Personally I stopped being optimistic about this kind of thing a long time ago, I live in
Tenbury Wells which I guess is classified as rural, it took us years longer to get ADSL2 and FTTC. The irony is that I watched Openreach install a fibre cable a couple of years ago to a local school literally past the end of my driveway, so I guess it's available for business clients.
Two (slightly larger) towns near to us also have FTTP (Bromyard and Leominster) which is also mildly annoying, combined with the fact that we also live in a not-spot where you can only get 3G if you stand outside. On the the other hand we have at least one excellent butcher ....
C