Fibre broadband is the future. All the adverts tell us how lives will be improved by the installation of super fast Fibre. Though the reality for most is it’s not actually Fibre coming into our houses. Most implementations of ‘Fibre’ is in fact Fibre to the Cabinet (FTTC) – this is nothing new, V*rgin have used this method for years (Fibre to Cab, then Coaxial to home – not too dissimilar to the BT cable from the pole).
So living in Birmingham you have thought getting Fibre would be an easy task, well for some in the B26 area it is. However, for those on Cab 50 (and other small cabs) – chances are you’re not getting it.
Why? Well I asked Openreach and they replied:
Exchange Stechford
Cabinet 50
Postcode B26Thank you for your interest in our Fibre Broadband deployment. We are deploying one of the fastest and largest commercial deployments in the world. Our commercial deployment will have extended to 66% of the UK by the end of Spring 2014. We aim extend this to 90% of the UK, in partnership with other sources of funding, e.g. local and National government.
Our deployment is based on the commercial criteria for each cabinet and your cabinet fails to meet the commercial criteria. This is because the cabinet has too few premise connected to it, rendering it too small to provide a return on the investment based on the costs for the construction and on-going running costs of providing a new FTTC cabinet.
So there you go, I can understand their argument – it would be nice if all the Fibre adverts would go away. I guess I’m fairly lucky as I know others would love the 5-6mb download speed I currently get. However if this house was 200metres or so in each direction I’d be on a bigger cab and able to get Fibre.
So no options available (BDUK isn’t an option as I’m potentially served by V*rgin M*dia) – I might consider writing to my MP – Maybe Mr Hemming might be able to do something.
So got a cab like this? Chances are you wont be getting Fibre as the Cab Capacity doesn’t justify the investment in this current tranche. So next time anyone in the B26 area walks past it, please be nice – don’t let dogs wee up it as it’s all we’ve got.
You can check your Cab number and availability with the BT DSL Checker website (you can check either phone number, postcode or address).
Oh, by the way I host this site at home on my current ADSL2 connect – it’s a bit slow at loading, hence why I’d like Fibre. 🙂
/update:
I dropped an email to my MP (John Hemming) who’s replied (via email and letter from the House of Commons!) to say his team will contact Openreach/BT for an explanation. Not sure if anything will happen, but we’ll see. To remind me how bad things are, downloading a couple of 3 minute movies trailers on my Apple TV tonight took a few minutes each to load.
/update2:
Had contact back from John Hemmings office – sadly they got the same albeit longer reply.
Sadly looks as if V*rgin are the only speedy option – I’m not overly pleased with their 18 month contract, nor their traffic management.