My promise comes directly from WSCC in an email from their press officer.
However, looking at the Openreach info on the Where and When website the only thing that is available on the West Chiltington exchange is FTTC.
There is no mention of how they are going to deal with the long lines. As our exchange is at Storrington we have no exchange only lines and the ADSL only lines are very slow because of the added distance, some customers are still on dial up.
The USC will not be met in West Chiltington without further expenditure. My cabinet 4 has 288 lines running from it, only 200 lines give superfast speeds.

USC does not to be done over copper BT network of course

Should be pretty simple if USC was part of contract and not met then penalties should kick, if council signed a contract with no penalty clauses then more fool them

I don't think there are any details on *how* BT will do USC because they have no USC-specific solutions right now. Nothing that we don't already know, and which are pretty expensive.

I think that most of BT's hopes are focussed on the uplift that comes from the NGA installation, even at fringe areas, alongside copper re-arrangement (for both EO and non-EO).

For some people, therefore, the USC solution hangs on whatever can be done to raise fringe speeds of existing NGA nodes - whether that is any of the potential features of Vectoring, G.INP, or GEA-ADSL2+.

For others, it depends on the installation of a new node that takes over the job in the fringe regions. FTTRN would do this, if BT could solve the power issue. FTTdp would do this, and would solve the power issue, but tried+tested+risk-free reverse powering is probably still a way off - possibly too long to be included in these projects.

With the original 90% target, I think BT would have had to do something for USC coverage.

However, with most projects heading for SEP funding, the higher target of 95% SF means that most of the USC cover (for the other 5%) really is going to come from the spill-over.

Meanwhile, phase 3 (unlikely to be BT? Likely to be wireless?) could end up going ahead in parallel with the SEP phase.

My suspicions are that politicians and civil servants are juggling with the hot potato of whether it is worth spending anything extra on the USC if the funds could be better used on improving either the SEP or the phase 3 project, or in subsidising the few (as few as possible, I hope) places that will always end up on satellite.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Should be pretty simple if USC was part of contract and not met then penalties should kick, if council signed a contract with no penalty clauses then more fool them

You are right, if it came to arguing about the contract penalties in a court. It would be "pretty simple" to decide upon a financial result to a breach of contract. However, the breach, and penalty, still wouldn't get the villages what they want - faster speeds.

BUT ...

The whole point of this thread is about whether the USC is part of the framework contracts still. If they (presumably DCMS/BDUK) have dropped the USC portion, then it is no longer a part of the contract. And presumably dropping the condition is done at some cost to BT - either "just" the budget that was meant for USC, or with some penalty.

This too is "pretty simple" - it is just a commercial re-negotiation of the content of a contract. We just need to find out if it is what has happened.

West Sussex is a framework county, so would be affected by this decision.

The MP named at the start - Anne Marie Morris - is an MP within Devon, and CDS is also a framework area.

As far as I am aware its not been dropped from the framework but I don't sit in on BDUK meetings so maybe some deal has been done behind closed doors.

I don't share your optimisim that a national target of 95% will upgrade enough cabinets to provide USC uplift. As has been said before that 95% is a national target not a local target. For example in our district I am told that BDUK estimates will only get c. 80% coverage superfast even after Phase2. Therefore simply not enough cabinets wil have been upgraded to provide fringe USC uplift.

Looking at the result of the recent consultation on the next phase by WSCC there have been a few developments. They have amended their maps slightly and say that we can expect more detail in May 2015.
I can only see one road with a few houses that falls in the white area [currently served by FTTC] on the basic broadband map [Spithandle Lane near Steyning].
However, my postcode is shaded grey and some of my neighbours are below the USC so I guess the map may not be completely accurate.
Still it seems that as my postcode is white on the other sub 15Mbps map I am still in the intervention area.
The result of the consultation is tagged on to the bottom of the announcement of the consultation dated October 2014 a link can be found on the West Sussex Better Connected site, under News..

Can you see a map with individual postcodes? I just see a 1-page pdf for each of basic & nga.

No, unfortunately they don't publish the postcode list, you have to request it.
Even with local knowledge it is difficult to interpret and using local knowledge it is easy to see some mistakes.

I suspect the absence of a denial that it has been dropped suggests that it has been, except where councils have given a specific deadline to their ratepayers and will be under pressure to deliver.