BT has opened a new high street shop to promote fibre broadband in London's Muswell Hill - the location for one of its two fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) pilots, along with Whitchurch in South Wales.
Residents of London's N10 district are being invited to try the FTTC service for free until January 2010, with the telco targeting its existing broadband customers with letters offering a free taste of fibre.
A BT spokesman said thousands of its customers in the two areas have so far requested to be part of the pilot.
Engineers started work on hooking them up at the end of last month.
Pictured above is some of BT's local marketing for the fibre trial in Muswell Hill, just around the corner from its new shop...
Photo credit: Natasha Lomas/silicon.com
Comments
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1. Richard Davies
They mention traffic shaping; I also recall them being affiliated with Phorm.
Why must ISP's like BT want to mess around and control a users connection like this?
If you pay for a connection and a certain amount of bandwidth per month then it should come free from traffic shaping and adverts etc. As long as a user isn't accessing illegal sites (most ISP's blacklist these anyway) then they should be left alone.
I would like to know in what way they will shape traffic.
I think that ISP's should be forced to disclose how and when they shape 'users' traffic.
2. karen challinor
and what is the ratio of the sum of the bandwidths of the fibres to the cabinet to the sum of the bandwidths of the connections between the exchanges ?
3. drew stephenson
As the comments from Richard and Karen illustrate, the biggest problem the telco's will have now is that no-one actually trusts their figures enough to invest. Until they actually start to advertise some genuine figures (including the realistic effects of traffic-shaping and contention) or provide a guaranteed minimum level of connection that they're going to have a job persuading people to sign up.
It's one thing to be involved in the trial when there's a high level of focus and back up, but what's it like in the real world?
4. Nick Boyd
Lord how fed up I get, with hearing about all the benefits that London businesses (and homes) will have or has. This initiative will doubtless roll out, one assumes to, Brum, Liverpool, Manchester and so on.
The rest of us poor saps, struggling to run businesses in the country will just have to get by on 2mbps - on a clear day and when the string is taut between the two cans.
The fact that I live three miles from Britain's largest Defence Academy - which has its own internal high speed broadband and satellite service; or that I peer at five huge wind turbines; or the fact that it is seven miles to the nearest supermarket ( as opposed to local Co-Op), are all just indications of how muddled everyone is about the role of the rural communities in modern Britain.
Urban-focused Government will take what it needs in terms of space - but provides an infrastructure comparable with that of, say, Mykonos - but without the sun!
Ludicrous
5. Don Tregartha
2Mb?
I dream of 2Mb....
As always the superfast stuff gets implemented where there's plenty of infrastructure already.
Why? because there's competition.
Out here in the sticks we don't even get 500k and that's when its not out of action due to theft of the multicore trunk from the exchange, which happened twice in 4 weeks.
Traffic shaping!
Ha ha ha