Well ADSL2+ requires little more than the wholesale provider (in this case BT / Openreach) to upgrade the dslams in the local exchange (which may be nothing more than a firmware upgrade, or "switching" something in the dslams).
Of course with increased speeds available to all, they may have to increase the link out of the exchange (back to the BT core network).

IIRC BT announced (last summer) an increased roll-out of WBC (which would include upgrades to ADSL2+) for just over half of the UK's exchanges - giving them around 90% population coverage.
This was supposed to happen before next summer (2013).

The main problem appears to be the size of your exchange (very small at just over 700 lines) so I'm sure BT will be needing some financial assistance because they're never going to get a return (on their investment) with such a small exchange.
Plus the fact BT is the only provider in your exchange (meaning nobody else has fibre links to the exchange, which means paying some other wholesale provider to "unbundle" your exchange is going to be stupidly expensive).

So; yes, ADSL2+ will be the cheapest option (as all/most of the hardware is already in place) and you have lines short enough to benefit.
Fibre may well be prohibitively expensive, especially if BT (or another provider) doesn't have a nearby access point or junction box.
Do you have a school in the village? That may have a fibre connection.

There's almost certain too few of you to afford paying for someone to install a fibre connection and a mesh wireless network.
BT are running a similar trial in Bute but with speeds little higher than you're currently getting anyway (as it's meant to fill not-spots rather than boost speeds for those who already have 8Mbps broadband).

At least your speed (with your line stats there's no reason why you shouldn't be getting the full 8Mbps available from ADSL1) is much higher than many on the perimeters of very large towns, so there are many who will have little sympathy for your plight.
Before I was able to switch to Infinity, I was so far away from the exchange I only got around 4.5Mbps (and that was with a heavily tweaked connection - most of my neighbours, with their 'straight out of the box' set-ups, were on little more than 2Mbps) and we're within the town boundaries.

As for satellite broadband; it's very expensive, doesn't work properly when it rains, and is unlikely to deliver much higher speeds than you already have.

Ade,

Many thanks for taking time to explain all that - it should probably be a sticky for others in our situation.

In fact we do have fibre to our village school right in the centre of the village and BT Openreach even upgraded it last summer (chatted to the BT engineers doing it).

When this 'logical' solution was put to Somerset Council the response was something along the lines of too difficult to renegotiate the contracts.

Not content with that I have written to our MP to see if something can be done like spending money to renegotiate contracts rather than reinventing the wheel **. In fact Thinkbroadband.co.uk news item about Hampshire using the public network was most timely.

Again many thanks to all for your valuable help.

Jamie

** just for completeness the letter also stated how crazy it was spending a fortune to push just 2Mbps to not spots saying that while the job is being done a much higher rate of service should be provided (clearly I'm a dreamer
J

there's been stuff in the news about the new PSN (Public Services Network) helping with flexibility and third party uses of things like schools connections.

In reply to a post by jayteepics:

Apologies for anonymous....

Post code TA14 6SG...

Update for me personally. Since I know that whatever happens here it will be a 2 year struggle and since for me Orange broadband SUPPORT failed me abysmally over the last 3.5 years I just moved to BT. Since my new service is only 3 days old I can't say much about speed other than I am getting at least 1Mbps more than the best speeds I had last week.this is the current status from the new homehub3...

ADSL Settings
VPI/VCI: 0/38
Type: PPPoA
Modulation: G.992.1 Annex A
Latency type: Interleaved
Noise margin (Down/Up): 8.9 dB / 26.0 dB
Line attenuation (Down/Up): 28.0 dB / 14.5 dB
Output power (Down/Up): 19.9 dBm / 12.3 dBm
FEC Events (Down/Up): 8516 / 2
CRC Events (Down/Up): 18 / 4
Loss of Framing (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Signal (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
Loss of Power (Local/Remote): 0 / 0
HEC Events (Down/Up): 263 / 2
Error Seconds (Local/Remote): 10 / 1

Thank you

Jamie

Sorry to go off topic, but how did you get those stats from the HH3?

http://192.168.1.254

settings (sign in)

advanced settings (continue to adv settings)

broadband

connection

Ah right, thought I was missing something.
I dont get those stats, but i'm assuming that's because i'm on BT Infinity, can anyone confirm this?
Thanks anyway

In reply to a post by steadyeddie:

Ah right, thought I was missing something.
I dont get those stats, but i'm assuming that's because i'm on BT Infinity, can anyone confirm this?
Thanks anyway

Confirmed .

Stats are only ever available from a modem. On ADSLx they are available from the HH because that contains an ADSL2+ modem. On Infinity the modem is the Openreach VDSL2 one and the HH internal one is bypassed. (You use the WAN port instead of the ADSL port).

The OR modem is locked down to stop you getting the stats. It's called nonOpeninfo. There is a hacked version of the firmware available, to get at them, but unless you are reasonably techie and know what you are doing I advise not messing.