government.
Hidden alongside this rollout is the fact that Northern Ireland and Cornwall have their own projects in place that already make use of public funding - but it is mostly European Union money that has been added there. These have higher coverage targets.
In the next part of the rollout, BDUK funding is meant to take the rest of the UK (on a county-by-county basis) from 66% to 90%, targeting non-commercially-viable areas that are still "reasonably" densely populated (Norfolk, for example, are targetting areas where the density is at least 100 people per square kilometre).
The UK central government funding is over £500 million, and the local councils are meant to add a similar level of funding, then BT (or whoever wins the bid for each county) is meant to top this up too. Some counties are attracting further EU funding too. Presumably this all goes together to create a project of £1.5 billion or so.
The BDUK projects haven't gone too far yet - with North Yorkshire being the only place to have felt the effect, with many exchanges being added to the plans for 2013 and 2014, and 1 new cabinet being unveiled with a fanfare in December. The current targets are for this work (across the UK) to be done by 2015, but there are many counties still to sort out their procurement plans.
There is further money for the "super-connected cities" and there seems to be another £300 million of government funds for future projects that isn't quite announced yet, but the various players talk about it as though it were fact.
The final part of bob_s2's worry (or paranoia) is that the BDUK projects come with penalty clauses, and that this will cause BT to naturally delay the commercial rollout for fear of those penalties. Not that anyone has *seen* a penalty clause yet, nor debated its nature...
If he/she worked for Microsoft, I'd just label it as FUD.
Anyway if its 66% of households as opposed to exchanges? ...... good lord they are on a slippery slope then.
Its is indeed 66%, but "of what" is a little unclear. It is usually taken to be "66% of premises" rather than "lines", but isn't always clear whether the premises are restricted to households, or include the business premises too. It could be "66% of population" too.
In the commercial rollout, BT have tended to avoid cabinets in business areas. That is either because they really don't fit the "viability" model, or they are scared that it will disrupt the (highly-priced) leased-line business.
So for me, it all seems to point at being a residential target. i.e. 66% of households.
Of the 66% target (16 million premises), they were at 12 million back in October, and had passed 6 million in the 12 months to that date. Does that imply a slippery slope?
It isn't yet clear how things will go in the BDUK projects. The early counties, the most rural ones, have included some "European Regional Development Fund" (ERDF) money in their project - and this is *meant* to be used specifically *for* small & medium business generation. That must result in the counties requiring SFBB coverage of business premises more than BT have done in the commercial rollout so far.
And yes it is a fortune. They will garner far more through their re-sale/licenses and ongoing maintenance contracts.
The BDUK funding comes with some clawback requirements too. If the funded cabinets attract more business than expected, some of the funding can be clawed back from those areas, and used to fund further expansion instead.
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