Originally Posted by RobinOfLoxley:
“No, they have been widely doing that (FTTC/FTTH) Green Cabinet stuff only recently.
But they have been upgrading the National Network (between exchanges) with fibre since the late 80s and through the 90s. (My company was a supplier of fibre related equipment, to BT, doing that).”
This is pointless pedantry. I was obviously talking about the access network, not the trunk side.
BT, as you say, hasn't had a problem getting backhaul to exchanges for years - but this isn't really the problem.
The problem is the access network and it is only around 2011 that BT finally woke up and did something about it.
Originally Posted by RobinOfLoxley:
“But Rural areas were low on the list. So you might only get 500kbps instead of 2 or 4 or 8Mbps.
I'm not 'demanding' Superfast fibre for all now, but you should at least be able to get 4 or 8Mbps until further infrastructure is available at 10s or 100s of Mbps.”
In terms of ADSL speeds, rural areas have never really been forgotten. With the exception of a tiny, tiny number of exchanges, everyone who is connected to a BT DSLAM can at least get an "up to 8Mbps" connection. Over the years, as BT has slowly replaced its "20CN" network with "21CN", this became "up to 24Mbps" (or 40/80 for FTTC, or 160/330 for FTTP). Some of the LLU operators have also moved into smaller exchanges too. I can get TalkTalk ADSL2+ now.
The problem is line length - and that is something that will never be overcome by providing exchanges with more backhaul capacity. As you are probably aware, the only way to fix that is to reduce the copper length, and that's what BT has been doing with its FTT* rollout.
I mean, I am fortunate that my line was both short and free of defects - so I was on 8Mbps for years (right up until I could get FTTC). Many rural dwellers are in a position like mine. I was able to get 8Mbps on the same day that millions of others could - rural and urban - as BT switched it on nationwide almost in one go.
And if you're going to spend tons of money on putting in miles of fibre + cabinets to serve rural areas, you might as well push the boat out and offer high performance too. Hence 40/80/160/330 and soon 1Gbps (depending on whether you can get VDSL, G.fast or FTTP)
4 or 8Mbps is rather pointless too, given that it looks set that BT will have a 10Mbps USO placed on it. You can't do that purely with ADSL from exchanges - you need to do that with FTTC and FTTH (or maybe 4G now that they own EE)