View Full Version : BT move the Exchange upgrade date again and still no work on NextGen broadband
It's been moved forward once again to the 30/09/12 this time.
I really think that at this point HIE should seriously consider going the Community Fibre route, it's been so successful elsewhere that telecomms companies have lobbied to get projects banned. Why waste the money for BT to sit around having lunches, consultations and pontificating when we could fund something similar to this project in the North of England (http://b4rn.org.uk/) (http://b4rn.org.uk/). That project doesn't even have government funding like the Highlands does.
God sake. somethin needs to be done. i've been holdin off to end o this month in the hope i would get sky broadband cheaper. now am goin to have to think about goin back to Bloody Terrible.
Bobinovich
11-Jul-12, 21:07
While talking to an ISP last week they let slip that their computer system had a date of 14th November 2012 for the 21CN upgrade - as always with BT it's a case of don't hold your breath :(
This is getting silly now, entering my (Thurso) tel. No. into the BT availability checker now gives
Your exchange is planned to have ADSL2+ by 31st March 2013.
about 3 weeks ago it said 12th July and last week 14th November, the latest BT Wholesale spreadsheet (available here https://www.btwholesale.com/pages/static/Library/Network_Information/21CN_Broadband_Availibility/index.htm )
says between 1st and 30th September and last year we were supposed to have this by year end (2011)
must be waiting to see how much they can get out of HIE this time!
Having said that I don't see Virgin or anyone else providing a service in this part of the world and don't even think of mentioning Fujitsu!
They use the same source as Sam Knows which uses BT's official Exchange spreadsheets. it's been timetabled for an upgrade since November 2011 but they keep pushing the date forward, other people here have posted about calls from ISPs offering new packages once BT upgrades. The cynical part of me - actually that's probably most of me - thinks they're either going to take the BDUK money and just give us ADSL2+ which I'd class as last generation broadband, not next generation broadband or that they keep pushing the date the forward as a dodgy sort of blackmail tactic for them winning the contract.
Their current plans for the BDUK money - which is separate to the exchange upgrade - have a timetable of 5 years which is way too long as far as I'm concerned. I can't help but feel a lot of the money will be wasted on pointless meetings, consultants and lunches. People just standing around talking about something instead of actually doing it, not that some degree of planning isn't important.
The reason others aren't doing anything up here is because BT charges too much for access to it's ducting etc. With Ofcom being one of the most toothless and biased regulators I've ever seen and with lots of its management either being from BT or applying to BT positions this isn't going to change any time soon.
Like I've said I'm all in favour of a community fibre project they've been so successful elsewhere that telecomms companies have lobbied to have them banned and declared illegal.
pentlandlad
12-Jul-12, 09:08
Unfortunately its just a case of being in the North of the Highlands and we get a low priority, as they are not interested in our exchange upgrade, and they also know our politicians are a complete waste of space, as they would have chased this up long ago. I have been watching the date move back for the last year, and reading in the paper about all the improvements to broadband being made in the country. I had considered writing to some of our politicians, but from previous experience, having contact with them, i would be wasting my time. I just hope i am still alive when they get round to upgrading exchange, or maybe it will end up a museum for old BT equipment.
Might it not also have to do with the number of potential customers and the fact they can't find Caithness, it is north of Inverness you know![lol]
Unfortunately its just a case of being in the North of the Highlands and we get a low priority, as they are not interested in our exchange upgrade, and they also know our politicians are a complete waste of space, as they would have chased this up long ago. I have been watching the date move back for the last year, and reading in the paper about all the improvements to broadband being made in the country. I had considered writing to some of our politicians, but from previous experience, having contact with them, i would be wasting my time. I just hope i am still alive when they get round to upgrading exchange, or maybe it will end up a museum for old BT equipment.
Might it not also have to do with the number of potential customers and the fact they can't find Caithness, it is north of Inverness you know![lol]
We have the same number of customers/users at the Wick and Thurso Exchanges individually as some rural parts of England that have been upgraded more in a lot of cases actually. They can reuse old equipment from former ADSL2+ exchanges that have been upgraded to Infinity/FTTC/FTTP. Outside of that upgrade this NextGen Broadband/BDUK project has money to spend, about £300 Million for the Highland area. Which is actually quite a lot for this sort of work.
Part of the problem is very few politicians actually get technology or have any knowledge in the area so they'll accept what the big companies spending money to lobby tell them and ignore constituents as complaining malcontents.
I suppose if enough people complain to different sources: HIE, local news media, Councillors, MPs, MSPs etc then something might get done.
Niall Fernie
12-Jul-12, 22:30
This whole saga reminds me of when they tried to palm us off with satellite broadband before we got adsl.
My Dad, Colin and myself went to the big announcement with many bigwigs and even an MSP trying to convince us that it was the best we would ever get.
They didn't quite get the fact that people who were working with online databases might have a hard time staying connected to it. They even let us demonstrate the latency (over 800ms) with a quick (or slow) ping to caithness.org on their own equipment in front of everyone there :)
All they could come up with was the fact that you could download big files with it and that's really all small businesses would want to do online anyway(???)
I was really surprised not to find a snake oil stand.
More developments - http://www.hie.co.uk/digital/consultation.html - updated on the 12th of July even though their crappy website has it listed as the 12th of August. That date mistake doesn't fill me confidence and these people are supposed to manage a technology project.
30Mbps by 2020!?! WTF is wrong with these people. I've had it with them, this is the last straw, I've had it with HIE, I'm loathed to make personal attacks but these spineless, ignorant, glorified bureaucrats who know nothing about technology have violated a trust. 8 years for something only slightly better than ADSL2+ (which gets 24Mbps), far below cable speeds and much worse that what other countries get currently. This is not Next Generation Broadband or Superfast broadband. This is Last Generation Broadband. Why are they even allowed to manage this shouldn't community projects be setup?
Practically everyone else classifies Next Generation or Superfast Broadband as a connection with at least a symmetrical 100Mbps speed, that means the same speed up and down.
They also say:
HIE's project will make 2Mbps the minimum speed available anywhere in the region by 2015
You don't say! I should bloody well hope so. They actually feel proud making that statement?
Kind of annoyed that neither Wick nor Thurso are classed as 'KeyTowns' - the highest definition - either. Not unsurprisingly there's a lot of attention focused around the Inverness area. Perhaps too much. Snail Oil Salesmen indeed. I guess our NextGen broadband money is going to fund the BT infinity rollout elsewhere.
They talk so much but say so little. This is just indicative of why government and public IT projects cost so much and have lacklustre results at best. They're managed badly by people who don't know about the project, are being manipulated or are just plain corrupt.
secrets in symmetry
15-Jul-12, 10:42
30Mbps by 2020 isn't much to aim for!
I've just done a test with http://www.speedtest.net/, which gave a download speed of about 28Mbps. I usually get 30-something Mbps, although I did once get more than 40.
At work, I often get more than 500Mbps from speedtest.net
This is all right now, not in 2020!
My results...
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2064677084.png
14592
secrets in symmetry
16-Jul-12, 10:27
That's not too bad for a straight ADSL connection - assuming you're in Caithness. AAISP deserve their good reputation.
Bill Fernie
16-Jul-12, 19:30
Well I have never been happy with my speeds in recent years. I just checked and it is still a pathetic .71Mpbs download and .31Mpbs upload.
Never ending buffering and ages to upload anything to this web site.
I have to say I hope everyone will say they are not happy with what we get here and that they need to up the game way past these proposals. OK it's a lot better that we have if they actually deliver it. But as many countries had these speeds years ago and will presumably have improved or are improving then by the time 2020 gets here we will still be way behind. I am not techy and I realise we have a huge geography with low population but if we are spending £200 million on this upgrade can anyone explain why we can only still end up way behind many other places by 2020.
Please all go and respond to the consultation and tell them this is still not good enough - everyone in Highland needs them to aim higher than that.
secrets in symmetry
16-Jul-12, 23:37
Well I have never been happy with my speeds in recent years. I just checked and it is still a pathetic .71Mpbs download and .31Mpbs upload.
Never ending buffering and ages to upload anything to this web site.
That's truly awful. Is it because you live a long way from the exchange?
Which ISP do you use? Have you tried one of the "top" ones such as AAISP or Zen?
That's truly awful. Is it because you live a long way from the exchange?
Which ISP do you use? Have you tried one of the "top" ones such as AAISP or Zen?
I'm with AAISP and it's usually fine though even then we've had to do some tied pair moves to a different VP because other ISPs keep over subscribing the trunk and during peak times it can be problematic. Personally I think they shouldn't be allowed to over subscribe but that's a different discussion possibly related to the lack of capacity up here.
My results...
http://www.speedtest.net/result/2064677084.png
14592
I've just moved back up to Caithness from Aberdeen and have had broadband installed by BT. I'm in Barrock and they said I should get a speed around 3.5Mb with a guaranteed 2Mb. Well in practise now that the line has trained and settled, I am getting a very consistent 5.5Mb minimum and normally around 6-6.5Mb. I've even had has high as 6.8Mb and BT had told us the absolute maximum we would get is 6.5Mb. In the centre of Aberdeen I was only getting 4.5Mb as my exchange hadn't been upgraded.
Even if we were all getting 8Mb/s it's still too slow. Especially considering content is becoming more rich, not to mention the contention/over subscription issues.
Even if we were all getting 8Mb/s it's still too slow. Especially considering content is becoming more rich, not to mention the contention/over subscription issues.
100% agreed. My point is, don't go thinking this is a Caithness or Highlands issue or that it's just the big, bad Government / phone companies / regulators / whatever ignoring us up here. I lived in the very heart of Aberdeen 2 months ago and the absolute best spped connection I could get was just over 4Mb. This isn't an issue purely for us up here - it needs ground-up improvements everywhere.
And like it or not, I can see why the companies and governments focus their efforts on the cities first. I may not like it but I respect the fact that they can improve the standards of internet for 200k people in Aberdeen with much less effort than 30k in Caithness. I'm not saying it's right or 'fair' just that it makes good business sense.
100% agreed. My point is, don't go thinking this is a Caithness or Highlands issue or that it's just the big, bad Government / phone companies / regulators / whatever ignoring us up here. I lived in the very heart of Aberdeen 2 months ago and the absolute best spped connection I could get was just over 4Mb. This isn't an issue purely for us up here - it needs ground-up improvements everywhere.
And like it or not, I can see why the companies and governments focus their efforts on the cities first. I may not like it but I respect the fact that they can improve the standards of internet for 200k people in Aberdeen with much less effort than 30k in Caithness. I'm not saying it's right or 'fair' just that it makes good business sense.
I totally understand that reasoning, though Aberdeen does already have several high bandwidth Points-Of-Presence and it is possible to get good connections there in some locations it's just a case of local distribution. Up here we have no such thing and we do have a dedicated fund for getting it it's just being mismanaged in my opinion.
It just occurred to me that another concern with the broadband up here is that BT's 20CN network has issues with IPv6, especially native IPv6. PPP packets under 74 bytes had to be padded with crap to make it work and even then that could be intermittent. It's an easy fix which basically requires a well documented core router update, but BT refused to do it. Perhaps that has changed given all the high profile IPv6 Day stuff recently I'll need to look into it again to be sure.
This is ridiculous, I get a download speed in Weydale of between 0.3 and 0.7Mbs and have done for months, but apparently thats ok because after an hour on the chat with BT it seems there is a fault in my area and when it`s fixed I`ll be able to get 0.5Mbs, wow, thanks a lot !
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