Who was it in BT that said that? Was it call centre staff, an engineer/installer, a planner, someone in senior manager, Chief Exec?

Depending on who told you would give some information around accuracy of comment. And I doubt anyone in true power would ever say "never". Nobody knows what new technologies are around the corner that could change the economics. Plus of course you may well have 4G and in future 5G - which both can give superfast speeds (dependent on what the individual defined as "fibre" speeds as that could be anything up to terabits per second given some tests that have been done).

26% of London homes that cannot get so called superfast services

This is complete and total absolute rubbish. This is nothing short of an out and out lie.

common situation in council estates across London

Yet another lie.

Edited by deleted (Mon 22-Dec-14 11:01:44)

Rather than people out and out saaying the OP is rubbish how about some evidence to the contrary ?

I'm not sure that deploying bragging rights about being the fastest ISP in the country is really saying much about "the situation" facing the large metropolis.

Chris regularly contends that the BDUK money should have been given to altnets to fibre the final 5%. Some nebulous arguments then follow about how this added "competition" (in reality, it will be hotspots of monopolies, where BT have already proven they don't wish to compete) will somehow force BT to provide fibre elsewhere.

B4RN works really well within the boundary it has constructed for itself: Huge takeup requires the targetted area to be almost exclusively a BT notspot, and requires the massive community buy-in that comes as a consequence. So much buy-in, that the community provides the volunteer workforce. That volunteer workforce needs to work somewhere - which isn't the public roads; this aspect depends on farmers (or other large-scale landowners) to provide access for the dig, and to do so with a cost-free wayleave. These farmers/land-owners are naturally placed to become part of the volunteer workforce over the land they own.

The parameters are: Big notspot; Community buy-in; Landowner buy-in (preferably few landowners with lots of land); Free wayleaves negotiated with a manageable number of bought-in landowners.

This model works well within those parameters, but it falls down outside those areas; it particularly loses traction when the community has some level of service, and wants to keep the freedom of choice of existing ISP bundles (esp Sky and TalkTalk), where broadband is seen as almost free. It also loses traction when the fibre can't be laid in fields; where land ownership amounts to a small garden, and wayleaves number in the thousands ... leading to the need to put fibre in the roads & pavements instead.

It is a brilliant model for its location, but it doesn't apply to The Smoke.

The onus is on the OP to provide a link to the statistic. As for evidence to the contrary, this is Ofcom's chart (which shows about 90% for NGA).


http://media.ofcom.org.uk/news/2014/cities-summary-r...

Interesting to see that Northern Ireland is better catered for, presumably because they've had a project running of several years.

Boris Johnson has declared a 99% target for London by 2018

http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/news/2014/09/london...

In reply to a post by Desmond:

I'm afraid MP Val Shawcross challenged the government on their actual plans for the 26% of London homes that cannot get so called superfast services. They told her categorically that there were no plans. She has a particular interest here as the MP covering Rotherhithe, where unless you are wealthy enough to live in a property Hyperopic would deign to bother with, you may as well live in the middle of Nowhereshire. This is also a common situation in council estates across London. The current government claim that all that are left are the 'most remote places' is therefore a lie. That is unless they consider places inside thethe division bell remote or hard to reach.

The mistake the government has made is I think they have assumed urban areas are covered commercially and hence government programs have been targeted at rural areas.

Edited by Chrysalis (Mon 22-Dec-14 11:50:00)

Yes Rotherhithe does have lots of EO, but also now have Hyperoptic in some places. Relish coverage I think reaches over the Thames at that point and as part of Southwark the boroughs coverage is around 77% of fibre based broadband, or 72% at superfast speeds.

The problem was that London was considered as a whole, rather than at the individual borough level in terms of the first round of BDUK funding.

Absolutely nothing stopping individual mayor/boroughs/councils doing their own gap funding projects independent of BDUK though.

And the rural areas are complaining that the money has gone to urban areas.

Varies greatly from Borough to Borough, e.g. Kingston makes up for the deficit in places like Southwark

8% of households in Lewisham actually have option of FTTP from Openreach.

Exact to the point of irrefutable means spending a lot of money to do an independent audit of the BT and Virgin Media and other networks in the areas.

Have a very good feel and worked out figures

Andrew