On the rejig network issue, I presume you are excluding the numerous infill cabinets that are being deployed, and a smaller number of full network rearrangement cabinets and the addition of cabinets for EO (and some EO going straight to FTTP)

Phase 2 and gain share extensions have seen the amount of changes increase, hence the higher number of posts about checker estimates being wrong

I'm not sure what it means, or if it's relevant, but CodeLook lists the earlier cabinet installs as

Phase BDUK Nottinghamshire 13a

whereas the later ones, including ours, which the local BDUK were always telling us was not planned to happen, are

Phase SEP Nottinghamshire 17b
Phase SEP Nottinghamshire 18b

BDUK is first phase

SEP Superfast Extension Plan/Project is the Phase 2 and Phase 3 and gainshare

So all hinges on when the chat was with the local BDUK team

Yes Andrew, I think my first contact with the BDUK scheme at Notts County Council was about 12 months ago - after the inital flurry of cabinets sprouting in the surrounding villages, but before there was any sign of our part of the world being scheduled.

When I contacted them again at the end of last year, I got the feeling that the 'Better Broadband for Nottinghamshire' BDUK department at the Council was basically in limbo. The dedicated facebook page had gone, the website postcode search didn't work any more, and it took prodding the main Council facebook page to get a response to the two emails I had sent them. To be fair, they did respond and went on to find out what was happening, from their contacts at Openreach presumably.

The BBfN website where & when bit has been stuck saying...

We will share information about where better broadband is available in Nottinghamshire as soon as we're able to. The postcode checker is being updated and will be available soon.

...for quite some time now. It did work a year ago, but did tell me my postcode was already enabled for superfast broadband.

Edited by sparky_paul (Sat 20-Jan-18 13:07:00)

Excluding the EO lines, the infill cabs do seem to be on a council to council basis.. And my cab may still get infill (been told two different things). And to far on myself, i don't have a full information on the network rejig from copper to fibre-copper to fibre.

Yes even though its the same Openreach doing the work, there are wide variations from county to county, and nation to nation.

The technologies largely remain the same, but in some counties we are seeing infill cabinets going in for VDSL2 passed but not superfast ahead of villages where nothing has happened at all yet.

2018 is going to see the pace slow down, the push to 2 million Openreach FTTP i.e. another 1.5 million under commercial roll-outs will mean that projects won't the same priority, hence why looking at having gone from 90% to 95% in 18 months, and now 95 to ~98% in two years.

Our village - hamlet, really - is also a strip of fairly well separated dwellings along about a mile of lane. We used to be on well under 1Mb/s on a good day, the street cabinet being about 2 miles away (farther for many). A while back BT installed full fat FTTP as the only way they could provide any sort of decent speed. Most internet users here have upped to FTTP - it costs nothing extra. I think you're wrong to suggest only a few will want it - it's that or carrier pigeon speeds!
The actual installation took ages - months after boxes appeared some cable appeared, then there were more long waits until anything was actually available to order - keep checking with BT, they won't just tell you when it's available. Every installation seemed to require at least 1 extra telegraph pole!
Of course, this is Cornwall so there were EU funds available to do the work.

Derby

As others have said it would be part of a contract to upgrade as many as possible that cannot get superfast.

FTTP is actually the cheapest way to hit lots of small clusters in different localities as the splitters nicely provide up to 32 users. A cabinet is more expensive due to the difficulties getting power to it and the inherent cost of a box that will serve 128-384 only serving below 30..

Take up in the areas is usually higher than built up places as these often already have better speed because they are closer to the exchange or have Virgin available. In some places this exceeds 50% now!

Most areas with hundreds of houses per cabinet have either Virgin or are close enough to the exchange to get over 8-10Mb. Many people who can get over 10Mb will not upgrade to Fibre due to the cost difference Thus take up rates are far lower, 10-25%, .

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The technologies largely remain the same, but in some counties we are seeing infill cabinets going in for VDSL2 passed but not superfast ahead of villages where nothing has happened at all yet.

I think that wherever possible, something should be done for those languishing on sub-2Mb ADSL. You get to a point, given the total lack of any information, that you start to wonder if it will ever happen... especially when you see everyone locally being upgraded by a council BDUK scheme, but they can't even tell you if fibre will ever come, never mind when.

It doesn't seem fair when we all pay the same council tax, and invariably pay more for a market-A line with poor ADSL than those on FTTC in the local town. If there was a plan, I think people would be a lot happier if they thought there was light at the end of the tunnel, no matter how remote.

It must also have a detrimental effect on house sales, I guess not many would be prepared to go back to 1-2Mb ADSL once they are used to fibre.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

FTTP is actually the cheapest way to hit lots of small clusters in different localities as the splitters nicely provide up to 32 users. A cabinet is more expensive due to the difficulties getting power to it and the inherent cost of a box that will serve 128-384 only serving below 30..

In our case, we are getting a new cabinet to serve 20 properties, after the other 20 properties in the village got FTTP.