In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I know the feeling.

Its about PR and perhaps even some political reasons for this.

2% of a 30k exchange still amounts to 300 users, anyone designing this demand league would have been well aware the likely winners were going to be small community exchanges.

I expect you have business's using lucrative leased lines in your area.

Well yes, they are also likely to be cheaper to enable, it probably takes a lot less cabinets for BT to pass 1,200 premises than an urban sprawl of 15,000 premises.

So 2% of a 30k exchange and 50% of a 1.2k exchange are a completely different proposition. Leased lines irrelevant, deployment costs in terms of fibre runs, etc, very relevant.

As a reminder this enterprise was promoted by BT Retail, these guys have a fraction of the leased line revenue of Wholesale or Openreach to lose.

In reply to a post by New_Londoner:

there were no published Rules and Regs

I seem to remember a few, such as needing to reach over 75% threshold, having more than 1000 lines, one vote per household etc?

I think the poster was referring to the actual voting process.

It does seem weird that on the first voting page the input information was verified (so the returned screen might stop you from progressing to the second screen by saying, for example, "This line already voted for" or similar) but if you got to the second voting page whatever you put in resulted in the returned screen "Congratulations, you've voted!" (or whatever it was).

Surely the process should have been either 'Rules and Regs Lite' and all the verifying done in real-time (as the first page was) or made it very clear - in the Rules and Regs - that votes would be subject to subsequent examination and verification. (With the 'Congratulations you've voted' message replaced with a more sober 'Thank you for your submission which in the coming days/weeks will be verified before it may be added to the votes cast etc'.)

(Slightly ot, I haven't yet seen any conclusive/authoritative statement which makes clear what input fields were subsequently verified.)

A bit of one and a bit of the other? That's not a process.

In reply to a post by New_Londoner:

...one vote per household etc?

I remember them too.

In the context of the Race, anyone like to define "household"?

I know but its only an artifical division. Ultimately its the same company.

or does openreach have its own seperate shareholders?

swings and roundabouts on the cost.

less cabinets yes, but also lower population density, ie more spread out houses, less multi storage flats etc. probably still overall cheaper but of course much less growth potential.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 05-Jan-11 09:33:35)

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I know but its only an artifical division. Ultimately its the same company.

or does openreach have its own seperate shareholders?

swings and roundabouts on the cost.

less cabinets yes, but also lower population density, ie more spread out houses, less multi storage flats etc. probably still overall cheaper but of course much less growth potential.

fewer!

In reply to a post by somerset:

fewer!

They're not using ducting through the sewers are they?

2% of a 30k exchange still amounts to 300 users,

and they say educational standards aren't slipping

600 users spread over multiple cabinets would be less attractive than 600 over 2 or 3, surely ?

Also the Openreach offer to all CPs to FTTC enable an area is based on percentage.

sorry yeah bad maths.

In reply to a post by Chrysalis:

I know but its only an artifical division. Ultimately its the same company.

or does openreach have its own seperate shareholders?

swings and roundabouts on the cost.

less cabinets yes, but also lower population density, ie more spread out houses, less multi storage flats etc. probably still overall cheaper but of course much less growth potential.

Doesn't matter, more than the 288 lines per cabinet means an extra cabinet is built so there's more fibre and hardware. Due to the construction of network all that matters is the number of PCPs, what's actually behind them isn't the issue and population density isn't such an issue, unlike how it would be with FTTP, as there's nothing being added past the PCP.

Growth potential isn't such an issue either, a new build again means new hardware addition that has to be done.

Regardless even BT are quite aware that FTTC is an interim and a step towards FTTP so looking at longer term growth potential isn't a major issue.

BT Retail were running this in accordance with Openreach set rules and regulations, these regulations don't take account of % of business lines.

Oh and of course, the major, major point.... this was a publicity stunt. Don't for a moment take it seriously.

How does BT know an account number for a line that is LLU or WLR is real?