EO lines

Hi firstly hope this is the right forum if not sorry guys and can someone move to the right one.

I have been told i'm on an Exchange Only (EO) line which to my understanding means my small block of flat (6) our lines run straight from out main hallway straight into our local ecxhange.

Now i'm a realy bad part of London where i'm now lucky to get 4mbits and some get as little as 2, If we wanted to get fibre or something on those lines would it not be a simple case of rewiring our block and just running the fibre from the exchange down our current tube/tunnel where our copper wires go into our block?

Now i know it sounds simple and i bet it's WAY more complicated then that but i have to ask as i have no idea of how it works being on an EO line.

All1

For FTTC (Fibre To The Cabinet) the fibre runs to the cabinet (PCP) and not the customer's property. Those on EO lines, and like you I'm one of 75 EO lines in a cluster in central London (SW9 6xx), aren't connected via a cabinet but directly to the exchange. In our cases our connection is fibre to the exchange and then copper (or possibly aluminium) to our homes. For those connected via an FTTC enabled cabinet fibre runs to an adjacent cabinet and copper or aluminium is only used for the final step.

For the most part BT isn't interested in fixing the problem, there's no BDUK funding available for London to help with the cost and having written to the mayor he seems particularly disinterested in helping and is more focussed on helping small business. Nevertheless I believe BT may be doing something to help those in the Rotherhithe area and installing cabs nearer to the end users which could then have an FTTC cabinet added.

As for FTTP (Fibre To The Premises), which is more like what you describe, there has only been a very limited roll out by BT and whilst it would solve the problem of there being no cab is I feel unlikely in the short to near medium term due to the high costs involved.

EO in tend tends to be historical -- former factories , offices where land / buildings has been used to build houses and have used to exxisiting copper cables to connett - there is a technica solution (it could be there are anumber of blocs in your area which cuod work together to ger covered under prviate funding -- it can be done all depeods if their is appetite to do it - see openreach FAQ's for how to start the process