BT Fibre Optic Instalation 'Lottery'

Subject: BT Fibre Optic Instalation 'Lottery' Tue Feb 22, 2011 11:43 am

Quote :: The installation lottery of BT’s fibre rollout is leaving thousands of homes in blackspots even though their areas are supposedly enabled for fibre broadband, PC Pro can reveal.

According to industry insiders, as many 60% of street-level cabinets have been left out of the fibre loop during the initial installation, despite BT trumpeting the availability of services in the area.

BT’s fibre rollout is the long-hoped-for upgrade that moves the UK towards next-generation internet access, but the technology requires two installations to be completed - one at the exchange and the other at the street cabinet - before consumers can receive up to 40Mbits/sec services.

BT Openreach describes an exchange as in progress if there are ten cabinets live, but there could be 70 or 80 or more cabinets in that area – customers are seeing when their exchange is enabled but not when their cabinet is going to be, or even if it’s going to be upgraded, because only about 40% or 50% of cabinets in a given area are scheduled or are likely to be upgraded.

BT needs to make it clearer what an enabled exchange means, make clear that a rollout can take place over three, four or five months and make clear that just because an exchange is enabled the actually coverage in that area could be 40% or 50%.

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