Why is this legal?

[bigal488]

Can someone from BT explain to me why it is lawful for BT to charge me the same for a 0.5Mbps service as people 6 miles down the road who receive 8Mbps?

Our exchange is artificially speed-restricted to 0.5Mb as part of the Scottish Government/BT's 2005 Exchange Activate scheme that was rolled out in 2005. This scheme effectively gave BT a monopoly over providing a broadband service.

There is therefore no commercial pressure on BT to provide a faster/better service.

At a recent local residents meeting, the broadband service/speed was the most voted for area of concern.

I would like to know:

1. How long does BT's monopoly last for (now 5 years+)

2. What plans are in place to upgrade the Exchange Activate exchanges?

3. Why are BT allowed to charge us the same amount for this restricted service as people who receive 16 times the bandwidth?

[timeout]

the ADSL max (up to 8 meg) service was rolled out a few years back.. At that time the capped products were removed 512k 1mb 2mb ect. it was replaced with ADSL max which was given at a cheaper price than the capped services. The broadband is supplied at an upto 8 meg service,upto being the preverbial word. BT are covered by this single term to continue providing the service at a fixed price no matter what speed you get (Its a term agreed to when signing up for broadband) As you know line speed is determined by how far you are from your local exchange. Fitting a broadband accellerator plate may help, it reduces noise on the line so means your loop loss will fall and signal to noise ratios should rise meaning a clearer line for BB to run over. I know there are a couple of LLU exchanges in the north that have been unbundled offering speeds of 20 meg+ but these services are still affected by line length ect

hope this helps 🙂 

[bigal488]

Thanks for the reply.

If you have a look at this link:

http://www.scotland.gov.uk/Topics/People/BroadbandforScotland/Technical-Overview#a4

Go to the Exchange Activate section. You can see that it is still limited to 512k at the exchange. 

(I can see the exchange from my house!). You also notice the extremely limited list of possible broadband suppliers (basically BT has a monopoly).

My point is that we pay the same for this crippled service as our neighbours in the town 6 miles away (who do get the full 8Mb ADSL Max)

I believe that:

1. BT should not be allowed to charge us the same for this reduced service.

2. The monopoly on these exchanges should be ended. 

3. This 512kb cap should be removed

I realise that this is a Governmental matter (and have had several meetings/discussions with both my Westminster and Scottish MP's) but BT is complicit in this: Its their policy to keep these exchanges capped at 512kb and I wanted to draw attention to this.