In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

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

so how much BDUK funds have gone to urban areas?

To me its just the rural peeps have the loudest voice, they always complaining.

There's plenty of evidence that shows that 26% not being able to get fast broadband in London is an out and out lie and using such an incorrect figure totally devalues the rest of any statement. People should stick with the truth, it is far more powerful as even 5% without fast access is a disgrace.

To start with there is very significant coverage by VM. The OFCOM Infrastructure report published in October 2013 reported, for example, 780 of roughly 14,085 wired internet connections (5.5%) in SW9 had no access to a fast broadband connection and this ignores any possible access to cable. I used the now outdated Fixed Broadband Postcode Level Data spread sheet from October 2013. I did this in respect of Lambeth to highlight the problem of the hotspot I live where there are 75+ EO line at nearly 2Km from the exchange. This was one of only three significant not spots in SW9, and the only large cluster on the Vauxhall exchange, the other two being on the Nine Elms and Brixton exchanges with 79 and 57 connections respectively. No other clusters came close.

So yes, I have done my research and have figures to support my view that the figure of 26% is an outright lie. You can download the data from OFCOM and do your own research.

Whats the current coverage % for London? Anyone know?

In reply to a post by RossMcG:

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

How about this document?
http://stakeholders.ofcom.org.uk/binaries/research/c...

This is an Analysis Mason report attached to Ofcom's 2014 "Communications Market" report (dated August 2014). It details broadband availability in 11 cities, as of 2013.

Figure 1.1 show London having NGA availability of 88%, rising to 90% in 2015.

Section 3.3.1 shows availability figures:

VM's NGA availability amounts to 60%, with no change by 2015.

BT's NGA availability amounts to 84%, increasing to 85% by 2015.

The combined total gives NGA availability of 88%, rising to 90% by 2015; (NB: this means it hits the current BDUK target for 90% by 2015).

Of course, London is huge (section 3.1.3) - so those in the 10% amount to some 320,000 properties - no small amount (**). Figure 1.5 shows there are still 90,000 lines below 2Mbps. Plenty of room for complaints about being left out of the BDUK and UBF projects.

Incidentally, section 3.2.2 suggests that the Mayor and GLA have responsibility for broadband, and for choosing how the government (both central & local) subsidies are handed out. The mayor looks to be thinking "ultrafast", forgetting about the 10% that are being left out of the mere "superfast".

(**) - For comparison of size, note that North Yorkshire has a total of 380,000 properties, of which around 190,000 are in the NGA intervention area, and around 150,000 are due to get superfast provision through the BDUK project. Other counties have a similar size, though perhaps a smaller intervention area.

Edit: Add a comparison figure to show the scale of London's problem.

Edited by deleted (Mon 22-Dec-14 12:20:37)

The first wave BDUK projects are all listed at http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6582-magic-1-mill...

The problem is one persons rural is another persons urban. So lots of arguments over towns of 10,000+ people where BDUK is funding cabinets e.g. infill on estates or city centre business areas, or the out of town industrial parks seeing FTTP rolled out to them.

To keep it simple I mean actual city areas.

So not towns.

Thanks for the info Ill read that, at first look im quite surprised how poor coverage is in London, I always assumed it would be higher and they would (as always) have had the highest investment rate.

Looking at Glasgow its shockingly low, although inverness is awful.

Also the number of sub 2mb lines in London is alarming.

I think they must have thrown Inverness in there to fluff the figures lol (such a random city to choose)

Intersting info thanks!

To keep it simple I mean actual city areas.

So not towns.

One man's city is another man's town... especially if you accept the old definition of having a cathedral (hence St David's is the UK's smallest city at 2,000 people).

In my county, there is only one city, and it only comes fifth in the population lists within the county. Here, it is the towns that make up the majority of the commercial deployment.

Never simple...

In reply to a post by TheEulerID:

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

Yes - NI had a quasi-BDUK project running earlier, rather like Cornwall. The NI cities ended up with good coverage, and Derry/Londonderry was trumpted by BT as the first city where every cabinet was upgraded.

The project didn't end up with quite such good coverage in the rural areas, and NI has a (relatively) large proportion of its population out there, with a lot of lines that are distant from the cabinet ... so there is a follow-up project that looks closer to the current BDUK projects.

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

I don't think I've seen him refer to the merely superfast before, so it is good to see. However, he must be playing with a very weak hand - he has no budget to allocate to subsidise any of this work, so he has to just "persuade".

The figure is from something I read earlier in the year. Thinking back I think that figure was very specific to a borough. Camden I think. So I apologise for generalising. The article in question was pointing out the lies and half truths being peddled by BT and the Government in relation to coverage.It still does not change the fact that to say the Government only has the most remote and hard to reach places to deal with is a lie. They need only walk over Westminster Bridge to find thousands of homes with no plans at all covering them.

Shoreditch, supposedly the epicentre of tech in London, was singled out as being one of the worst places for superfast if you actually lived there. Why? because most of the population are not hipsters, living in expensive flats and working in tech. Instead, they live on council estates with EO lines. To suggest Hyperoptic as an alternative is adding injury to insult. Please feel free to point to a council estate they have ever wired up. Relish are great so long as you want a crippled service when it comes to uplinks to you from outside. Moreover, service is very variable. I could get 30Mb when I tried them (if the router was on a shelf on the first floor by the window) Down the road, a friend tried them and it essentially would not work at all.