In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

I'm trying to work out why Edinburgh is getting twice as many FTTP exchanges as London despite having 1/15th of the population in a lower density urban conurbation.

I'm trying to work out where you got your numbers from.

If they were from this (updated 12/01/2011), there are 3 x exchanges in Edinburgh (City of - there is no Greater Edinburgh conurbation) and 4 x exchanges in London (G.L.A. area - not just the City of).

EDINBURGH FOUNTAINBRIDGE ESFOU FTTC/P Lothian Dec 2011
EDINBURGH NEWINGTON ESNEW FTTC/P Lothian Sep 2011
EDINBURGH WAVERLEY ESWAV FTTC/P Lothian Dec 2011

FOREST HILL LSFOR FTTC/P Greater London Jun 2011
HIGHAMS PARK LNHPK FTTP Greater London Accepting CP orders now.
LEYTONSTONE LNLEY FTTC/P Greater London Mar 2011
MAYFAIR WEWMAY FTTC/P Greater London Mar 2012 (added since 07/01/2011)

The 3 x Edinburgh exchanges are all city centre locations as is Mayfair (I've walked/driven past that exchange a million times and didn't realise it was there - even when there was a BT van stuffed in the entrance. 0 out of 10 for observation!).

A more appropriate question related to that document would be;

Why does the London Borough of Waltham Forest get 1 x FTTC/P + 1 x FTTP (1 x FTTP has to be worth 2 x FTTP/C) exchanges, when it's in the top 10% of the most deprived local authorities in England (Lewisham's in the top 20%...)?

As has been suggested elsewhere, if the FTTP roll-out was based purely on population density, The Royal Borough of Kensington & Chelsea would be full FTTP already.

There's no FTTP on that list for RBKC!

The problem with London is down to planning permission.

Harringay was one of the first places to get FTTC and yet the council bitched and whined over the size and location of the cabs BT had to come back and spend even more money relocating them.

St Albans just to the north of London was even worse with the locals there kicking off and trying to get a national campaign going to stop BT rolling out fibre.

I expect BT would love to go into Kensington and Chelsea but I wonder if the council and locals would be very snobby indeed.

I expect Manchester, Liverpool and Edinburgh concils even though they are a lot smaller only have one city council to work with who seems to be very happy with getting fibre and will let BT do more.

Thats the problem with London although it is very big it also has an awful lot of councils to deal with when you want to do something across the board there.

High concentration in LBWF may have something to do with a rather large event coming in 2012