Though to be honest I will believe it when I see it!
Those who have been following my FTTC fibre journey will know that I was one of the first people in my area to get fibre back in October 2010. I was impressed with the 40Mb download speeds.
I was less impressed when I moved house in 2012 and having moved (literally) just down the street I was back on really slow ADSL. So for nearly the last five years I have had an ADSL connection that struggles to get to 1.5Mb download speed!
The story of the fibre journey of cabinet 25 connected to the Worle Exchange has been one of mis-information and downright confusion.
Back in 2015 I outlined the story so far…
I have written previously about my woes with fibre before, when we first moved house and lost fibre and then my initial investigations into why I couldn’t get FTTC and back in 2012 writing about the confirmation of no plans to upgrading cabinet 25.
It would appear that BT Openreach decided initially that cabinet 25 wasn’t commercially viable, as a result passed it over to Connecting Devon and Somerset. Then at some point BT Openreach changed their mind about the commercial viability, so when Connecting Devon and Somerset came to plan to upgrade the cabinet, they found it was part of a commercial plan, and under the rules they adhere to, they weren’t able to upgrade it. Now we are in a situation where BT Openreach are saying that it is under review with no indication of when or even if it will be ever upgraded.
In May 2016 there was an article on the local paper.
According to the report in the local Weston Mercury, BT Openreach had changed their mind and would be upgrading cabinet 25 to fibre so that we can get FTTC.
In theory we were supposed to be getting fibre by March 2017… then it all fell apart and BT Openreach backtracked on the date!
So last week when I checked the BT Openreach linechcker I was surprised to see that the fibre journey which had been stuck on “We are exploring solutions” for years had moved along to “Design”.
According to the BT Openreach website this means
You’re in a fibre plan and we’re looking at the existing network in your area to see how we will design the upgrade. You can’t order a fibre service today but typically it’ll be available to your premises within the next 12 months.
So we could be connected to fibre in less than 12 months!
We’re drawing up our network plans and assessing the best way to bring fibre to your area. We currently deliver fibre to you in two ways. Sometimes we use a combination of fibre and your existing copper line to deliver our Superfast network (Fibre to the Cabinet). At other times we connect fibre directly to your property (Fibre to the Premises). We often need permission from the local authority while also considering the wishes of your community in terms of look and practicality. At the end of this design process, we’ll have a blueprint in place for delivering fibre to your community.
Possibly we might even get FTTP (fibre to the premises) but I think I am just blue sky thinking there!
Having just moved to worle from clevedon, I was very dissapointed at the broadband speeds 🙁
Especially that virgin media wasn’t available at all! (Have registered interest but doubtfully it will come)
Been using and relying on virgin for years now and trying to figure out the best alternative is difficult.
You think virgin will ever come to weston?
Design…sounds promising!!! Finally Xbox (and more importantly work #cough) will be back to what it was before I moved!!
BT are full of crap will believe it when I see it
based outside of Yeovil, Somerset – our cabinet gets us 3mbdown and .300kb up, was in build phaze, no work carried out then went right back to 1st stage of the journey planner exploring options 🙁 so much for a crack down on these companies to ensure everyone gets fast fibre speeds – more annoying is how many vans are around and an 80mb cabinet 300 yards from where i live which is a different box to the one im connected