Question about Milton Keynes

Hi, I will be moving to the UK at the end of the year, sometime around December.
It's not my first time in the country, I've lived in Brighton and Cambridge for 5 years (2000-05), and was always used to getting NTL and high speed broadband.

My partner will work in Bedford and I'll be near Oxford so we have thought about buying a house in Milton Keynes. But as we were checking the house market I just thought I would go and see what kind of broadband options they had come up since I left the country in 2005.

Fair enough I saw that NTL was now Virgin Media and that apparently they're using fibre optic where there was only coaxial cable before (I checked all addresses I lived in the past and they all had now FO). But then I checked Milton Keynes !!!! What's the deal there? I've read a bit about it and what kind of problems they have with ADSL due to aluminum cabling and the works.

So I guess my question is:
how likely is that all MK will have FO broadband from Bt infinity in the near future?
What about Virgin media? Are there plans to get a decent cable network like they have pretty much everywhere else?

We now live in Barcelona and are used to having a FO pipe of 100mb down and 25mb up, with HD IPTV!!

thanks!!!

I know next to nothing about Milton Keynes, but just picking up on Virgin Media Cable. It is still FO to the cabinet, (just like the new BT FTTC). It is still coax from the cabinet to the premises, just like it always was. BT FTTC uses the existing copper or aluminium from their cabinet to the premises, but in some places they now have FTTP (fibre to the premises).

Really?
Then for BT it's not really FO but something more like VDSL..
In Spain Telefonica has something similar, FO to some buildings, then FO to the street cabinet, but in that case they're not allowed to sell it as FO.

Having lived and worked in Milton Keynes since 1977, I can tell you that the rollout of decent (ie: fast) broadband services is a mess. The new city's grid road system - which was ok when we only needed voice telephony services - isn't helping the spread of fast broadband across the city, but even then the availability of services is patchy and sporadic.

My service, which O2 on a BT line, gives me an average of 2.4 Mbps down and 0.89 Mbps up. This is consistent, and I'm within 2 miles of the Bradwell Abbey exchange "as the crow flies". Unfortunately, the cabled infrastructure means that the actual distance is much more than that due to the fact that trunking runs under the horizontal and vertical grid roads and literally "around the houses" in most cases. Oddly, though, some parts of the city that are close to the Bradwell Abbey exchange are currently enjoying 100 Mbps (which is really annoying!). I've heard of subscribers quite close to me - and further from the exchange - enjoying much higher speeds than me, such as 10 Mbps and higher.

Unfortunately, I can't see a solution to this problem anytime soon, but as a person who works at home as a freelance, I desperately need higher down/up speeds. As for Virgin in Milton Keynes, forget it. I'm sure they'd rather forget that they have an MK operation!

More info on MK broadband see: http://mkbag.org/

I live in a village of around 300 houses about 6-miles to the East of Milton Keynes.

We got FTTC here a few months ago. Getting D/L of 25Mbps and am 600 metres or so from the cabinet.

Try the post code checker at BT (Google will find it) to see what speeds you are likely to get. If you don't know any Post Codes, try looking up Businesses in the local area and use that.

Also, with MK's Grid-Road system the wires will invariably be longer than the direct path.

Only parts of MK has FTTP (some of Bradwell Abbey?).

For the rest, we're a long way off 100Mbps in most of the UK!

jmmo20

Quite a lot of Milton Kenyes has FTTC (VDSL) but you need to check each area it it covers a huge geography and some parts have very poor BB speeds..
A limited area has FTTP.

You need to check first the post code of the areas you are looking at, try the BT Wholesale checker, then when you are actually looking at a property, use the actual telephone number to check availability at that property.

I don't think Virgin do broadband in MK. It's an ancient catv network leased off of BT.

BT FTTC, (there are many suppliers, not just BT Retail Infinity), and Virgin Cable are both to cabinet. Only BT FTTP is to the premises.

Neither BT product is sold as FO. Just "super-fast broadband". Virgin is sold as fibre, but incorrectly - as you say.

A couple of posters have referred you to the BT Wholesale postcode checker. Here's the link. Bear in mind that the estimates tend to be low, and for FTTC/P can be dramatically so.

(Edit - typo).

Edited by RobertoS (Fri 21-Oct-11 12:45:42)

I live in Bancroft, Milton Keynes, and have FTTC, but my speeds are lower than many get with just ADSL2. If you are looking for a house in MK and want to ensure fast broadband speeds, then you should look at houses which can get FTTH from the Bradwell Abbey exchange.

Oh yes. Forget about Virgin Media. They do not seem at all interested in upgrading the cable system. It was for this reason that I dropped cable TV some years ago, and switched to Sky

Edited by deleted (Sat 22-Oct-11 12:13:20)

thanks, how can I check if a house has FTTH availability?
The BT checker should show it as having 100mb Bt infinity coverage?

I understand that anything that says 40mb at the BT site means it's FTTC and VDSL to the home.

thanks.

I believe virgin is fibre to the node? so could be further than the actually cabinet in coax! (correct me if im wrong).

You could be right. I've always assumed that the multitudinous cabinets, (Nynex >> NTL >> Virgin on our estate), had fibre feeds, but on reflection, and considering the larger cabinets that feed many of them I'm probably mistaken.

I live in an area where Fibre to the Premises ie being trialled by BT

Most who have it say they get in excess of 75 Meg but who knows how much it'll be when the trial ends, I'm waiting to find out.

Fibre to the Cabinet/VDSL2 (infinity is BT Retail's brand for it) is being rolled out in a few places.

No VM coax Internet here as the cable system is still owned by BT and Virgin rent it and there is some sort of dispute.

Most people round here now have freeview, freesat or Sky satellite TV because the cable TV system has gone down the toilet, mostly due to VM/BT squabbles over it but VM's customer service is just as carp as BT's

Setting all that aside I'd really not bother moving to Milton Keynes, in fact I'm saving as hard as I can to get out of this hellhole having lived here sine '86 (I was 4 at the time so not my choice)

Stabbings. shootings, anti social behaviour and the oddest people on the face of the earth, there really isn't an upside to the place.

Plenty of nice places around it though.

Edited by techguy (Sat 22-Oct-11 19:34:42)

Honestly, save yourself an awful lot of needless heartache, and avoid buying into it.

Connectivity in MK is a complete lottery, the problem with that is, that most of the people who buy into a lottery don't win the big prize.

I've had broadband here since it was ever possible and was overjoyed some years ago to go from 512 to 1024, but I'm not under any illusions here, it's going no further.

I can only offer you the advice. I can't make you inclined take it! ;O)

It's not easiest thing to say, as it's not really very nice to have to tell someone this sort of thing.

Sorry to be the bearer of bad news. (

Be lucky.

Unfortunately I have no much choice
My partner really (really really) likes MK and will work in Bedford and Oxford, respectively. So MK sounds like a nice middle point.

Best bit of advice

1. Buy only a property that has broadband already
2. Make sure you find out how fast it is, i.e. ask for print out from a speedtest website
3. Be wary of woolly estate agent promises
4. Use maps.thinkbroadband.com
5. Look for the areas with high upstream results (over 2Meg) this shows where the fibre is available now.
6. Things are patchy due to the nature of fttc/p but then that is the same in other countries, just people accept it, unlike the UK moan and do nothing to help themselves out.

My son and his girlfriend are looking to move to Milton Keynes or the immediate area.

I'm totally surprised that Estate Agents don't know anything about Broadband interconnect speeds in the properties they are advertising.

For the pair of them, it's a deal maker; no speed, no deal.

In reply to a post by jmmo20:

So MK sounds like a nice middle point.

Cross-town traffic in the rush hour is a pig though. Towcester would be a better bet for an easier commute in both directions: Oxford / A34 / M40 / A43 / Towcester / A43 / M1 / A421 / Bedford.

Edited by gomezz (Mon 24-Oct-11 18:15:08)