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The two big reasons for low takeup stated were: lack of awareness and personal evaluation surrounding whether it is needed. I've helped some friends recently with broadband choices of this sort, so here's my evaluation!

Case A: Person C (not an initial) had some Openreach engineers in their area, who apparently laid fibre on one road, but not the lane C was down, as C's lane's residents said they didn't want it. (I would question the factual accuracy of C's report, but nonetheless it's is plausible with some 'translation'). Anyway, he was on TalkTalk up until recently, but only got around 0.5mbps down, but then moved to BT and now receives 6mbps over ADSL2+. After a lot of convincing, I got him to put his phone number in DSLchecker and surprise surprise, he could get up to 55mbps. He was pretty shocked, but basically concluded that six is more than fast enough for his family, especially since they were habituated to 0.5mbps. He downloads a fair bit from Steam, so they're certainly not a low usage household. Conclusion: didn't know as misinformed + didn't (feel) need (but glad to know it's there if needed)

Case B: Person E (also not an initial) checked their details on superfast Openreach in circa 2011 and saw that it was not currently in rollout plans. As it was a fairly rural area, he just assumed that meant it would never be available. Now is on a 26mbps down connection, which he's very happy with as was on sub 2mbps prior. Conclusion: didn't know/lost hope, but did (feel) need.

Case C: Person H (yep, you guessed it: also not an initial) lives in a fairly central location and never really felt the need to check. Turns out he gets around 14mbps on ADSL2+ and has never felt the need to change it. Conclusion: Didn't know, didn't care.

Case D: Person P (yep, it's an initial as it's me!): Stuck on a horrendously poor TalkTalk connection which attained me a rather cool 0.0016mbps (yes, I'm serious). Resorted to using 3G for a while and the 2mbps speed we achieved completely revolutionized everything. So much so that once we'd downloaded all the catch up TV and games my agegroup does, we'd already consumed about 300GB of data. Lucky 3's unlimited data option for mobiles exists! Later moved to BT, thanks to you guys, and then raced ahead with 7mbps down and 0.3 up. However, this gave us slower uploads than the 3G, which made my video 'business' quite difficult. Now on VDSL and rocking 8.5mbps down and 1 up. Just took 16 pages of emails to Superfast Surrey and a lot of patience! Looks like VDSL is coming. Conclusion: Initially thought it was never going to come (lack of information), feel I need it


I could put pretty much everyone I know into one of these categories!

Additionally, many people are happy if they can stream a 720p stream on their machine, while their family does stuff eg all can do what is wanted simultaneously. A 720p YT stream is ~1.2mbps, so allowing for overheads, 8*1.2=9.6mbps would be more than enough to keep most of the people I know happy.

Further details regarding takeup of BT's FTTC service: in friends' areas where Virgin Media exists, it's generally VERY low, we're talking 5-10%. In areas without virgin media, I've got to break it down a bit more:

Good VDSL(>20), poor ADSL (<5): Maybe 30-40%
Good VDSL(>20), good ADSL (>6): 15-20%
Very Good VDSL (>20), good ADSL (>6): Still 15-20%


EDIT: Put here rather than comments as felt is rather big!
 
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Case E: Person G (yep, it's an initial as it's me!): Lucky swine lives very close to the mast in 4G EE "Double speed" area. This person is a weirdo - lives on his own, hates TV, no interest in streaming, doesn't download videos, so only uses about 15GB a month on average.
He's not bothered about download speed (was getting around 20Mb on ADSL2+ but connection dropped more often than he liked so he asked his ISP to just cap it at 15Mb to improve stability rather than have a load of BT faffing around) but wants a decent upload speed. Best upload he would get on FTTC would be 20Mb, but 4G EE gives him an absolute minimum of 25Mb, and normally about 40Mb.
After a short experimental period to satisfy himself that this 4G lark does what it says on the tin, person G ditches landline - £30 gets him what he wants with EE for the internet, no line rental to pay, and phone call costs on Three's PAYG offering are no more than he was paying before, as although calls to landlines cost a little more, calls to mobiles are cheaper so it's swings and roundabouts.
Person G says "FTTC? No thanks."
:p
 
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