@ Everybody,
Thank you all so much for your kind words.
@ Britbrat I have been very fortunate in that some really excellent advertising material is available to suggest that any ISP is better than the performance of the incumbent as illustrated here:-
http://www.ewhurst-broadband.org.uk/?p=2751#comment-478The situation might improve in mid January (I.e. over 6 months), if they don't postpone the repair yet again, provided they can find a suitable engineer who is able to connect
both ends of 12 wires properly.
It is quite preposterous that the initial lash up provided no spares at all, when an additional £10 or so could have provided two spare pairs by using 2 * 4 pr drop wires.
Regarding the battle, it is likely to be just beginning as the gazumping incumbent has thought it quite fit and proper to provide a maximum of 100 paris in three cabinets to serve 900 properties as a replacement for our 500 service cabinets we had specified.
This provides sufficient for 29%, 30% and 46% of houses respectively.
I was actually thanked by our minders for pointing out in the early Spring of this year that a "Higher capacity ECI cabinet" is useless if only a single pair of 100 pr cables are installed.
You might think that remedial works would be in order, but we now (8 months later) have to suffer the ignominy of competing with all the other substandard areas in Surrey for a virtual peppercorn of State Aid to rectify the numbers required as well as obtaining services for all those sub standard lines where no VDSL service is available.
Sorry for the minor rant, but perhaps it's a good thing that I am in a jocular mood this evening !
Kind regards,
Walter
EDIT One of my more agressive correspondents has provided the following opinion.
If this sort of thing is required to enable every State Aid application we may well be in for a very long wait.Securing of an EU allowable decision for state aid for Ewhurst may prove difficult if the letter of the EU requirements is followed. Accurate mapping would be needed to show the bits that BT are not able to reach with their current deployment. Also BT have already killed off a subsidised project on the basis that they would provide a solution within 3 years (the time period where the EU will not grant state aid once a company declares it will do the job). Note paragraph (c) in the attachment speaks about “similar if not identical quality conditions” meaning comparisons should be based on similar if not identical specifications. Regarding the Ewhurst history, paragraph (c) is in a different context, but how can BT kill subsidy to a competitive project and then receive subsidy to make good an inferior infrastructure without falling foul of the EU laws?