The celebrations today as Highlands and Islands Enterprise and BT announced the start of superfast broadband with up to 80mb download speeds in Stornoway rang hollow for some people there when they got home and ordered it. They were told they couldn’t have it.
I was one of the people who ordered it. The usual 17 minutes wait for BT to answer resulted in yes you can have it. Oh, hold on, no you can’t. Apparently, I cannot.
Only those of us who live very near to an enabled cabinet in the street will see any difference. I am just down the road from the exchange but I am stuck at the existing speeds for the foreseeable future, according to the BT person who finally knew what he was doing.
You are in the same boat as many other premises & businesses in the town centre where BT say will never get fibre broadband as they are all Exchange only lines (connected directly to the exchange not a fibre cabinet) whereas the far end of Bayhead can get 74Mb download & 19Mb upload speeds due to the fibre cabinet across from Salvation Army. Also the back streets of Stornoway can get 74Mb. Newmarket, Tong, Marybank & Parkend will get 20-40Mb downloads & about 9Mb upload speeds. If you are in the town centre, from the end of July you will be able to get ADSL2 which will gives speeds of 17Mb download & 1Mb uploads. So nowhere near the fibre speeds expected. Very disappointing from BT. Think how many of these business including hotels & offices that require high speed internet can’t get the full benefit of it due to being to close to the exchange. They should put a fibre cabinet next to the exchange but that isn’t so straight forward to do seemingly.
I am connected to the exchange, and I have been told the high speed fibre will be available to me from October.
Ah. Thanks for the technical explanation, Murdo. It’s really frustrating.
The only thing superfast about broadband are the myriad of exaggerated claims