Hi gunjack and welcome.
Tiscali MSANs are already adsl2+ capable, its just that Tiscali dont really offer it yet as a product. IMHO most likely because their backhauls seem to come under some strain as it is on <8Mb.
I would imagine that TT would look at bringing them up to date though, although how soon this would be I dont know.. it did take a lil while with AOL bringing them up to date with Max.
>> rationalising of exchange equipment
I would imagine (at least with LLU) that they would do similar as what they did with the AOL takeover.
Any AOL customers remained on the AOL MSAN, what they do appear to have done though is merge the backhaul.
Theres a pic on the
exchange equipment page towards the bottom which shows a pic of the fibre optic backhaul.
Although its not too clear from that pic.. but that particular exchange has an AOL MSAN and also a TT MSAN.
The bottom backhaul was easynets.. but the one above it shows how both the orange fibre from both MSANs went to the same backhaul. Theres a short explanation of which is which next to the pic.
However Tiscali Wholesale have their own backhaul network.. TT have Opal... so I would imagine that merging the 2 would take far longer than what it did with AOL who didnt have their own backhaul and instead used a carrier.
TT's MSANs are MPF, whilst tiscali have SMPF (as do AOL) so keeping the 2 MSANs separate makes some sense.
>> TT's forums seem more technically aware and helpful than tiscali's,
Yes - at one point TT were baaaaad.. but they seem to have at least learnt some lessons and tried to improve on them.
They still have a way to go.. but are much improved to what they used to be.