I’m at home berating my ADSL router again.

Screaming at it to give me more than 0.3Mbps (I live in a 3 year old house on a new estate but a bit too far from the exchange for my liking, I’ve gone from 6Mpbs to not even being able to stream Spotify tracks. It’s amazing how the internet becomes an essential service) and I decide to check on the LLU status of my local exchange again to see if I can move from my travesity of an ISP to a more reputable one and maybe double my speeds (woo)

Hang on? What? That’s an error surely? My local exchange is going to be FTTC around 01/09/2010! *faint*

This is amazingly good news for someone that’s on cold turkey from the internet. Some background….

FTTC and FTTP are part of BT’s plans to rollout fibre connections to Cabinets and Premises (FTTC = Fibre To The Cabinet and FTTP = Fibre To The Premises). Most will receive a service of FTTC which basically means that BT engineers will wire up your local phone cabinet (important difference to ADSL Exchange here… this wiring is to the green cabinet commonly found around the end of your street so the “Distance from Exchange ADSL” issue disappears) and the remaining run , from cabinet to your house, will be over the existing copper. An engineer will also have to install a special VSDL type modem and then you’ll be set.

Now to the good shit. Speeds if you’re in a reasonable radius of the cabinet will be upto 40Mbps download and 10Mpbs upload. Yup 40Mbps. Anyone with a basic understanding of math will gather that craps on high on my current 0.3 so to say I was happy was an understatement. I’ve gotta wait a few weeks then get on the waiting list for an install! woo yay!

Check out the BT page I’ve just linked to to see other exchange install dates, some have already been done and the people using this service already are more than pleased.

A few ISPs are offering the service as well as BT (BT’s package is called “BT Infinity”), one of the ISPs that seems to have a few people talking and comes recommended is IDNet. From looking at those allowances, some seem quite small for such a powerful and blazingly fast internet connection but I’m guessing consumers and businesses will take a while to adjust to what is actually feasible for the cost / performance ratio.(Another ISP announced their package : Zen)

BT will want us all to be watching HD streaming films and music ASAP and with a connection like that it all becomes possible.

As an aside for anyone reading from Bury St Edmunds… I spotted an OpenReach engineer down a manhole feeding through cabling so stopped and asked was he installing fibre. He said yes and that they where about 1/2 way through installs and it was going to be 40Mbps to the cabinets and I’d get that sort of speed if I lived where I did (having pointed at my house)… chuffed!