Broadband

[sddsddean]

I live in a village and apparently BT will not convert our exchange to ADSL unless they got 200 'promises'. So another company called Pipemedia has agreed to put in all the ADSL equipment if it gets 45 'promises'. The catch is that I think I would have to give up using AOL as my ISP and use them instead (although I am extremely satisfied with AOL). Has anyone else had a similar experience and how did you feel about it? It seems most unfair to me that another village 2 miles down the road, which has an industrial estate in it, has had the ASDL stuff put in by BT. If I lived there I could be on broad band now for only �13 a month more than I'm paying AOL now. It all seems very unfair. I thought this is what OFTEL was supposed to sort out. Any comments?

[brownrabbit]

I suppose it must cost a lot of money to make the service available, and if there's an industrial estate they know they can make a lot of money back. It's probably not very profitable in a small village.

[j2buttonsw]

I beleive BT has to upgrade the telephone exchange to support ADSL. Obviously you have a different exchange to the estate and BT doesn't think it profitable to upgrade yours. This sucks but I expect BT will upgrade all of the exchanges eventually, its just a matter of when. There are other broadband alternatives to ADSL (satellite/microwave links etc) but it depends on how much you are willing to pay for it. BTW, you are the first person I know to publicly endorse AOL!!

[Think Deep]

Well, J2buttonsw, I was going to say the same thing about AOL! As for broadband, sddsddean, give it a few years, and just like the BBC is madly trying to get everyone onto digital, so they can switch the analogue signal off, BT will be tripping over itself to get people onto broadband, so it can unplug the standard phone network. Anyone got any guesses how long it'll be? Not that that's gonna help you get broadband now. What about playing the two companies off against each other?

[Ant]

I also live in a village yet our exchange has been recently upgraded by BT, so i'm now using ADSL. The only thing I can suggest to you is to do what happened here. BT said that if we can gather 450 pre-registrations to ANY ADSL ISP then they will upgrade the network to ADSL. Some guy (dunno his name) set up a website so you could pre-register, which he did, and also a letter box drop and advertised around the village and other areas within the area the exchange served. After about 4 months 450 had pre-registered on his website and BT upgraded our exchange. So basically if you contact BT and find out how many pre-registrations you need, and get them, then you will be able to sign up for any ADSL package.

[darth vader]

We had to do this sort of campaign in my hometown Thirsk) - see link below - I'm sure if someone sued BT they'd be successful as in my eyes it seems we're being forced to do the donkeywork of drumming up business for BT. by the way i'm with the "AOL is a pile of poo" clan.

http://www.thirskbroadband.co.uk/