In reply to a post by horeaa:

Interesting ... you could be right, I've missed that box. I wonder what the other 3 at the boottom of the estate are? Those 3 have no numbers on them, I'll check this one out when I go home tonight.

The label on the manhole covers in front of them will also be a clue. The cabinets will likely connect into those boxes.

There were issues with adopting the roads but as far as I know everything was sorted out last year ... this is good point, I need to confirm if they are actually adopted now. Is there an easy way to find out?

The council will know if they are now responsible for them. I guess the highways department is a good start.

According to this doc it servers quite a few postcodes in my estate (if not all) and very few outside but you could be right about the large area and more FTTC cabs required.

As your postcodes were included in that old spreadsheet, it suggests that the number of properties were counted in the 2010-2011 timeframe - although they probably counted lines, rather than properties. So they could still be running off old numbers.

The usual guesstimate here is that a cabinet needs to have of the order of 300-400 lines to get included, and we've seen ones in the high 200's get left out.

These kind of issues - uncounted properties on new-ish developments - are the kind of thing that your local BDUK project want to know about. Any place they can get BT to cover commercially means that somewhere else gets included in the county project.

Certainly there is evidence that this has been done - the Warwickshire project included an item in their newsletters that such negotiation had added 45,000 properties to the commercial rollout!

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

it may be that the first properties were feed by a cable from cab 82 which may be closer to GL501EF and latter development got its own cabinet or two.

Possible, as I have no evidence, but I remember first properties (including demo houses) were built where GL525GB shows on the map ... and that postcode is split with cab 185, so I say it's more likely before 82 was installed, cab 185 was used.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

The usual guesstimate here is that a cabinet needs to have of the order of 300-400 lines to get included, and we've seen ones in the high 200's get left out.

These kind of issues - uncounted properties on new-ish developments - are the kind of thing that your local BDUK project want to know about. Any place they can get BT to cover commercially means that somewhere else gets included in the county project.

BDUK for my area is http://www.fastershire.com. I've sent them an email but I didn't get anything back. Not a great start. They only talk about villages and no mention about not spots in towns ... anyway at this stage they don't seems to know anything about the order they will do an area. I hope you are right and my cabinet will be included by BDUK ... even if I'm surprised to see such a large estate left out by Openreach.

Can you email me [email protected] and I'll pass this onto BT and see if they can use a stick to prod the spreadsheet people.

Include contact details for yourself and the list of postcodes covered by the estate.

In reply to a post by horeaa:

Now, does anybody have any idea what this commercial criteria is?

Only BT know what their criteria are. Like all private companies they will endeavour to keep that secret to avoid their competitors finding out.

If you can work with your local council you might be able to find out what kind of subsidy would swing the balance in your favour. I believe it's been done before. In effect you take on some of the installation costs making it viable for BT.

Also as other have suggested, contact BDUK.

But ultimately it's BT's money and BT's decision. It's not like there's a legal obligation to upgrade your cabinet. It's something BT are choosing to do of their own volition and as such they can pick and choose where and when as the mood takes them.

Edited by Andrue (Thu 13-Jun-13 13:22:01)

In reply to a post by Andrue:

Only BT know what their criteria are. Like all private companies they will endeavour to keep that secret to avoid their competitors finding out.

...

But ultimately it's BT's money and BT's decision. It's not like there's a legal obligation to upgrade your cabinet. It's something BT are choosing to do of their own volition and as such they can pick and choose where and when as the mood takes them.

Competitors? What competitors!? Virgin has no cables in my estate. There is no competition ... it's a monopoly and that is the problem!
I understand that you cannot force them to enable a cabinet or another but to provide some information about some of their decisions should be the minimum they could do, especially when going from 2Mbps to 60Mbps could be, for some, a life changing experience. In my case I think they have taken the wrong decision by not counting all the houses after they�ve been built, but having no official data from them I can not be sure if that's the case. The lack of information it's the part that frustrates me most.

Virgin Media on are on the very edge of the estate, so just as easy for them to expand to new builds and gain lots more triple play customers.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Virgin Media on are on the very edge of the estate, so just as easy for them to expand to new builds and gain lots more triple play customers.

They could, and I wish they would, but probably they won't. I used to live down the road in a "Virgin area". We were in a property with 8 flats (all separate entries). 4 could get virgin and 4 couldn't. My flat couldn't but nevertheless I was getting lot of advertising from them. When I've asked them to install it ... "hmm, ooops, we can't as we need to put another cable underground and it's not worth it". So, if they can't be bothered to install a 5 meter cable to reach the next door flat why would they bother with this new estate where they need kms of cables? Anyway they should have done it by now as the roads were finished only in 2011. I doubt that the council will allow them to dig brand new tarmacked roads. As I said, I hope they would do it but I don't see it happening ... so, as it stands BT have monopoly in my estate.

Which goes back to the developer not thinking that it might be a sales feature to add:

Cable TV with superfast broadband available in all properties on the estate, by working with Virgin Media during the build phase.

Advantage to developer would be less Sky dishes spoiling the lines of their pretty new estate.

Your situation is down to lots of peoples decisions, where broadband is a long way down the list of priorities.

I couldn't agree more ... just to shame the developer: Taylor Wimpey.

I work in IT so having a good internet connection would make a massive difference: I could work from home, I could run a website, I could start my own business, etc ...

The only real choice is satellite broadband, more expensive and with its own drawbacks but if nothing happens with cabinet 82 by the end of the year I'll have to seriously consider it.