Hi guys and girls.
Yes I am the author of the post on tbb about ali in Leics.
My area is a inner city area highly populated, however it is a trouble spot, historically there was a local exchange but this was removed in the 80s by BT after privitisation to reduce costs. This area is now fed of the city centre exchange. The problem with this is a canal and a 2nd river in between the city and us as well as indirect road routes.
Now it has been in the local press more than once that thousands of lines are unable to even get a line synch, this is in the estate just across the road from me, I myself can get a synch of around 6mbit but it is troublesome with various noise bursts, interference etc. as well as hideous voice quality.
My direct distance by air to exchange is 1.65km
My road distance as estimated by kitz online checker is 3.54km
My line length according to BTw database is 3.96km
My adsl1 attenuation is 49db.
Make of those stats what you will.
I have been told by various people within BT currently no ali in my area, but is a lot of thin 0.4 copper and even some 0.3 copper.
Recently I heard road digging in the distance for 2 weeks that got closer and closer, when I went to examine it was openreach doing the work.
Initially I was unable to get any kind of info but eventually a engineer watching the work told me they laying ali along with a new cabinet.
I tried to have a conversation with him but he was trying to get rid of me, he said to me this was nothing to do with getting the houses in the estate broadband the line would still be too poor, but was due to high fault records in my area and the pairs marked faulty broke openreach threshold and justified some emergency work.
Apparently was cheaper for BT to lay ali, lay brand new ducting, and a new cabinet than to replace the current copper with better copper or even fibre.
It is entirely possible I have this all wrong and he was feeding me rubbish, I am waiting for the cabinet to be put up and see if it looks like one of the FTTC style ones.
My side of Leics is a nightmare for broadband connectivity, it is cabled up but is analogue tv/phone service only no broadband, the exchanges are very far apart and we are smack bang in the middle of the 2 starting points of nationwide FTTC rollouts, the midlands has very few exchanges earmarked for FTTC at present, and to make it even worse we have no local BTw POP so this area is not what I would call a prime FTTC candidate. I just cannot see why BT would rollout ali in brand new ducts when fibre is planned. So the future looks grim here.