In reply to a post by caley:

I've recently found out (yesterday) that quite a number of houses around Culloden are 'exchange only lines' which mean no cabinet

That you could have told from your suppressed top line from BT Availability Checker, by absence of cab #, like so:

Telephone Number ########## on Exchange Inverness Culloden is served by Cabinet 10

If you use this checker:

http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/

and type in your tel number (or address checker option) what do you get? If you get something like

"Address xxxxxxxxxxxxxx on Exchange INVERNESS CULLODEN is served by Cabinet 6"

then you're not on an exchange only line and it might be worth waiting for OR to upgrade your cabinet to fibre. Otherwise being close to the exchange, you should get very good (~20 meg) speeds with TalkTalk or C&W LLU on ADSL2+.

Back in 2010 i wouldn't have dreamt of going with TalkTalk LLU due to their horrible reputation but i reluctantly took the plunge as they were offering a 30 day satisfaction guarantee in those days and been very happy since. I get 18 meg 24/7 and whilst their phone support isn't the best, their UK forum support are good and are able to resolve most queries. I'm paying £5.75 a month for TalkTalk Plus (no TV) for broadband + anytime calls with value line rental paid in advance annually.

EDIT: Xray specs beat me

Edited by deleted (Tue 11-Feb-14 17:23:00)

lol

I've already put my phone number in there but it doesn't give a cabinet number at all. I've tried other Culloden numbers using the same checker and they show a cabinet number which gives me the impression that we don't have a cabinet. I've just sent off an email to Danny Alexander, our MP, to see if he can get the information BT won't give me. I'll let you know if I get a response.
How longs your contract with Talk Talk. I wouldn't like to be tied in too long with any phone and broadband company. I'm with IDnet for my phone and Zen for my broadband which are 1 month contracts.

Caley.

In reply to a post by caley:

which gives me the impression that we don't have a cabinet.

It's not just an 'impression', it's a fact (now that you have finally revealed to us that the BT Checker shows no cab #)!

In reply to a post by caley:

How longs your contract with Talk Talk. I wouldn't like to be tied in too long with any phone and broadband company. I'm with IDnet for my phone and Zen for my broadband which are 1 month contracts.

I'm on a 12 month TallkTalk contract but that's because each year i sign up to another 12 months with retentions to get the best deal...its so cheap it wouldn't bother me to pay off my contract (~ £70 max) if i had to leave them early. Otherwise once your initial 12 month contract is up with TT then you go on a rolling 1 month contract unless your renew.

If you want to keep your IDNet line (BT based) then consider signing up with Xilo (very good isp) for their TTB partiall LLU broadband. You'll pay more but you'd get better support than TT direct and also be on a 30 day contract:
http://www.xilo.net/adsl_broadband/

The checker is pretty reliable on the fact that if no cabinet number is given then you are on what is called an Exchange Only line.

This makes getting FTTC to you more expensive than the majority of people, and I'd go out on a limb and suggest that as the current Scottish target is 85% able to order superfast broadband by 2015 that FTTC will not be coming to you in the next two years.

Might be lucky by 2017-2018 depending on how the Scottish project evolves.

Feel free to lobby your MP, but the reality is that it may be serve you or two other people in another area. In which case why should they serve you and not the other people?

Hmmmm. You've got me thinking now. If fibre isn't available to me then I might just go down your route later on. I want to wait until I can find out if BT have any other plans for the folk of Culloden who might not get fibre. From what I can see there will be quite a few who'll feel miffed if they get left out. I'm not too worried about it but there are others who are. I was happy getting the 13mb with ADSL24 until the dreaded Coms appeared. A number of folk asked me if I would contact our MP Danny Alexander for them so they could find out if they were or were not going to get fibre so I fired of an email earlier on. I don't hold out much hope that he'll get involved but if you don't ask you don't get.
Thanks for all the information you've given me. Helped me tremendously. There are quite a number of helpful people on this forum and some not so quite. Let me know when you get signed up.

Caley.

this is understandable given as well those connected to cabinets on average will be longer lines.

my sister is direct to exchange she and her bf were both depressed about the lack of fiber, netflix etc. buffering. I went round to do some diagnosis, logged into the sky router they had and lo and behold they have a sync a bit above 24000kbps (best ever line I seen personally), no problem with the line then, and in my eyes these sort of lines lower candidate than areas like mine where adsl was atrocious. Thats amazing considering sky are known for conservative DLM profiles.

My sister said she seen a flashing sync light once (told me on boxing day) I swapped her cables round as the sky splitter was plugged in 'before' the filter. She said it hasnt occured since, the buffering remains tho, her netflix and other streaming devices are all wireless, tested with my phone and was connected via wireless G at a whopping 5mpbs, her bf's S4 a whopping 1mbps, router is a old sagem, G model. Got her to ring sky and apparently a sky hub is on the way, hopefully that will fix her wireless performance issues as that I believe was the cause of her buffering. In my view a 24mbit synced adsl2+ line is adequate for mainstream use. as long as uploading isnt important.

adsl1 tho is a bit obselete now imo.

Edited by Chrysalis (Wed 12-Feb-14 10:20:30)

In reply to a post by caley:

Thanks for all the information you've given me. Helped me tremendously. There are quite a number of helpful people on this forum and some not so quite. Let me know when you get signed up.

Caley.

Culloden is now FTTC live and i have seen some brand new PCP cabs (along with fibre cab) installed on Barn church road near Scotmid in Balloch, so perhaps Openreach are re-routing those on exchange only lines? My cabinet in Westhill went live overnight and i've just ordered fibre with TalkTalk
http://www.imageupload.co.uk/images/2014/04/01/Captu...