Rural areas are just as important as urban areas and each plays a part in the overal UK economy. And yes Ofcom should have done/do something about exchanges which will never been unbundled.

Here is a big jump in subject.
Had a telephone call from Toronto which lasted 40 minutes.
I remarked that this call was going to be expensive, the caller replied. No, not at all .
Unlimited international calls cost SIX DOLLARS A MONTH.
I could never understand why, my cousin phoned her Mother every day when she reached her place of work after leaving her Mother's home.Her Mother told me local calls were free.(That was over thirty years ago)
Can one see that EVER happening here,not really.
Big Brother has all calls including mobile going through their network, so that answers that.
£17.99 per month line rental, what a PLEASURE.
Don't reply by saying there are cheaper suppliers.I know.
The telephone infrastructure was funded by taxpayers.

Yes but usually such calls start off local then get transferred to the internet. But using apps like Viber, international calls can cost you nought. My wife regularly calls her daughter in Vietnam (video calls every time I might add). Both are using smartphones connected to the local internet. Yes, fast internet certainly does help but the quality of both video and voice is A1 in my book. Yes, we do pay for the internet (unlimited usage) but the actual calls themselves are free of any further charges. 40mins is small fry in her book - think hours. I dread to think how much we'd pay a telco for such calls.

Isn't this like using Skype or Facetime?

Strange

The vast majority of our UK Calls, Land-line to Land-Line, Any Time, are free, apart from remembering to hang up at the 58th minute, and re-dialling - Very rarely do our calls exceed a few minutes.

We have 1,000 minutes free for Land-Line to Mobiles; but rarely use more than a few minutes.

And we have free or very cheap calls to about 25 overseas countries.

No special agreements, standard contract.

Same same. All free!

Silly, silly me !!!!! to think ill of BT
The British Infrastructure Group and backed by 121 MPs -both Labour and Conservative, called for BT to be split from it's Openreach division. All major internet service providers except Virgin pay Openreach to carry their service.
Critics of this arrangement argue that BT has no incentive to improve it's broadband infrastructure because rival ISP's would benefit.It has left 5.7 million Brits with "dire" internet speeds, the report claims despite BT receiving £1.7bn from the Government to fund the delivery of super-fast broadband.The report stated that most of those stuck on slow speeds live in the countryside, it adds 'BT seems content to ignore forgotten rural communities.
The headline from the article reported here is:
Is BT treating the British public like fools?.

While there is a debate to be had, the report you refer to had so many flaws in the data that it probably would have been better releasing it with no data.

What I will say is this, if we keep on at BT Group to get better and deal with 100% coverage at whatever speed people think is fine, how will this improve competition and ability for others to offer better services in the future? The message should be how can we encourage others to compete on a commercial basis and either they wipe out Openreach and BT Group or the PLC ups its game in response. The vast majority of BT is bad calls otherwise are just asking for the group to improve and thus make it harder for the emerging rural competitors to compete.

So the chickens are AT LAST coming home to roost.
BT must hate this latest report, published yesterday.
In a statement that will surprise few, it said despite Openreach's obligation to treat everyone fairly "the evidence from Ofcom�s review shows Openreach still has an incentive to make decisions in the interests of BT, rather than BT�s competitors, which can lead to competition problemsWill be interested in comments from the Monopolist supporters.

Edited by deleted (Thu 25-Feb-16 17:19:28)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If you goto https://labs.thinkbroadband.com/local/index.php?area... you will see our stats for Glasgow City and you fall into the gap between the two lines you can see when you click the history button i.e. 0.9% of Glasgow passed by a VDSL2 or cable service but not able to get superfast speeds.

The broadband provider should have given you a speed estimate at the time of signing up and before you committed to upgrading.

The UK as a whole has 92.8% able to get something like VDSL2/cable/FTTH but the figure for those superfast is lower at 88.6% to 89.3% depending on whether you call superfast something over 24 Mbps or over 30 Mbps

The figures you have for Exeter are miles off reality.

97.4% can get superfast. Sure... pull the other one.

There are whole areas with no fibre serving thousands and thousands of homes. Areas where FTTP was part installed and abandoned with no FTTC alternative, areas like my office which are between 2 enabled cabs, where the fibre goes PAST ours, and was blatantly left out intentionally, and not because it wouldn't be feasible).

On one large trading estate, you're lucky to get 1.5 meg in many parts of it that I encounter regularly. We have quite a large number of lines in the Exeter area (not sure how you're definiing Exeter) where this sort of speed is still normal.

Below 2 meg USC ... absolutely, plenty of areas.
Below 15 meg... wayyyyy more than 1.5%
92% of Exeter can get Virgin... haha.
In fact, I'd find it unlikely we have 9.72% FTTP - there are a few chunks, but there are far more that are completely abandoned, unfinished and are no longer being done (were dumped years ago now).

The Devon figure is also laughable.

Hell, I've got customers in the EXETER area with FTTC who get 6 meg.