There also appears to be a misconception that EO lines are short lines and can therefore expect to already see good speeds from ADSL. As you know, this is far from the case, our EO lines being c2km in length putting our current ADSL speeds in the lowest 0.4% for Lambeth (TBB figures) although admittedly they are faster than many deeply rural isolated hamlets.

Well yes, the fideo is qute simplistic and nobody could expect such a huge project to be as simple as that, but the general idea they've given all along was that the people without, or with slow broadband were going to benefit first.

Maybe there'd been a disjoin between the marketing people and the actual people planning/delivering the service.

I don't envy the team behind the Superfast Cymru facebook page though, everytime they posted updates about new fttc availability every post would get a torrents of complaints about how slow there were in other places and they should got out from their cosy offices and actually install stuff. How a marketing team could be expected to help out with the actual laying of cables and installing cabs I've no idea.

What I don't understand is why this stuff (FTTP) is suddenly on the side of poles. If I think of FTTP locations near here, Chester South and Saltney all you have are the manifolds at the top of the poles. The rest of the FTTP network is underground. Why the change to having FTTP splitters on the sides of poles?

Cheaper than building a joint box to put it in

Only 2km ... I know of some that are probably getting near 10km. A friend of a friend at around that and gets about 1Mbps on ADSL, it is very stable though and they have several line into the property, family, business, staff and more with ADSL on them all.. The chance of him seeing FTTC is NIL - between the house and exchange there are maybe 4 or 5 other properties. He cannot "see" a satellite as there is a large hill or small mountain and forest to contend with. He is just waiting for a FTRN install - if it ever happens!

In reply to a post by Ribble:

Cheaper than building a joint box to put it in

Yes, that's true.

I wasn't trying to say that a 2km EO line was anything special, although perhaps so in a major city, instead I was supporting my statement that by no means are all EO lines close to their exchange and thus not all can expect to see reasonable speeds on ADSL and therefore warrant upgrading to FTTC/FTTrN/FTTP as appropriate.

I have a couple of pictures, but seem unable to attach to this posting for others to try and identify.

You can upload picture files to a site like this (others are available):-

http://postimage.org/

and then copy and paste the link onto your post.

I was just trying to reinforce the fact that EO lines can be long, very long or very, very long!

Indeed, if there are only a handful of properties in a certain direction from the exchange, that are spaced quite far apart, it wouldn't make sense to put a PCP in place.