Going Nowhere Fast

Hi Everyone,

I moved into my house in a rural part of East Renfrewshire, near Glasgow over a year ago. At that time, we were on an EO line with very slow ADSL speeds. Soon after we moved in, OR engineers turned up to replace most of the telegraph poles and said they were installing fibre from one of the local cabinets along the telegraph pole route in preparation for offering fttp. At about the same time, BT moved us from an EO line to a local cabinet. This cabinet was still a considerable distance from our house but they offered an fttc product which I ordered. At least that now gave me 7mb/sec instead of 3.

Over the following 8 months, I regularly checked the OR website for fttp availability then around 4 months ago, further OR engineers visited the road for a couple of weeks. Not sure what they were doing, but they said it was further prep for fttp.

Another 4 months on though and there's still no fttp available. It's now been 13 months since the original work was done to install the fibre. What's most frustrating is that you can't get an answer from anyone. Any approach to OR or SuperfastScotland is met with either no response at all or a set response that tells me nothing.

I presume since a lot of effort has gone into running fibre cables along 2 miles of telegraph poles that we'll actually get offered fttp at some point in the future. Is there really no way of getting a timetable from anyone? I've lost all credibility with my kids who are sick of my "coming soon" promises!

How long is the piece of string I am holding? Answer that and the mystery will be known.

Priorities in Scotland are about getting the numbers up as quick as possible, so likely that the more dense FTTC areas will get priority, but this may change as the New Year rolls in.

In Wales a different picture as little VDSL2 left to do, but lots of FTTP to do, so if they finish that you might some Welsh staff visiting Scotland for a few weeks in the New Year.