In reply to a post by WelshWArrior:

What annoys me though is that there's already fibre in our exchange and your too. The County Council have it installed there for all the School/Libraries. We have 2 10meg Fibre lines coming into Greenhill School.

Surely having fibre already in the exchange should bring down costs for BT?

Ah I think you are referring to services operated by "Updata" for the County Council offices and the Schools. I'm quite curious about the DWP call centre at Pembroke Dock, I guess they must have a decent service there too, not to mention Friday-Ad - Im not sure if the other call centre in the old Dockyard is still open. Then theres the "Technium" at the Cleddau Bridge Business Park, I seem to recall them boasting "state of the art communications" for that when it was opened. so I shouldn't think that place is hanging off of some creaking old up-to 8 meg copper line, but like most things in Pembrokeshire - Pembroke Dock is the poor relation.

As I said... it would be nice of TalkTalk to at least tell us why we have been bypassed, in what is pretty much a county wide roll out that isnt too much to ask surely? I notice this thread have been ignored by the TT reps, who have answered other threads recently - so it isn't because they are not here...

Go Figure!

The situation really is pretty dire for you in Pembroke and Pembroke Dock. It doesn't make any sense at all, particularly looking at TalkTalk's rollout: why the hell would TalkTalk (or any company, for that matter), choose to unbundle 10 or so tiny exchanges such as Johnston and Narberth - both small villages in the rural Pembrokeshire countryside with less than 2000 premisis per exchange - as opposed to the Pembroke exchange, covering 2 large towns with 10000 premisis or more?

Just look at the pictures - this is Johnston exchange, which had TalkTalk LLU installed in November (according to SamKnows): http://i40.tinypic.com/11v06zb.png - it's literally just a garden shed.

Then look at Pembroke - no LLU, no WBC ADSL2+, no FTTC (as if that needed to be said!) and no prospect of any change in the coming months - not even a sniff of an RFS date. Yet this is a ginormous exchange in comparison to Johnston: http://i41.tinypic.com/11rvkp5.png - and the picture doesn't even convey it's size very well; it extends quite a way to the rear (pictures from Google Street View).

I believe Pembroke actually had an RFS date for BT's WBC ADSL2+ product several years back (2008 maybe?) but that disappeared and still hasn't reappeared, which is yet another bizarre "development".

Even worse is that earlier this year, as you've mentioned, Sky suddenly and totally unexpectedly unbundled Saundersfoot's exchange - another small village exchange with only around 3000 lines - and that's the only exchange in the entire county they've touched! Tenby, with around 5000 lines (ignore the SamKnows figures), is literally just a mile or two down the road and is a far larger town with many more homes and businesses, yet Sky ignore it. The same goes for Haverfordwest, Milford Haven and Pembroke (again) - all large towns with around 10000 lines, but no sign of Sky in any of them. I actually got in contact with Sky's Chief Executive regarding their decision to only unbundle Saundersfoot - all they could tell me was that Saundersfoot represented the best investment for them (how?!), and that there were no plans to enable any further Pembrokeshire exchanges for at least another year.

At least now with TalkTalk's LLU offering it appears that some of the county's exchanges will finally have a choice of something greater than "up to 8Mbps", even though a choice between TalkTalk and an ageing BT product is obviously still a pretty dire choice to have. But unfortunately even TalkTalk don't seem that bothered - Tenby's TalkTalk RFS date was nearly a month ago but it still isn't enabled, and it's the same in other places in the county where TalkTalk's RFS date has come and gone.

At least Haverfordwest and Tenby do have WBC ADSL2+ to look forward to in January, although the date could slip. It also appears that in the last few days Milford Haven and Saundersfoot have been given WBC RFS dates towards the middle of 2012, which again is better than nothing, but still no sign of anything for Pembroke. I do have it on good authority from a contact very high up in BT (as in, one of the highest!) that BT are pushing for funding to roll out fibre to the vast majority of Wales by 2015 at the latest, similar to what is being done in Cornwall with the whole county getting FTTC or FTTP. However whether or not any funding gets secured remains to be seen, so that plan could possibly end up dead and buried before it even gets off the ground. Unfortunately the fibre in the schools is completely unrelated to the commercial public rollout of fibre and uses totally different systems (leased lines direct to the school rather than the public telephone network) so that won't make the rollout happen any faster i'm afraid.

But hey, here's hoping we see some change soon. It's about damn time!

Apologies for the lengthy post.

TechWest

Good info there fella. I can confirm that the Schools do use the local exchanges for their Internet. The company that provide the Fibre have their own kit installed as you can see by the diagram and case study on their site

I work in one of them and BT are here quite often when there is a problem to check the kit in our POP room and also back at the exchange. I can also confim that we have fibre direct from the exchange.

They will make a commercial decision as to whether it will be viable to unbundle an exchange. Factors they will consider are the number of lines on an exchange, the number of users they have on that exchange. The overall take up of Broadband on that exchange and the number of users they may gain if it is unbundled

There seems to be more to it than that... a largest exchange in the county here.. a town where TT have been actively selling services for a long time via supermarket stands etc... so they must have a lot of people on those costly BTw arrangements.. make a lot of sense to move them on network and maybe mount another push as the only company that offer the possibility of above 8 meg,

Something doesnt add up.

Why would you need to apologise for such a comprehensive post? Thanks for both backing up some of my points - and for bringing some clarity to others. Its strange that Google street view can place our exchange so accurately when Google maps cant - maybe thats why it isn't getting unbundled.. talktalk have looked at the wrong end of the miss-named area. (according to Google maps the exchange is about 2/3rds of a mile west of its actual location)

I am very familiar with the shed at Johnston, and its younger brother at Neyland, I'm wondering Who lives in Saundersfoot lol ..... someone there seems to have some pull, and we all know how things often work in this corner of Wales... I spoke to a guy at Cardiff Bay who rambled on about them talking to people about how to move forward... so I'm guessing talks about talks, Carmarthen has an entry on the WBC list - about the same size as Pembroke and also has 2 LLU operators already in place. I'm dubious about fibre reaching here anytime soon... I guess it will go to the north Wales urban locations first.. the the uni towns like Carmarthen and Aberystwyth, we will be a long way down the list - as usual.

Given the plague of Talktalk reps haunting our local supermarkets last year - and the number of Tiscali/AOL refugees in the area (I know several - a fact I am not proud of lol ) there must be a financial incentive to get them off the BT infrastructure and onto the TT network. Also there is the point of being able to say we are the only "above 8 meg" game in town", the list I have seen for BT WBC shows up to mid 2012 and Id guess we wont see any moves at Pembroke till after that, so we will have the situation where part of the 01646 area is on WBC.. and the rest isn't, that might confuse some people. Im not even sure about the health of my Exchnage now as evening speeds are down.... and my ISP isnt showing contention on my IPSC bodge... sorry I mean node... maybe my data is running out of steam by the time it reaches the Birmiingham bodge.... sorry I meant IPSC Node

The silence from the Talktalk reps has decided me that if there ever get here (and arrive before WBC or another LLU Operator) there is no way I would buy from them direct, The communication with them doesn't seem to be any good. I think I would stick with the plan of keeping my voice line Post Office (the US and mobile weekend calls are useful) and buy Talktalk broadband service via a reseller.

Amusingly I can no longer access the page on the Talktalk site that listed Pembroke as "targeted". I think "noted for avoidance" may be closer to the truth. Having put all that effort iinto selling to people locally, it makes no sense to leave Pembroke out, especially when BTw have shown no signs of reinstating out WBC RFS. Someone must know why... its a shame they wont share the knowledge with us, I guess i will have to advise friends locally that there is no point in hanging on with TT when their contracts expire.

No apologies for the long post

Hi mate

Had reply from TT about the LLU situation in both Tenby and Dock - made no sense at all and was trying to get me to ring them to sign up! My internet during evening is also rubbish with the BT Speedtester telling me to ring my ISP! But that's down to VP being at Amber and contention according to Engineer yesterday as you can see here. Your exchange looks ok though - see..

Mine has been either Amber or Red since early 2010 - maybe that's one of the reasons we have 21CN RFS date in Jan? Size wise, our exchanges are pretty much equal so doubt it's anything to do with size. Your is wider and mine is longer with 3 stories.

Just joined looking for some info re my pathetic speeds. I'm in Pembroke and evenings I'm getting something like .5-.6mbps, it's impossible even to watch a youtube video. I e-mailed TT, thinking I'd hear nothing, but they did phone me yesterday, and proudly told me they had unbundled 95%, but Pembroke wasn't one of them! I asked what sort of time scale I could expect before they got around to us, and of course, no idea. "The best thing you can do is check every quarter". If someone could offer me some reasonable speeds at twice what I'm paying now, I'd rip their hand off!

Hi,

Memebrs would need some info, in particular your router stats, such as attenuation.

Must be on the fringes of Pembroke with those speeds, I'm not far from Bush Hill, but even with the speedtest result in my sig I often have issues with youtube and other video streaming, I keep checking but according to the plus net checker the exchange doesn't have contention issues. The last time I saw speeds like that from Pembroke exch was a friend on AOL who lived at the top of Grove Hill.

Talktalk also called me after a speedtest, and kept banging on about the cost saving, couldnt answer my question about when SWPM will be unbundled. I told the guy I wont sign on the promise of "eventually" at the moment im in a 30 day contract so if another option opened up here I can move to it with minimal fuss and no way will I lock myself into a long term contract on upto 8Mbps. He seemed to be having problems understanding that lol

Its a shame that Talktalk as a company are not as keen to talk to potential customers as they are to sign us up to long term contracts on the same (or worse) slow service as we get now, I just hope they got the hint and don't phone again. I have raised the issue that they claim to deliver 24Mbps "to my exchange"... Really? On an exchange not yet on WBC or LLU? !

I'm wondering what the issue with Pembroke is, no Talktalk, no WBC and no one is saying why, yet a tiny place like Saundersfoot gets 2 LLU operators and WBC

It makes no sense

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-Jan-12 15:14:02)