Super Fast Broadband Manchester & Salford

[WingTips]

Originally Posted by Fortun3

18? not bad, not bad. How far from your exchange are you?

For those that are in the salford quays area - they've recently upgraded the trafford park exchange to fibre, so I imagine they'll start rolling this out to street cabinets (which will be when we can actually get it) soon.

I'll post this in the SQ thread too.

Could you keep all BB stuff on this thread or it will get very confusing, thanks for the http://fttc-check.alc.im/ really handy.

[future.architect]

Originally Posted by Fortun3

18? not bad, not bad. How far from your exchange

I'm about 1 mile from the exchange.

Originally Posted by WingTips

ohhhhhhhhhhhh... and ...hows it going?

It's seems to be going ok so far.

Speed seems to have increased since the other day. I'm not sure of the reason for that.

[WingTips]

good stuff

[Cobbydaler]

Blackfriars was upgraded at the end of March, but still waiting for rollout to us.

[WingTips]

Just come across this, and this has been kept pretty low key...

The cities allowed to enter the next round of urban broadband funding announced
Friday 04 May 2012 13:23:27 by Andrew Ferguson
The push to make the UK look uber cool with respect to broadband continues. The Chancellor announced a further £50m of funding for smaller cities in his most recent budget, some six weeks later the actual 27 cities that can enter this race have been announced.

Aberdeen, Brighton & Hove, Cambridge, Chelmsford, Coventry, Derby, Dundee, Exeter, Gloucester, Kingston upon Hull, Leicester, Londonderry / Derry, Newport, Norwich, Oxford, Perth, Peterborough, Plymouth, Portsmouth, Preston, Salford, Southampton, Stoke-on-Trent, Sunderland, Swansea, Wolverhampton and York.

Twenty-seven cities in running for ultrafast broadband cash
The criteria for being in the list is that the city has a Royal Charter and comprises more than 45,000 homes and businesses, reduced to 35,000 for Northern Ireland.

Only ten cities will be chosen so the odds are stacked against each bid, and the money is meant to only be used in areas where will not be served by ultrafast broadband by the private sector. In cities like York who already have Virgin Media, BT FTTC and FTTP and CityFibre starting to deploy, identifying a contiguous area within the city boundary may prove challenging. Londonderry also is rare in that all its BT street cabinets have a corresponding fibre to the cabinet buddy, which will at present not really cover the 80 to 100 Mbps requirement, but with vectoring it may do in a couple of years, and the announcement of FTTP on Demand for all FTTC areas raises the question, is that on-demand aspect enough?

For those in the most rural 10% of the UK, who will scream what about the widening digital divide? This news is not going to reduce the volume of their screams.

What is confusing is that several exchanges in Salford are already SBB enabled, and given that they are saying "the money is meant to only be used in areas where will not be served by ultrafast broadband by the private sector" is interesting as Salford does appear to be well served in the sector.

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/

[marty2014]

Originally Posted by Fortun3

18? not bad, not bad. How far from your exchange are you?

For those that are in the salford quays area - they've recently upgraded the trafford park exchange to fibre, so I imagine they'll start rolling this out to street cabinets (which will be when we can actually get it) soon.

I'll post this in the SQ thread too.

Hi There
My exchange is the Trafford Exchange,and a short time after it was fibre enabled my wife noticed BTO engineers working at the street cabinet round the corner from where we live.It's worth checking the BT site every day because the last day the engineers were working I went on the online BT fibre availability checker( on the18/04/2012) which gave the message"FTTC" available 30th June 2011.I checked again the day after,on the 19th April 2012 the online result came back as "Fibre Available Now".So the same day I placed my order for Sky Fibre Unlimited BB and am pleased to say I had it installed on the 04/May 2012.

In my experience if possible I find it better to get a morning visit booked for the engineer to install.That way if they get held up they could always turn up in the late afternoon.Mine was booked betweem 8am-1pm but turned up at 5.15pm.

Installation
Engineer disconnected phone etc from master Telephone socket
Attached a signal sender
He went to the street cabinet for approx 20 min
Back at my house installed a new Fibre face plate on Phone socket
Installed BTO modem to master phone socket
Connected my router to modem
Checked the line
Did some speed/connection tests on my pc

[WatcherZero]

Bit embarassing news for the Government last week however, theyve under estimated the universal broadband rollout cost by £1bn.

[WingTips]

Not surprising really !

[WingTips]

Originally Posted by marty2014

Hi There
My exchange is the Trafford Exchange,and a short time after it was fibre enabled my wife noticed BTO engineers working at the street cabinet round the corner from where we live.It's worth checking the BT site every day because the last day the engineers were working I went on the online BT fibre availability checker( on the18/04/2012) which gave the message"FTTC" available 30th June 2011.I checked again the day after,on the 19th April 2012 the online result came back as "Fibre Available Now".So the same day I placed my order for Sky Fibre Unlimited BB and am pleased to say I had it installed on the 04/May 2012.

In my experience if possible I find it better to get a morning visit booked for the engineer to install.That way if they get held up they could always turn up in the late afternoon.Mine was booked betweem 8am-1pm but turned up at 5.15pm.

Installation
Engineer disconnected phone etc from master Telephone socket
Attached a signal sender
He went to the street cabinet for approx 20 min
Back at my house installed a new Fibre face plate on Phone socket
Installed BTO modem to master phone socket
Connected my router to modem
Checked the line
Did some speed/connection tests on my pc

I have started using Speedtest.net recently its very good.

Thanks for explaining the set up precedure for this too, as till now wasnt really sure how it worked.

[Fortun3]

Originally Posted by marty2014

Hi There
My exchange is the Trafford Exchange,and a short time after it was fibre enabled my wife noticed BTO engineers working at the street cabinet round the corner from where we live.It's worth checking the BT site every day because the last day the engineers were working I went on the online BT fibre availability checker( on the18/04/2012) which gave the message"FTTC" available 30th June 2011.I checked again the day after,on the 19th April 2012 the online result came back as "Fibre Available Now".So the same day I placed my order for Sky Fibre Unlimited BB and am pleased to say I had it installed on the 04/May 2012.

In my experience if possible I find it better to get a morning visit booked for the engineer to install.That way if they get held up they could always turn up in the late afternoon.Mine was booked betweem 8am-1pm but turned up at 5.15pm.

Installation
Engineer disconnected phone etc from master Telephone socket
Attached a signal sender
He went to the street cabinet for approx 20 min
Back at my house installed a new Fibre face plate on Phone socket
Installed BTO modem to master phone socket
Connected my router to modem
Checked the line
Did some speed/connection tests on my pc

Thanks for the tips - I spotted this article recently: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/broa...ck-unreliable/

BT’s Infinity broadband service that offers speeds of up to 100Mbps internet speeds (with 300Mbps promised in the next two years) is available to 10 million premises in the UK but many searching online for domestic availability are disappointed that their area is not yet connected.




However, PC Advisor readers and staff have confirmed that BT’s high-speed fibre broadband service is actually more available than BT cares to boast about.


Here we give you simple advice about "How to check for BT Infinity high-speed broadband availability".


If you check your home’s phone number and postcode on BT’s website it may tell you that the Infinity service is not yet available.

BT checks your phone line and postcode online, and may return the sad news that you’re stuck with average (or what you’ll now regard as low-speed) broadband speeds.


The message reads: “Sorry, you're not currently able to get BT Infinity. This may be because your area has not been enabled yet, or your individual line does not support superfast broadband.”


However, don’t despair. Even BT admits that its online availability check is “often wrong,” as I found out when following PC Advisor’s Forum Editor’s advice to call up BT anyway.


It appears that BT still believes it’s good to talk.

Read more: http://www.pcadvisor.co.uk/news/broa...#ixzz1vs6Wa2ly

I called BT but unfortunately no change for those of us who live on the road named 'The Quays'. I've been trying to track down the exchanges around Salford Quays, I believe there's one outside the car gate to NV buildings. I've put a map up that we can all collaborate on, so if you know where a cabinet is, please feel free to add it:

http://maps.google.com/maps/ms?ie=UT...8f4f69dbd3ab78

[WingTips]

Thanks for the info, the Pendleton exchange is SBB enabled, but apparently its only Salford area "B" receiving SBB at the moment, as soon as you see a new Green "Cab" ( thats technical term apparently) then it should be on the Horizon.

[Fortun3]

Yup I drive past my cab (85 on The Quays just outside NV Buildings entrance) regularly and I'm always on the look out for a new green box. Nothing yet.

Although in a strange turn of events my broadband speed has slowly but steadily increased over the last two months. Up from the 3.5mb/s it's been for 18 months, now it's averaging 4.5mb/s with peaks up to 8mb/s. On the downside it has started dropping more regularly and needing the router re-set.

I'm with Sky broadband btw, will go infinity as soon as someone switches it on!

[WingTips]

Metronet has become one of the first peers on the new Manchester internet exchange point.

Wireless broadband provider Metronet is collaborating with LINX and other major internet firms to back the launch of the UK's newest internet exchange point (IXP), IX Manchester.

According to Metronet, the establishment of the IXP has given a major boost to plurality in the UK by taking some of the focus away from London-centric networks.It said the exchange point is a "clear reflection" of Manchester's key position as a global city and stated that the development of an IXP requires the existence of "resilient and reliable connectivity" - something that Manchester has in abundance.

Steven Axon, network manager at Metronet, insisted it is unsurprising that Manchester has become one of the first metropolitan areas in the UK outside of London to develop its own IXP.

"Metronet has long recognised the strategic importance of Manchester as a centre of excellence for connectivity and indeed it is one of the reasons why Metronet chose to base itself in this dynamic city," he explained.

Earlier this year, Metronet announced the launch of its next-generation wireless and fibre-based network in Crewe and the surrounding areas, offering local businesses an alternative to copper services such as ADSL.

http://www.cable.co.uk

[WingTips]

Sky confirms 76Mbps is available to all

Up to 76Mbps broadband is now available to new and existing Sky customers.
Sky has confirmed that its up to 76Mbps fibre optic broadband service is now available to all customers.

The satellite broadcaster launched the product in April, but it was initially available only to new subscribers who did not already have Sky Fibre or Sky Broadband.

However, the company has now revealed that everyone can sign up for its fastest connection. "All our broadband products are open to all customers covered by Sky's network," a Sky spokeswoman told ZDNet UK.

It is thought that Sky had not completed development work to transfer its existing customers from the old to the new system by the time it began selling the super-fast broadband service.

The up to 76Mbps proposition hit the market at the same time as Sky's up to 38Mbps product, with both of these packages supported by BT's fibre-to-the-cabinet infrastructure.

More than ten million homes and businesses across the UK are currently served by BT's fibre broadband networks.

The telecoms giant is aiming to increase this coverage to two-thirds of properties by the end of 2014 under its £2.5 billion national rollout.

[WingTips]

Not sure how this sits with your experiences, I recently went over to BT BB from Orange who were trurly appalling in every sense, and my speeds have increased to about 9Mbps and a much more stable connection...

UK gets average broadband speed increase

The average speed of home broadband connections in the UK has risen to 9 Mbps (megabits per second), as more people switch to super-fast services, says Ofcom.

The figures suggest a rise in speeds from last May’s average of 6.8Mbps. It indicated that 8% of UK home now have super-fast broadband, defined as speeds of up to 30Mbps or higher.

The government wants the UK to be the fastest country in Europe by 2015.

Sebastien Lahtinen, founder of broadband news site ThinkBroadband, said that 8% represents a "low take-up" for faster broadband services.

"In the current economic climate, spending an extra £10 a month to get faster broadband is simply not a priority for most households," he said.

Free network upgrades are helping to push up speeds. Many of BT's customers have been moved to the faster ADSL2+ technology, while rival Virgin Media started to double the speeds of most of its broadband connections in February, increasing the top speed of its fastest package to "up to" 120Mbps.

Ofcom has been at the head of a campaign to make advertisements for broadband less misleading.

All of the UK's major ISPs are now signed up to a voluntary code of practice which requires them to give more accurate estimates of expected maximum speeds. They have also agreed that, where possible, they would resolve customers' speed-related problems.

Users whose speed remains significantly below the estimated range have the ability to leave their provider within three months of the start of their contract without penalty.

"We are continuing to work with the advertising code-writing bodies and ISPs to ensure that speeds advertised reflect actual speeds experienced, to allow consumers the ability to make informed decisions when shopping around to find the most suitable package," said Mr Richards

http://www.egovmonitor.com

[Fortun3]

I did contact the virgin media team and they said they didn't have any plans to expand at salford quays in the future.

Just as an update I emailed Open Reach to find out when they were upgrading our cabinets at Salford Quays (as they have now done the exchange) this is the response I got:

Thank you for your email

Work in your area is ongoing and it probably will be the end of the year before that comes to a finish, assuming there are no major problems.

In addition trials are underway in various locations to test various fibre products in buildings of multiple occupancy (as with apartments) and these will run to the end of the year when the outcomes will be assessed.

Announcements when they are made appear on the rollout webpage below so would check that towards the year end. Please register your interest with your Communications Provider so they are aware
http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/

Many thanks
Peter Dean
Openreach Enquiries
contact.openreach@openreach.co.uk

[WingTips]

Originally Posted by Fortun3

I did contact the virgin media team and they said they didn't have any plans to expand at salford quays in the future.

Just as an update I emailed Open Reach to find out when they were upgrading our cabinets at Salford Quays (as they have now done the exchange) this is the response I got:

Thank you for your email

Work in your area is ongoing and it probably will be the end of the year before that comes to a finish, assuming there are no major problems.

In addition trials are underway in various locations to test various fibre products in buildings of multiple occupancy (as with apartments) and these will run to the end of the year when the outcomes will be assessed.

Announcements when they are made appear on the rollout webpage below so would check that towards the year end. Please register your interest with your Communications Provider so they are aware
http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/

Many thanks
Peter Dean
Openreach Enquiries
contact.openreach@openreach.co.uk

Parts of Eccles New Rd now have the new cabs as do parts of Langworthy, so I would guess it really is just a case of when they get around to individual cabs.

[WingTips]

Hmmmmm Hmmmmm ....

UK internet 'to be fastest in Europe by 2015'

The UK will have the fastest broadband of any major European country by 2015, Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has said.

He reiterated that he wanted to bring high-speed broadband - which he defined as greater than 24 Megabits per second - to more than 90% of the country.

Mr Hunt outlined the ambition in a speech at Google's Campus building in east London.

His comments followed heavy criticism last month from a Lords committee which said plans were too focused on speed.

The report from the communications committee said Mr Hunt's ambitions were "misguided" and left "a very real risk that some people and businesses are being left behind, that inadequate access to the internet and all its benefits is actually afflicting their daily lives".

On Monday, Mr Hunt defended his focus on higher speeds, which he said would be needed in order for the UK's network to remain competitive with others in Europe.

"We simply will not have a competitive broadband network unless we recognise the massive growth in demand for higher and higher speeds," Mr Hunt said.

"Today's superfast is tomorrow's superslow. Just as the last government was wrong to hang its hat on 2Mbps speeds, we must never fall into the trap of saying any speed is 'enough'."

Fibre To The Home

He said the government had begun looking at the ways it will allocate part of a £300m slice of the television license fee to provide high-speed broadband to a greater number than the existing target of 90% of the country.

Initially, much of this speed increase will be achieved by a Fibre To The Cabinet (FTTC) system, in which high-speed fibre cabling is connected to a cabinet near a user's home.

Internet data will then travel the final distance through copper cabling, which is slower. The possible connection speed available via FTTC decreases as it travels further away from the cabinet.

Because of this issue, Mr Hunt said FTTC will only be a temporary measure.

"The reason we are backing Fibre To The Cabinet as a potential medium-term solution is simple: The increase in speeds that it allows - 80 Mbps certainly but in certain cases up to 1 gigabit - will comfortably create Europe's biggest and most profitable high-speed broadband market," he said.

"And in doing so we will create the conditions whereby, if fibre to the home is still the best way to get the very highest speeds, private sector companies will invest to provide it."

Fibre To the Home (FTTH) allows a fibre-speed connection to reach individual homes without the need for slower copper cabling.

By 2016, he said up to two-thirds of the country will be able to access Fibre To The Home (FTTH).

[Cobbydaler]

Well, living in an apartment in Manchester city centre, served by an Infinity enabled exchange (Blackfriars), we still can't get it...

[WingTips]

Multi-million investment in Manchester broadband

The economy of Manchester is set to get a boost with the announcement of a £12m investment in the city's broadband.

The investment, announced today by Culture Secretary Maria Miller, will help transform Manchester into what the Government call a 'super-connected city'.

The hope is that by offering high-tech and digital companies the infrastructure they need, the city will be able to compete for business, investment and jobs with the world's top digital cities.

Manchester joins the four UK capital cities, Birmingham, Bristol, Leeds & Bradford and Newcastle in sharing a £114 million super-connected city fund. It will help provide businesses with ultrafast broadband (at least 80-100Mbps) and high speed wireless Internet access.

Culture Secretary Maria Miller said:

"Fast broadband is essential for growth, and is key to the country's economic future. Manchester has produced ambitious and comprehensive plans, which will turn it into a digital leader, and give the local economy a real boost. The new investment will help put the city at the centre of the digital stage, competing for jobs and investment with the best in the world."

The Government is trying to transform the UK's digital infrastructure as a key driver of jobs and economic growth. It is investing a total of £830 million in delivering the best broadband in Europe and extending mobile coverage.

Manchester's plans include taking ultrafast broadband access to around an extra 27,000 residential and 6,200 business premises as well as high speed wireless to even more. The plans are due to be delivered by 2015.


So good to see we are getting a good sized slice of the BB dole out...

http://www.itv.com.

The cash split is as follows...

London - £25m
Leeds and Bradford - £14.4m
Belfast - £13.7m
Manchester - £12m
Bristol - £11.3m
Cardiff - £11m
Edinburgh - £10.7m
Birmingham - £10m
Newcastle - £6m

http://www.bbc.co.uk