One thought on “Devon and Somerset county councils heavily criticised for poor management of broadband upgrade”
When I applied to my ISP for fibre broadband my ISP told me it would cost more but actually be no faster than my standard copper broadband (because the fibre only goes to the green roadside fibre box, and since mine was next to the telephone exchange in the local town rather than in my village, the copper part of fibre broadband was essentially the same length).
There is a world of difference between fibre broadband and super-fast broadband – something that was apparently not understood by Connecting Devon & Somerset (who should have understood this). As far as I can see the essence of the issue is that CDS were expecting super-fast broadband but BT had promised fibre broadband. And since BT are paid for every home which is able to get fibre broadband, it makes business sense for them to offer it to rural areas even though the speeds are no better than copper broadband.
I later learned from a BT engineer that this is because the BT fibre network currently only consists of primary nodes (i.e. near exchanges) and secondary nodes are not yet being rolled out. So presumably, at some future date, when secondary nodes are available to be rolled out, and if CDS pays BT yet more money to roll them out in East Devon, then maybe we will be able to get super-fast broadband.
East Devon Watch 
When I applied to my ISP for fibre broadband my ISP told me it would cost more but actually be no faster than my standard copper broadband (because the fibre only goes to the green roadside fibre box, and since mine was next to the telephone exchange in the local town rather than in my village, the copper part of fibre broadband was essentially the same length).
There is a world of difference between fibre broadband and super-fast broadband – something that was apparently not understood by Connecting Devon & Somerset (who should have understood this). As far as I can see the essence of the issue is that CDS were expecting super-fast broadband but BT had promised fibre broadband. And since BT are paid for every home which is able to get fibre broadband, it makes business sense for them to offer it to rural areas even though the speeds are no better than copper broadband.
I later learned from a BT engineer that this is because the BT fibre network currently only consists of primary nodes (i.e. near exchanges) and secondary nodes are not yet being rolled out. So presumably, at some future date, when secondary nodes are available to be rolled out, and if CDS pays BT yet more money to roll them out in East Devon, then maybe we will be able to get super-fast broadband.
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