[Archived] A Fibre Optic Fernhurst?

[Friarsnig]

I recall a discussion here a few years ago about fibre optic telephone lines being installed on the Fernhurst estate when it was built, and how a copper overlay had to be subsequently installed to allow broadband connections to be made because no one was offering a fibre optic service at the time.

Recently though we've had flyers through the door from Virgin Media advertising their fibre optic service, but when I called them they told me it isn't available here, or at least not at my address. I live at the end of a street at the edge of the estate. The chap I spoke to said it was "nearby", but said the council wouldn't let them dig up the roads to let it get any further.

Do any of you on the estate have a fibre optic broadband connection?

I ask because my contract with Talk Talk is up, and I'm fed up of the very intermittent connection I get - they've had their engineers look into it and have told me there's nothing wrong, so I'm looking for a new ISP.

Please don't tell me it's got something to do with the squirrels

[Hughesy]

Talk talk is crap.

Try 02 broadband - its the daddy!

[thebigguy]

The problem is there is fibre optic to the cabinet and then copper from the cabinet to the houses

that will be the issue with virgin media as they need fibre all the way into your house

[Lee]

Friarsnig, like thebigguy says, whilst there was fibre to the estate, it didn't go to the home, as it was copper from the cabinets to the box. We eventually got copper when they extended the copper run up the hill and placed new cabinets about.

Cable never came up the hill to lay anything therefore there is no chance at all of the estate getting it unless Virgin are allowed to start digging up the streets, and they've not done that sort of thing for a long time.

There has been a lot of consolidation in the ISP market in recent months, so there aren't as many players as there was say 18 months ago.

BT, Sky, Tiscali and the AOL/Carphonewarehouse/Talktalk lot are the biggest out there, and there's talk of Sky buying Tiscali, but whether they are the best is usually down to user experience...

[AndyNeil]

I live on the estate and used BT for a while (until we got a 3 dongle) ... never had any problems with connection speed or reliability(sp), BT got a vote from me.

[LeChuck]

I assume you're after a high speed connection? I get a pretty constant 16mb speed from Be (owned by o2), it goes up to 24mb depending on various factors. They'll give you an estimate of the speed over the phone if I remember rightly, they estimated mine to be 15mb so it's pretty accurate.

[Hughesy]

Im on 02 and its quality. Always good speeds and top, top customer service - and best of all the customer service is both free, and they can do a log in to your pc from the call centre too.

[Friarsnig]

Thanks for those replies folks.

[thebigguy]

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/scotland/7954690.stm

they are starting to roll this out fully shame scotland getting it first and not us up fernhurst