Question is this

Openreach had some 25 or was it 28 exchanges that ISP's could nominate.

BT Retail has been the only to stage a stunt - what about other providers? Yes there was finanical commitments that might arise, but if competitors are serious then they need to be seen to be doing more.

A firm could simply stage a lottery draw, but I doubt any will. They will largely wait on BDUK funding, and then it will be BT plus a few smaller teleco's chasing for that. Odds of VM or TalkTalk bidding is small.

I am very glad that this thread exists. Because it does, I've just registered myself onto the forum.

I have recently tried to interest one of the national dailies in investigating this competition because I think the results stink. So far, they have not shown any interest - they haven't even replied to my e-mail.

What have I done? What follows is largely a clip from what I sent the newspaper.

I have had a good look at the results webpage and it contained some real anomalies. First of all, there were six telephone exchange areas where identically 100% of the possible connections had voted. This meant for example that in Madingley which has 2,132 connections -every one- of these had had somebody use it to enter the competition and vote. Of these six exchange areas, five were selected as winners by BT. (This must mean that the one exchange area that got 100% of the votes and did not win must possess some fairly disgruntled people). [I know that this is now out of date and BT has made the sixth site a winner]
I now come to my observations which make me think it is extremely likely that underhand things have been going on.

I find it extremely difficult to believe that any campaign could actually get 100% of those addresses that have Internet connections to actually vote. For a start, there are going to be people who are working abroad or staying in a second home abroad for the duration of the competition and these people wouldn't have voted. Also there have got to be people that haven't heard about it.

I suspect that some sort of technical means, the sort of thing that could be arranged by a telephone engineer with the right knowledge, has been employed. Leading some support to this hypothesis is the fact that two of the exchanges, Madingley and Caxton are not only adjacent to each other but are both on the outskirts of Cambridge. It is well-known that Cambridge has and is being used as a flagship and testing site for the rollout of BT�s superfast broadband. Is it just coincidence that not one but two of the winning sites, each with a score of the magical 100%, is slap bang where BT would most like them to be?

Furthermore, looking at the overall population of places and votes several things are interesting. The place next to those that scored 100% of votes had a score of 78.8%, quite a gap from 100%, I think that this could indicate that this place had tried very hard, but by normal means. The very fact that there is a cluster of six places with scores of 100% and then a gap of 21% strikes me as in itself an anomaly.

Another fact, my business partner lives in an exchange for which a vote count of zero is recorded in the results table. However he registered a vote in that area. He is naturally baffled by this. This is in spite of the fact that where he lives is a sizeable conurbation. That indicates that BT can't collect the data accurately. As there is a long list of telephone code areas (about 2000 I think) with no votes recorded, one has to presume that there are many other similar errors.

If you wish to see the results of the voting yourself go to the following webpage
http://racetoinfinityandbeyond.veadas.net/league

However, when I tried to access this webpage a couple of days ago I could not get a connection to it (and I tried three times). This makes me suspect that BT might have taken it down. However right now the page is still in Google's cache so if you type the following into Google
bt race to infinity league table
and then click on the "cached" button on the first thing that comes up you will see the results. I have kept a local copy of these results by cut-and-paste.

I think this whole thing stinks and seeing as hundreds of thousands of pounds worth of benefit are going to accrue to the winning sites I am most unhappy about it going to sites where I think cheating has almost certainly occurred.

Good luck in getting the newspapers interested.

You won't find much interest I fear as the papers are currently much more interested in bashing banks rather then BT.

My MP is Ed Vaizey who is supposed to have an interest in telecoms from a government perspective. He won't respond to emails on the subject either which is rather sad, but what I expected as he is a complete waste of time when it comes to local issues.

It is obvious something went wrong but no one is interested.

At best campaigners who spent money could try suing BT but there is little chance of success as laws covering the area are very �vague� I have been informed.

I am quite tempted to lob a small claims court claim in just for the sake of it, but have yet to investigate whether a claim even comes under the small claims court jurisdiction and whether I risk costs against me.

Given the state of UK courts the likelihood of a judge finding in favour of the campaigners is zero. It doesn't involve illegal immigrants or sex discrimination and hence they will have no interest in applying the law fairly/imaginatively. However BT might settle out of court just to avoid the hastle of small claims court proceedings.


The real cost to BT is that have got nothing out of the campaign. Local campaigners have raised awareness of a service BT can't/won't provide to their area now. Promoting BT infinity to areas that can't obtain it is crazy marketing. Locally several people are switching from BT as they are now aware that BT aren't investing in their exchange and have been made aware that other ISP's can match BT's service for less money by local campaigners. Others may see it differently but I just don�t see what BT hoped to get out of this farce.

In reply to a post by Arcticfox49:

I have had a good look at the results webpage and it contained some real anomalies. First of all, there were six telephone exchange areas where identically 100% of the possible connections had voted. This meant for example that in Madingley which has 2,132 connections -every one- of these had had somebody use it to enter the competition and vote. Of these six exchange areas, five were selected as winners by BT. (This must mean that the one exchange area that got 100% of the votes and did not win must possess some fairly disgruntled people). [I know that this is now out of date and BT has made the sixth site a winner]
I now come to my observations which make me think it is extremely likely that underhand things have been going on.

I find it extremely difficult to believe that any campaign could actually get 100% of those addresses that have Internet connections to actually vote. For a start, there are going to be people who are working abroad or staying in a second home abroad for the duration of the competition and these people wouldn't have voted. Also there have got to be people that haven't heard about it.

Madingley & Caxton did NOT get 100% of all possible votes, as has been explained ad nauseam in this thread. Moreover you claim the voting population is "100% of those addresses that have Internet connections". That is WRONG. Premises without internet were quite entitled to vote.

Both exchanges cover villages which have udergone huge & rapid expansion over the last couple of years, and it seems that BT's database of addresses is way out of date. That was established long before the end of the competition by our "doorstepping" team, who visited every address (so everyone knew about it!). The only reason all 6 winning exchanges show 100% is that the league table software cannot show >100%

The sheer scale of our campaigns had to be seen to be believed - all the parish councils were on board, even our MP, a Government Secretary, took time to turn up at the local Morrisons to show his support.

If the results look weird blame BT not us - it is their fault & their PR disaster

of course its weird

I am not saying there has been cheating, however the 100% yes vote for FTTC isnt a practical or realistic result. It would be a near miracle to even get 100% to vote on the issue never mind vote yes and give out their address etc.

However that to me is a side issue to the point that the whole thing itself is a farce and unfair to larger exchanges because it was % based.

Does anyone have a leaflet I could adapt to encourage my local rural community to register an interest in FTTC being laid to our village. Our exchange is due to be enable on 1st March 2012, and I have read on the BT site that rollout is influenced by interest shown, however our village 5.5KM from exchange is not on rollout plan.