An Exchange Only Line - advice needed

Hello everyone, just joined up! After some advice on my horrible broadband situation

It turns out (after a bit of investagative work) that my phone line is an exchange only line (connected to Swindon Blundson exchange FTTC enabled). Its by no means short, in fact, its almost 5km away from the exchange, resulting in my top sync speed at the moment being 2mb.

As a first port of call when I discovered this slow speed, I tired to apply for infinity, however I was told it was not avalible to me, hence me then going off and finding out that my line was exchange only.

What makes this so annoying, is that all around my street (I live in a close SN25 1QY) everyone has infinity, and virgin media, my street has nothing.

I was with skybroadband, and have gone through every measure to get the best speed, new routers, filters, faceplates, line checkers, open reach engineer to my property, however its all made very little difference.

Its gotten to the stage now that I have purchased a 3G dongel when i want to do anything faster on the internet, but of course, this is not a cost effective solution.

What I would like to know is the following:

1.) Is there any way possible to get open reach to reroute my line to a local cabinet (there are 3 within a stones throw of each other).

2.) If above is not possible, are open reach able to reroute my line to another exchange? (There is another exchange much closer to my property under 500m as the crow flys)

3.) Are there and pending technologies or plans that anyone is aware of to help people like me with long exchange only lines?

Many thanks for any help that any one can give me!

Using your numbers

1. No standard procedure, perhaps if you pay a few £1000 then may be

2. No standard procedure, perhaps if you pay a few £1000 then may be

3. In the pipeline from Openreach but no announcement yet

Sorry but their concentration has been on the bulk of lines, i.e. hitting targets as quick as possible.

With a 2Meg sync I presume your attenuation is over 61dB, if it is lower then show us the figures, may be some tweaking can be done by the provider

Thanks for the reply MrSaffron,

Where did you find out about point 3?

How do you know you're on a EO line?
What's your attenuation?

Asked Openreach directly.

A hint that they have not totally forgotten these lines is in http://www.superfastcornwall.org/see-how-its-built.html and as this project started ahead of most, it should hopefully be the first to resolve exchange only lines.

Attenuation is 65db.

Open reach engineer confirmed that I am on an EO line.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

3. In the pipeline from Openreach but no announcement yet

Andrew, for those of us on short-ish exchange only lines (say <1km) do you think there's a good chance of getting Fibre to the Premises (FTTP) instead of FTTC?

I would of thought that all EO lines would end game be FTTP as it completely removes the need and cost of a cabinet...

Least your lucky and on a short link to the exchange, you have speeds that I can only dream of!

Hold on while I flip a coin.

The short EO lines, should get a reasonable speed on ADSL2+ anyway so less of a problem in 2012 to 2014 window. But come the day of the cloud and no petrol it will be very different

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Hold on while I flip a coin.

You've just summed up my thoughts exactly - Ive had enough of being left in the dark by BT/OpenReach

Hearing different things, from different people, and different companies - no one knows what is going on...