[Wolves] Thoughts on Virgin Media?

[Simon C. Burke]

On Thu, 21 Aug 2008, David Goodwin wrote:

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>> It's totally pot luck at the mo, but BT are supposedly upgrade to fibre
>> optics slowly but surely exchange by exchange...
>>
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> I'm sure nearly all exchanges will have fibre inbetween them ... surely
> the real issue is that the "last mile" between the exchange and the
> customer's house is copper/aluminium/wet-rope and is expensive to upgrade.
>
> David.

Yes and no apparently:

(Cited from: http://kn.theiet.org/news/jul08/bt-fibre-optic.cfm )

BT plans to spend 1.5bn to bring fibre-optic broadband connections to up 
to ten million homes by 2012. Some homes will get 100Mbit/s connections 
that may be upgraded to 1Gbit/s in the future.

The company plans to run high-speed optical fibre connections to street 
cabinets in many areas, with copper connections taking up to 40Mbit/s into 
homes. New technology may make it possible to upgrade this to 60Mbit/s. In 
new-build areas, such as Ebbsfleet and the Olympic Village, BT plans to 
take fibre-optic connections into homes to enable 100Mbit/s connections. 
In other areas BT will offer copper-based ADSL2+ connections that will run 
at 10Mbit/s for the majority of customers, and up to 24Mbit/s for some.

BT's plan will take an extra 1bn in capital investment, which is being 
funded by suspending a share buyback programme. The company plans to spend 
an extra 100m in both the 2008/09 and 2009/10 financial years. The 
remaining extra spend of 800m will be spread over the following three 
financial years.