Super Fast Infinity - Super Slow Rollout

[GadgetBoy]

It's now two years since BT started pestering me to apply for Infinity. Now I'm not talking their blanket media campaign, I'm talking about emails and direct mail.

Is Infinity available? No. Not even a sniff of it. Nothing. Not a sausage.

It's not like I live in the back end of nowhere, I live in a city of half a million people. There are both a hospital and a major shopping centre within 500 metres of me. My exchange has been accepting orders for a considerable time. The next cabinet in the street has been upgraded to a fibre unit. I can walk for about 30 seconds from my front door and stand on the culvert where the fibre is. I've even asked my neighbours and other residents to register their interest in Infinity. Still nothing.

I'm fed up and extremely hacked off.

I've been a loyal BT customer for many years. I paid through the nose for ISDN before broadband was available and I switched to ADSL in the days when 500kbs was a technological marvel. I shudder to think what I've paid to BT over the years. I'm over the odds for Business Broadband too because I work from home in a heavily data dependent sector.

Enough is enough.

While BT are very cunning with their advertising wording - subject to availability and so on I've discovered it is illegal to advertise a product that will not be available within a reasonable period of time and it is also illegal to advertise a product when you have no intention of selling that product.

I will be referring BT to both Advertising Standards and Trading Standards and I have every intention of persuing the matter to its ultimate conclusion.

Thanks BT for the false promises and the, frankly, diabolical service.

[MHC]

Can you do me a favour and report Virgin too while you are at it.

I get at least one a week from them for the past 4 to 5 years and before that almost as many from them and their predecessors.   They dug up my drive to lay their ducts, put an access port for my neighbour on my drive, and still refuse to supply me as my "garden is too long ..." or other excuses.

As for roll-out speed, you might believe it to be slow but for a project as wide and complex as that with a very dynamic work force - one day there could be 1000 technicians available the next (without any warning) just 10.     Tens of thousands of notifications to LAs plus thousands of planning apps and various "bureaucratic little Hitlers" to work round ...  It is a real nightmare.       If BT could have found a way to deliver VDSL to 90% of the population in 1 year, they would have jumped at it, but there is no faster way.    Look at Kensington and Chelsea ...   tens or hundreds of thousands of pounds spent in planning implementation and marketing only for the local authority to refuse permission for most of the cabinets - so K&C get stuck with ADSL options and BT a massive bill.

[drinky1]

I can't agree more with the writer. I have two homes neither of which are served by high speed broadband. I too paid through the nose for ISDN before getting slow broadband and delivered hundreds of leaflets to homes withing  a radius of 2 miles to get BT to upgrade the exchange.

There seems to be a huge disparity between the aspirations of the govt to deliver a super fast digital network for the 21st century and the super slow management of |BT who couldn't run a bath let alone a multi billion pound enterprise.

When BT was state owned it was schlerotic and unresponsive. Under the present management they seem to be trying to emulate that model.

Finally I might add if the planning system is at fault then BT are not doing enough to point the spotlight back at the govt. This to is management issue. A project requires a multi faceted approach to deliver an outcome which in this case is not simply about the technical issues. Yes we have local autorities and govt depts who seem hell bent on making life worse not better for its citizens. it is for the private sector enterprises to be energetic enough and agile enough to shame these bodies.

[FSDSMAN]

I look after a few SME's and their IT. One is based in Crawley where BT Wholesale upgraded the exchange well over 18 months ago. Fact is the CAB boxes can only take 160 fiber lines I have been informed so it is first come first served if you are in a dense area. Secondly the roll out from the exchange to the local cab boxes will take years and BT have no financial gain to speed this up or any incentive to do so. Then running the new fiber lines to the dwellings will also cost and take more time. The government's idea and policy is quite frankly absolute crap of rolling it out. They set aside £50 million for this? That would not cover a minor city let alone the country. Why would BT want to roll this out quickly when they can offer the same thing essentially (a leased line) well same media anyway and route but that costs £8000.00 per annum aprox for a 20 meg line.

Oh just a note - if where you lived hosted part of the Olympics then you probably have infinity - elsewhere forget it. Even when the exchanges are enabled the roll out from them to your premises will take around another 2 years if you are lucky.

[bombinho]

---

@FSDSMAN wrote:

Oh just a note - if where you lived hosted part of the Olympics then you probably have infinity - elsewhere forget it. Even when the exchanges are enabled the roll out from them to your premises will take around another 2 years if you are lucky.

---

Actually I wondered about the strange pattern. But now you mention it that makes perfectly sense. They spared all the areas where people wanted it desperately and rolled infinity out in strange areas where I never had expected a large demand.
But yes, the olympic torch came that way.

[Gaz6565]

I must say how disappointed I am with the whole Infinity farce,

I recently found out our local exchange Longfield, Kent was being upgraded to supply Infinity only to find out we wasn't on that exchange and the exchange we are on won't be upgraded for many years, which I find very frustrating.

The area I live in is classed as semi rural but still has a high population, the amount of householders I know that would be more than happy to dig a little deeper into their pockets and pay to have Infinity is unbelievable, It seems such a waste of possible extra profit in the long term and to have happier customers for BT, that they just don't care, it seems as tho it's a case of you have so called Broadband (which at 3mbs) which is slow, so that's it. Don't expect anything else.

Even Virgin hasn't bothered to come into the area so we are all stuck with slow Broadband and satellite Tv.

I'm just fed up with Bt and Virgin promising the be all and end all, and having no hope of ever getting it

[DanSmith87]

The Fibre roll-out is one thing that's surprisingly impressed me about BT/Openreach lately. When you consider when they started the ball rollling they said that they'd have 66% of the UK Fibre enabled by the end of 2015, which is very typically a BT number as it was too little, too late, they've actually managed to bring it forward to the end of 2014. That's not at all BT typical, as you'd usually expect them to be late.

I now they've not delivered yet, but I'm surprised and impressed by the number of areas, and people, that have it already.

The main three things to consider where will be enabled next are:

1) How quick is the broadband already? The fibre rollout from day one has focused on places that have very slow or no broadband. This is partly because of agreements made to OFCOM and the government and partly because it makes business sense - they'll sell it because there's no notable competition.

2) Are Virgin/Another Fibre Provider already there? Openreach, or any service provider, are going to think twice about rolling out a very expensive to implement product where there is already competition. Where I live, the Virgin coverage is there, but patchy and there's Infinity from BT available in this area. Where I work, the Virgin coverage is excellent, and there are no plans for the local exchange to begin accepting Fibre orders, despite most of the surrounding, non-Virgin served areas already supplying Infinity.

3) Demand. If there's no real demand for Fibre broadband or superfast speed, then it doesn't represent a return on any investment. I hope everyone that has posted in this topic has gone through the motions of ordering Infinity, or the equivalent Fibre product from another BT Wholesale customer provider so that the interest is registered, because where's the return if there's no one who wants to subscribe?

Another issue which isn't helping uptake is the slow response of the other service providers to offer superfast products. The only other provider offering Fibre broadband I've seen advertise is PlusNet, and considering that they are BT Group business, that's not really surprising. The more providers that get on board, the more potential customer Openreach have; even if they're not BT users, they're still paying line rental.

[Jonesandco]

Totally concur with Gadgetboy. I have been with BT the same number of years, let's have some payback please for loyalty.