plenty of better investments than solar panels. I would rather have 4% pa and the money still available, than 6% pa and something parked on my roof.

That's the key difference - the capital is lost on solar panels unlike most investments.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

On my current understanding - no.

Depends on why they aren't upgrading your cabinet, and whether it will get done as part of a BDUK project. In short there a lot of variables that are unknown still.

That's disappointing.

I can't see any technical/physical reason for not upgrading the cabinet, and the business reasons to ignore us are (to me, at least) pretty tenuous. Personally I'm of the opinion that BT are simply dragging their heels so they get more of the BDUK/Council money, rather than investing in it themselves.

BDUK funding has been allocated to our area, but obviously I have no idea what is going to be done, nor when. Our local authority seems to be more concerned with hooking up rural areas, and expermenting with satelite tech. I don't know if they've even realised that a decent number of people living in large towns can't get near 2Mbps. There's probably enough of us to skew their statistics, so I guess I'll get in touch and point it out... seems like a no brainer to just upgrade the cabinet, but who knows.

Surely FTTP isn't dependent on cabinets being FTTC enabled? If that were the case, I can't see there would be that many takers, as most who would want it would have gone for FTTC already, and the difference between 80Mbps FTTC and 100Mbps FTTP are going to be pretty marginal for most people, especially considering the price.

Adding to MrSaffron's reply, there is also the major point that FTTC speed is "up to 80Mbps", dependent on distance from the cabinet. FTTP is 100Mbps, fixed.

And very soon 300+

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Surely FTTP isn't dependent on cabinets being FTTC enabled? If that were the case, I can't see there would be that many takers, as most who would want it would have gone for FTTC already, and the difference between 80Mbps FTTC and 100Mbps FTTP are going to be pretty marginal for most people, especially considering the price.

Adding to MrSaffron's reply, there is also the major point that FTTC speed is "up to 80Mbps", dependent on distance from the cabinet. FTTP is 100Mbps, fixed.

Sure, but I'd guess that for most people the speed available on FTTC is going to be fast enough, that FTTP would be a needless extravagance.

Especially as those getting poor speeds from FTTC are presumably some distance from the cabinet, where FTTP is also likely to be proportionally more expensive to install.

Surely there would be signifanctly more take-up and more benefit, from offering such services to people who don't already have *several* choices for superfast broadband.

I also believe that a house with fibre, is more desireable than one without.

Certainly i believe the £1500 paid, is value added to that desire, by more than £1500.

to me, i would just treat it as something that adds value to the house.

I also suspect that many people, to get FTTP, would sign a 5 year contract.

BDUK funding is for the rural 'white' areas's where the market will not invest without public funding, urban areas are not part of the project but i would not be suprised to see some cabinets enabled- particuarly those on the edge of the urban area's.