The BT network is made up of Cisco and Fuji kit so... nothing new here.

And I've worked with Fuji as a company myself... I'll just leave it there, the less said the better.

I agree that Maggie's time made it hard on BT - but both BT and the cable companies were only focussed on TV.

But even when it became obvious there was a need for decent data services, the cable companies (getting fewer and fewer, and probably looking inward more & more) really couldn't be bothered to try to deliver anything decent. There was just no ambition.

Virgin are just starting to get there with headline speeds, but not on the other aspects that will turn it into a decent quality service. They'll have to go a long way before I trust them with my business.

VM has its own local loop so that is proper competition. But of course it only applies to half the country.

funny enough I see it the other way round.

BT come across to me as a company who is extremely agressive at profits and has an inherent allergy to spending money, they tend to react to what competition does instead of leading the market. VM/ntl/tw have consistently in the past decade been ahead of BT and BT will release new services as a reaction to what cable are doing. BT have been particurly agressive on the local loop resisting in many ways to spend money on it to fix problems, mostly tightening up the rules on engineer visits and now adding a large detterent to stop isp's booking callouts. FTTC is a new direction for them and that in itself is dissapointing in that (a) its not really future proof evident by the fact it will be obselete by this new network before BT even finish the rollout, (b) it has one of the strangest rollout plans I have seen from a major telco. My MP is even going to mention to parliament she has had many complaints about why BT have targeted affluent areas in the county, as it seems I am not the only one who complained.

We come back to this illusion that somehow rural areas have much worse local loop infrastructure than cities, this has been pushed again and again in the media including this site, people like prince charles even joining in, now the result is a tory party who tend to be pro affluent anyway are dishing out subsidies for rural rollout and BT/VM seem to be targeting outer city areas for investment. At least in VM's case tho their current infrastructure is substantially better than BT's. I keep saying it and will say it again, the new final 3rd as far as BT goes is poor city areas. Luckily a lot of them may have VM cable access.

Edited by Chrysalis (Fri 15-Apr-11 07:58:22)

Because the internet for the public did not exist - some people forget how recent the creation of a web browser and integration of TCP/IP into consumer OS's is

Cisco just an equipment supplier?

You are joking they are a world class player. They are the largest suplier of Network equipment and have world class R&D. They are critical to this consortium as are Fujitsu. If you think they are just there for the ride you are very wrong they are both critical members of the consiortium

The fact that these tow world class players have come on board gives great credibility to this.

THe Consortium has no option but to push the rural angle as that is what the governement is pushing so they need to target rural to leaverage the government money. There is of cause the slight issue as to what they mean by rural.
Targeting the really rural areas is not realy sensiblee as it takes a great deal of time and money to benefit a very small number of people.

I think the consortiums primary focus will be infilling and building out from their existing coverage area as you benefit the most people as quickly as possible and at the lowest cost

LOL. That's more of an indictment on the lack of vision of the "consumer OS" than anything else.

But it is a good point - none of this stuff gets installed by a private company unless there is strong public demand.

So while we can harp on about "vision", it is the practical aspect of "what can the technology deliver now, that people want now", that is key. For anyone with an existing access network, the question gets augmented with "preferably resuing as much of our previous investments as possible".

Lots of people talk like this is an extension to the Virgin Media network?

Surely VM are just another buyer of services, if VM has the ability to skew the network roll-out to go where it wants to then that should be seen as anti-competitive

In reply to a post by Andrue:

In reply to a post by camieabz:

The mention of ten years got me thinking.

Same here. I've posted this previously on the Be forums:

"I moved into my house in mid '99.

*My first connection was a modem using CompuServe Classic as my ISP. I think that would have been k56 connecting at 44kb but might only have been 33kb.

*Sometime the next year I got Home Highway and connected at either 64kb or if I felt that I could justify the cost 128kb.

*2002 ADSL arrived in Brackley so I got a 2Mb connection. I remember paying for an engineer install because it was the only way to get a free downgrade back to HH if my line couldn't support ADSL. In hindsight that was daft paranoia but at least it left me with a filtered faceplate

*2006 ADSL max arrived and I got the full 8Mb that IPStream could provide.

*2007 Be chucked some kit into my exchange and now I have 13.5Mb during the summer and 12.5Mb during the winter.

Not a bad progression really. Ten years to go from 33k to 13.5Mb. I suppose the next leap will be FTTC and by my estimates that ought to get me at least 30Mb/s maybe closer to 40Mb/s. As to when..hmmm. Probably sometime in the next three years. I hope that since we're a market 3 exchange we will be on the list. On the other hand I remember that we were on the third ADSL rollout list which got canned and became a general roll out."

That was posted December 2009. Shortly afterward I found that my line would support their standard profile so now my speeds are 13.5 winter, 14.2 summer. Brackley has been announced as getting FTTC in December 2011.

So there we have it. 44kb/s to 30Mb/s in 12 years. Not bad for a small rural town

My experiences will probably give some context to my comments, dates are approx

1999 - Harlow - 45kbps dialup
1999 - Harlow - ntl 512kbps cable then 1Mbps cable (256kbps ADSL possible)
2001 - Welwyn Garden City - back to 28.8kbps dialup - no cable, no ADSL (poor quality lines)
2001 - Welwyn Garden City - 1Mbps cable then 2Mbps cable (moved a mile from the above)
2003 - Harlow (godawful estate called Church Langley) - 2Mbps cable, no ADSL
2004 - Blackpool: home 7150kbps ADSL (300m from exchange) office 4Mbps Telewest cable (no ADSL - poor quality lines)
2006 - near Alton, Hampshire - 1.7Mbps ADSL (3680m line length, poor quality line) or 2.5Mbps to 3Mbps 3G

Back in 1999 I thought "it won't be long before the whole country has cable and can get broadband" and 12 years later, we're up to, what, half the country.

It's still the case that if you want to be guaranteed broadband where you're going, it's not 100% possible, but the only way is to make sure as best you can is to check where you're moving is cabled; everything else is a punt.

And I mean "get broadband", not "get ADSL".

The place in Harlow still can only get 256kbps.
The place in Welwyn might just get 256kbps ADSL if they're lucky (wouldn't activate for me, but on a good day..)
The second place in Harlow can now get ADSL, but it's all cabled anyway

Progress? It depends on where you look. The final third has seen little or no progress in 10 years. All except one urban, perfectly simple to reach, perfectly deployable. Just not with xDSL. That "stop gap" is still being used to supply internet connectivity in 2011.

The entire country cannot live within 1.5km of BT's exchanges. Technology is meant to work for people, not the other way around.