"State of preparedness" of the local exchange

Let me state at the outset that I live out in one of those 'rural' areas, some 3 miles from the metropolis that is Leighton-Linslade, in Southwest Bedfordshire. In spite of its proximity to L-L (which already has Infinity provision) our local exchange is not listed as being on BT's horizon for "upgrading" to provide better broadband coverage, even out beyond 2015.
Can I ask any of the 'real cognoscenti' on this forum if it's possible to ascertain whether this local exchange (at Hockliffe) is itself equipped with fibre, or if it still uses co-ax for its connectivity? [At present, all BT seem able to offer any reseller is that standard "up-to 8Mb/s" adsl product (I've ascertained that the exchange is not LLU-ed!) which in our small village seems to provide households with between 5Mb/s and 0.8Mb/s (at the far end of the village!).] I'm led to believe that the exchange itself supports some 1024 telephone lines, spread over Hockliffe and 4 other surrounding villages.
I would like to know simply because if this exchange (as well as the other 6 small rural exchanges in the county on the western side of the M1) isn't already using fibre then our chances of getting a vastly improved service really are very poor, and our only real hope for a better service would seem to be the CBC Rural Broadband initiative (although this does talk of only 'attempting to ensure that everyone should get a minimum of 2Mb/s').
I'm not seeking 'sympathy' from anyone - merely information - at this stage!

Not aware of any BT exchange that uses coax for backhaul.

The old colossus network running for many years was fibre based with ATM protocol. The newer 21CN is IP based and cheaper to buy kit for etc.
Nothing stopping people like Sky/TalkTalk putting in their own ADSL2+ service, using their own hardware as TT has done in 93% of UK. Main reason for not doing so is that the cost of their own hardware probably means making money in your area is difficult

So short answer is the exchange will have fibre of one sort or another already going to it, and if you paid enough you could have a fibre based leased line but talking of £2000+ per month.

An exchange of 1000 properties is very likely to superfast service of one sort or another under the BDUK project. There may be some outlying properties on the exchange area that only see the 2Mbps USC figure.

Mosstly the network is Fibre. How small is small? Approx how many lines?

For FTTC they donot ned to go back to your local exchange but could go back to a larger exchange in your area with the Fibre. The cabinets would then be feed off of this fibre. It really depends on the local network and geography

To Bob_s2
Thanks for the comment - but without wishing to appear rude, I did say in my submission how many lines the exchange is rumoured to host! You obviously didn't read it all.
Also I can't see why you think that BT might run a fibre bundle out from a different exchange to a small village of less that 100 houses. Any ducts they would employ would surely go back to the current host exchange!

To MrSaffron
The CBC Rural Broadband venture is already being supported by a smallish sum promised from the BDUK pot, but the whole investment figure seems to be below £10M (from what I can gather). With other adjacent "county" services quoting roughly three times that figure in their negotiations with BT, it doesn't bode well for us. And BT reckon they'll be hard pushed to provide service before 2016 to the exchanges covered in their agreement!
TT/Sky don't seem interested in LLU for these little village exchanges, and Virgin (who have cable in Leighton-Linslade) have already stated that they're not going to dig out any further. So it looks for all the world as if it'll be a [censored] 3G reception or the crusty old aluminium cable we currently "enjoy"/employ here! And yet we pay the same line rental charge as everyone else!
If a single Fibre cabinet is supposed to cost £45K-£60K to implement, then the recoup time for such an investment will surely make it a real non-starter!!
BTW: Not sure that my OA pension will quite run to the £2K/month for a "leased fibre" line - my name's not Bob Diamond or Fred 'The Shred' Goodwin you know!!

They dont run fibre back from every cabinet to the exchange

When BT run a fibre bundle out to a different exchange, what they normally do is route the fibre through the ducting between your exchange and the nearest "big" exchange, then through the ducting from your exchange to the cabinets. So, the physical route for the fibre bundle is via your local exchange (as you'd expect), but the logical route (the one that BT's network equipment can see) shows that it only has stops at the big exchange and your cabinet - your local exchange is missed out completely.

By analogy, think of a rural bus route - the bus might stop at Wallingford and then Dorchester, travelling between the two places on the A4074, but not at Shillingford (the village in the middle). BT are only interested in where the fibre stops, so they'd describe such a bus as going to Wallingford, then to Dorchester; if you look at the routing of the bus, though, it stops in Wallingford, then it travels through Shillingford without stopping, then it stops in Dorchester. Same applies with the fibre bundle - while it goes through your exchange, BT ignore that as it doesn't stop there - they just care about the stops.

There's a certain amount of sense here from BT's perspective; as time goes on, they know that eventually the network will be fibre from the exchange all the way to your premises (and the Fibre-Only eXchange trial in Deddington is partly trying to evaluate whether there's a business case for going there in the next few years, or if BT should wait a bit longer). Fibre also has a much longer usable range than copper; with current kit, BT can serve customers at up to 10km from the exchange with the full range of services, including the high speeds, and BT could in theory shift to better kit to extend the range to around 40km maximum. By gradually making small exchanges redundant, BT put themselves into a position where they can sell the exchange building, just keeping a small area for the ducting that routes the fibre from the distant exchange to your home.

Where is the link to prove this?

Oh, you cannot provide one! I wonder why?

Have you seen the broadband plan for CBC, MK and Beford? Unfortunately they'veremoved the maps that show the predictions of which areas will have coverage of NGA.

From that, it looks like there are 75,000 properties in the "intervention area", out of a total of 287,000. The project aims at bringing NGA to 51,000 of those properties by 2015, and all properties by 2020.

In CB alone, the figures are: 29,000 properties in the intervention area, out of 70,000. The target is still 90% of the area, so 7,000 will be left out of NGA. That means there are 22,000 to be included in the plans.

Note too that the "lost" 10% aren't all automatically relegated to 2Mbps. The announcement for suffolk has only 2% in the 2Mbps - 5Mbps region.

Is NGA going to get out as far as exchanges of your size? I'm not sure - and you might be borderline. Ofcom's analysis labels 12% of the population within "market 1" exchanges, which means BT will have to start targetting the market 1 areas to be able to reach the 90% BDUK target.

Alternatively, BT is running a pilot to turn Deddington into a "fibre-only" exchange - which has 1200 lines. That might be one to watch.

You might get more of a feel as the BDUK winning bid is announced. Or you might want to check what size the other Bedfordshire exchanges are.

Maybe no link, but the "oft-quoted" figures is that, on average, 85% of the exchange gets NGA. Some will be down to cabinets that don't get fibre, some will be down to lines that are still too far from the cab, and some EO.

My personal suspicion is that, for BDUK to hit targets cost-efficiently, the 15% here represents a very low-hanging fruit to BT (so likely to be included) but an expensive burden to a competitor (so unlikely to be done).

The more critical issue is cost of deployment to the cabinets. THey dont even have to run fibre to the loca lexchange but more normally to a hub exchange. THe fibre then goes from the hub to the cabinets. If you have a cluster of villages quite close together the costs may not be all that high. DEmand also comes into the picture. Frequently demand is lower in rural areas so increasing demand can be critical