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Future prospects?

Hi all

I'm in a situation that I'm sure many others are too, and I'm just looking for some opinion to help me ascertain what the future broadband speed prospects are. In summary:
- I'm on an FTTC connection (ISP is BT)
- My property is 1200 metres from the cabinet
- I get a steady 15mb download speed and 1mb upload speed, which is the best possible due to the line length
- As I'm in the 'commercial roll out area' my local BDUK project team say they cannot and will not ever assist in any way (and that they are legally not permitted to do so)
- As I live in an urban area, most of the properties served by my cabinet have no problems with their FTTC or ADSL speeds. My part of the street is at the extreme end of the area served by the cabinet
- My exchange is not enabled for FoD but the cost would be prohibitive anyway

So my questions are:

1) As I have FTTC, but not 'superfast' speeds according to the Ofcom definition, does this mean I'm in the 97% covered by superfast or the remaining 3% who aren't?

2) What if any are the things that would be likely to increase my speeds in the future?

Many thanks!
 
Firstly, the current coverage level is about 92% and I don't expect the UK to hit 97% until 2020. Judging by your description the reason BDUK won't go into your area is because Openreach has already de-scoped it under their commercial roll-out.

However that doesn't mean you aren't in that final 3% and much will depend upon whether or not BT/OR also identified your area as being "superfast" capable or not (you'd have to ask them). But the problem here is that as your area is under Openreach's commercial roll-out, thus it's BT/OR that you have to convince in order to get another upgrade and not BDUK, which is tricky.

A lot of earlier BDUK contracts similarly required any new connectivity to deliver a 'step change' in local performance, so it wouldn't surprise me if your speed of +/- 15Mbps put it just outside of the qualifying criteria (some phase one contracts actually considered 15Mbps to be NGA / “superfast” compliant). The latest BDUK contracts are however doing some infill to upgrade existing FTTC areas with faster speeds.

At this point it would help to know your postcode and street, so we can take a closer look. As for the future.. if you're part of BT/OR's commercial roll-out then you stand a good chance of benefiting from G.fast when it arrives over the next few years. Likewise Virgin Media may be deploying into your area, so it's worth asking Virgin about that because BT and Virgin tend to overlap with their commercial networks.

The last option is to call around and see what sort of speeds and connections your neighbours get, then write a letter to your local MP and get any neighbours with concerns to co-sign it. I'd also send a copy to the local newspaper. Pressure can work, given time.
 
Which county? I know Surrey were looking at using their next "bduk(?)" phase to improve speeds to post codes that got less than 15mbps.

You could simply buy a second broadband service and either bond (using AAISP, sharedband or something) or VPN bond back to your own server to get double the speed.

I used to do that back in the 3.5mbps DSL days.

Tom - www.mouselike.org
 
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