Thurso Exchange 21CN upgrade

[retrodj]

Everytime I check the sam knows website the Thurso exchange upgrade keeps getting put back. It was April, then June, now end of July. Surely it cant take that long to make the exchange ready for some cheap broadband? It must only be a matter of flicking some switches or adding a couple of bits of equipment. Can any Openreach engineers on here give any explanations/updates??

[pentlandlad]

Had been looking forward to getting some cheaper broadband tariffs like the rest of the country, but being the far north of Scotland no politicians give a stuff, so why should BT give a stuff, just rip us off for a while longer. Just like the petrol, postage, etc, they have no interest in the population in the north.

[BNL Are Me]

The equipment, believe it or not, is sitting in the exchange ready to be installed. No idea on the delay though, sorry! Can only think that BT Wholesale haven't given the engineers the go ahead yet.

[RecQuery]

I've heard the delay is due to a lack of capacity on the network backbone links going down to Inverness, they're currently trying to optimise and shape what they have because heaven forbid they run more cable in the trunking. They already over subscribe VPs I suspect the situation will just get worse.

I think BT are also purposely pushing it back so they can have a big PR win in their corner come the time the HIE led Broadband tender is decided which BTW is turning to be a bureaucratic waste of money that will deliver a crap and inferior service and take years to implement - they should have called it Last Generation Broadband - so a standard government/public sector IT project basically. Not that I'd expect much better from HIE.