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.

One does need to consider the cost of providing that service. I suspect the cost of maintaining a poor ADSL connection to a remote location is significantly more than providing an FTTC connection to an urban user situated near to their cabinet that is also serving 300 or more of their neighbours.

Communication providers be they BT, VM, Gigaclear or any other are businesses rather than charities and need to be able to justify any investment. Nevertheless installing an AIO cab for just 30 rather than FTTP is perhaps surprising. Of course, urban dwellers might then ask why rural areas are able to get far faster broadband than they are for roughly the same cost.

Has the poster checked whether their council has a USC voucher scheme running?

Also fixed wireless services cover plenty of areas, so are another avenue to explore, as is things like 4G with a router.

The USC was declared covered generally by virtue of satellite coverage.

Some projects are dealing with USC type postcodes with FTTP or if a cluster FTTP, but its slow process and many USC premises are on the fringes of areas and in very low population density areas.

Without any visibility of what the costings were

If FTTP area has businesses in it that can sway the equation towards FTTP if a project has some EU money particularly.

If the cost of power was very high for one area it may be cheaper to deploy FTTP, but if cabinet location in another area had access to lower cost power than FTTC may be the best value for money option, i.e. what UKPN (or other power company) charges for getting mains to the cabinet is a variable.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If FTTP area has businesses in it that can sway the equation towards FTTP if a project has some EU money particularly.

If the cost of power was very high for one area it may be cheaper to deploy FTTP, but if cabinet location in another area had access to lower cost power than FTTC may be the best value for money option, i.e. what UKPN (or other power company) charges for getting mains to the cabinet is a variable.

Oddly enough, where they put FTTP, there is ready access to a supply - every property is on T-T overhead electricity supplies from poles, and the poles are out on the road. Where the FTTC cabinet is going, the electricity poles are behind the houses on the opposite side of the road, and some distance away. That said, they are digging in the verge for a supply, I never knew there was any underground supply there.

As for business influence, there is a 2GW power station on the edge of the area served by FTTP, so I guess that is possible - although I had always assumed they would have their own arrangements for fast internet connection via the grid. It's hard to imagine they would be relying on poor ADSL for a place that size, and even their phone numbers have the nearest city's dialling code.

some of the cabs that were planned in the new forest was scrapped because of power supply costs were just too high

Our village has just had FTTP installed on the poles, activated on the 17th Dec, ordered on 27th, and connected to BT 52Mb on 12th Jan. Problem they would have had here for FTTC is that the spurs from the cabs were all aluminium and corroded.

Edited by deleted (Mon 22-Jan-18 09:48:37)

In reply to a post by MCM:

I suspect the cost of maintaining a poor ADSL connection to a remote location is significantly more than providing an FTTC connection to an urban user situated near to their cabinet that is also serving 300 or more of their neighbours.

It's not exactly what I would call remote, 6-7 miles as the crow flies from a couple of towns, and 11 miles form the centre of a city. We just happen to have a line length of around 4 miles from the exchange, all the lines from which are exchange-only.