BT seem to be makinhg exactly the same mistakes that they made with ADSL and focus on rooling it out to the large central exchanges where take up tends to be low as they have a high level of small businesses and most dont need high speed Broad band
BT are pretty useless at planning & marketing hence the constant shifting sands and conflicting information from them. I doubt BT will ever change though.
this rollout isnt following that pattern nationwide.
from what I can see its concentrating on expense per home passed and affluency of area.
so short line areas with a richer populace are favoured, and density per cabinet as well.
What I posted on the news item was this.
1 - BT missed the boat, this rollout came years too late, should have been done when the likes of sky and O2/BE started getting customers, now people on good lines on a good LLU isp arent finding FTTC tempting enough to switch, even on good lines on 21CN possibly also the same. Going for VM enabled areas certianly seems a mistake as anyone who will pay for higher speed already will have a home with VM and yes I will say it that even going to my area would be a bad move now as VM have sown it up they got here first.
2 - Richer people I suspect have a lesser reliance on the internet than poorer people and are less likely to want higher speed products due to less likely to do things like film downloading. So I think the affluency thing is a daft idea.
3 - concentrating on shorter line areas as a priority due to lower rollout costs, this reduces the WOW factor as someone on 16mbit going to 40mbit is ok but it s way better for someone to get a jump from 0.5mbit to 15mbit+. Also in the latter situation a premium can be charged as the customer will be more desperate.
4 - the areas that got picked for PR reasons. Bad idea in terms of numbers signing up although the PR gains may bear fruits.
In reality they should have targeted the following areas in my view (almost opposite to what they done).
Areas with little competition, especially VM.
Areas with no and slow spots.
Areas with customers more dependant on internet and heavier usage. This I expect be poorer areas for majority of time. Whilst more affluent areas may have higher actual takeup (assuming yarwell facts correct), I suspect they will be more based on light users who just have it for very occasional use. VM utilisation stats indicate poorer areas have higher utilisation, and richer areas poorer utilisation.