BDUK Information

I'm assuming that my Exchange (CMKING) is being evaluted by the BDUK project for FTTC..

Is there anyway I can get any estimated dates for decisions and/or roll out.

Are you in the Birmingham City Council area?

NOTE If area has lots/total coverage of Virgin Media coverage then not likely to qualify for state aid funding, since a superfast service is already available

Yes I'm in BCC area.

Only way I expect it to be done is if Openreach revisit their roll-out plans and do it commercially, there is a chance as they have talked about an extra £50m of roll-out

Birmingham City Council is part of the connection voucher scheme
http://www.thinkbroadband.com/connection-voucher.html
Which is only available to SME business use

Well I'm not positive if it is BDUK but can't get in touch with openreach any more or I'm unaware of how to to confirm details.

IIRC Birmingham refused their allocation of BDUK funding, and isn't taking part in any BDUK project.

At the time of initial allocation of funds (ie for the 90% target), they were grouped alongside Dudley, Sandwell, Walsall and Wolverhampton as a "West Midlands" group. The remnants of the group have a "Black Country" broadband project running, but it has been a bit under-the-radar so far - it looks to be focussing on the 2nd tranche of funding (ie the 95% target).

LEP plans:
http://www.blackcountrylep.co.uk/place/broadband-plan

I thought this was the case, I got in contact with someone from Birmingham City council and it seemed they didn't know much did say my exchange was considered to not commercially viable which is what I got from Openreach over a year ago when rollouts started to happen.....

I also was told that virgin media was one of the companies involved in bringing superfast technologies to Birmingham and my area has is all virgin cable covered and is the most popular provider due to speed, I've been told in the past that if an area is covered widely by virgin or another superfast provider then Openreach would more than likely not even consider a fibre rollout.

The virgin network in my area runs well and I'm also looking into there big kahuna deal.... Might just stop with them as the future with them could be bright.

Very frustrating decisions, don't want to recontract for 12 months then FTTC comes along.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

I've been told in the past that if an area is covered widely by virgin or another superfast provider then Openreach would more than likely not even consider a fibre rollout.

Not quite right - BT have been overlaying a large percentage of the VM area, so they certainly do consider it. However, it can only happen as part of their self-funded commercial rollout, and not as part of the BDUK-subsidised rollout.

I reckon that, while VM covers 48% of the country, around three-quarters of those people will have the choice of BT too.

It seems that, with VM coverage, your most likely chance for BT coverage is as part of the £50m "city infill" programme.

If they won't installing in VM areas they would only cover half the country. However, VM being there (or any other high speed network) will impact the business case therefore the case has to be stronger.

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Edited by deleted (Mon 19-May-14 17:13:52)