what makes you think BT are prioritising urban areas for FTTC?

VM are doing the sensible thing and going for heaviest populated areas, at least their strategy makes sense. I am still trying to figure out BT's.

in my county most exchanges picked have no cable competition.

I said FTTx to be precise.

http://maps.ofcom.org.uk/broadband/index.html

Pick a few regions, including urban ones and see the super-fast availability percentages. 80%+ in urban areas, and 0% to 50% in predominantly rural regions (but be sure to know that there are cities in some of them).

Fife for example has a 45% availability, but 15% of the whole (or a third of the availability) will be within the city of Dunfermline.

that ofcom map is pretty much VM only as it doesnt include FTTx on the next gen coverage data.

Where do you live?

I know in Chester and Shrewsbury the council rejected the planning permission from NTL / Telewest because they did not want the cobbled streets disrupted.

Virgin are not really even increasing their coverage it is neally all upgrading of their existing network.

They did issue a report that they were going to start infilling areas in their existing coverage ares but that does not appear to be happing as plenty of people who have Virging almost going past their door have applied and Virgin have said no.

The only realy new cable going in is with new estates where the builders put it in.

Aberdeen =/

I had a thought it might be. I remember when Aberdeen Cable went out of business. Strange that no one (that I know of) has bought into the network.

It's interesting that living in an area which was built in 2006/7 and finished in 2008, there's nothing better than bog-standard BB.

Large developments tend to be on the outside of existing settlements and hence further away from existing infrastructure. If the developer, who makes tens of £thousands per home, doesn't provide anything then you're left at the mercy of companies that can only look to making a few quid per month per home. The result is inevitable.

So the Telcos have no input in new estate cabling?

Didn't know that.