So it appears that about 70% of those who could upgrade, have no great interest in doing so; with ADSL being sufficient for their requirements; or Dial-up; or are not concerned to have access to the Internet.

Im sure cost is the major factor. Maybe faster but unless you download or stream HD content then you probably dont need to spend the extra it costs to have fibre. Even HD can be streamed on ADSL. Alot cant warrant paying the extra for fibre a month.

But then the issue is if/when fibre comes down in cost, will more suddenly want it, resulting in more cabs requiring upgrades which cost OR money, which gets passed to the user?

Yes, I am certain that the costs of running Fibre proper to individual properties will not encourage the majority to do so.

Particularly if it has to go underground, as it probably would for the estates around me.

Even as Overhead from poles ( and getting the main feed to those presently non-existent poles) would be relatively costly.

I wonder what the effect of a cracked fibre would be?

And how far the broken ends would have to part to break the service.

-------

I have the experience of playing with glass-fibre cloth back in the mid-1940s.

It was fascinating to lay this very flexible cloth on the open fire, not burning; but solid when we retrieved it, otherwise apparently unaffected.

My father used it as the ribbon around wedding cakes, because of its lustrous appearance.

The care needed when cutting and trimming it, similar to asbestos.

Was mainly talking about FTTC, which is still more expensive than ADSL and this will discourage people. May only be £5-10 more p/m (not looked too closely at cost) but why pay that if you dont really need faster internet

Edited by bobble_bob (Tue 16-Feb-16 13:06:20)

No need to bother now. All I'm trying to say is that I'm very wary when I hear the percentages being banded around (by BT, Gov, council or even TBB) for 'superfast' broadband as in my experience the data may be flawed (i.e. The lines I see won't be the only ones in the country that are incorrect)

We do comparisons between some limited areas and speeds people are recording from the speed test, yours is interesting as started at 30 Mbps and has dropped. Why not for every postcode, because we don't have a team of 1000's to go and do this sort of checking - it is a team of me.

The general tolerance we give to the overall figures is +/- 1%. Some areas are worse than others and that can explain the odd blip up or down in our stats, i.e. as we review an area.

The way that press coverage works is that it would actually be more advantageous to us if our data disagreed with BT/DCMS as negative always gets higher coverage than 'yes their figures are about right' The real test will be when an area declares 100% superfast as then only need to find one postcode that is not superfast to reduce this to 99.99%

FYI
Your speedtest map links to http://gov.wales/topics/science-and-technology/digit... which is password protected?

It gets mentioned when checking for Welsh postcodes in slow areas:
Details of the basic broadband subsidy scheme (2 Mbps USC) for your area are available on the Sir Fynwy - Monmouthshire USC subsidy microsite. The subsidy of up to £400 should cover the install and hardware for a basic satellite broadband connection.

Is it possible to see where you are plotting cabinets on any of your speed related pages? I see you can show exchanges but it would be useful to see where the cabinets are - or have I missed it? Edit: I appreciate other sites do show cabinet locations...

Edited by b4dger (Tue 16-Feb-16 14:01:43)

Sometimes that Welsh voucher page seems to be password protected and then they fix it?

No need to pester them have found another version of the link that seems to work.

http://gov.wales/topics/science-and-technology/digit...

Edited by MrSaffron (Tue 16-Feb-16 14:33:40)

We don't show them, for the exact reason you are complaining, i.e. where lines are seen to be performing badly we might position a cabinet in a 'wrong' location to add to the line length that produces the most representative result for the cabinet foot print.

Also the checker site covers a multitude of providers where cabinet locations are irrelevant, strictly speaking so is the exchange but we compromised on that.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

...you are complaining...

I'm not complaining just providing you with some feedback!