So tired, tired of waiting

The below is from a forum post written to reassure that everyone is in the same boat with regards to Virgin Media's expansion, no-one has any idea what's going on, least of all Virgin Media it seems.

Right I just wanted to update the community in case anyone thought I was getting preferential treatment - I had some contact with VM around the time of my posting here, so January of this year.

A part of the local area that already had ducting was made live, as was discussed. Triple play was indeed available in the area that same week.

Just one minor problem: telephony isn't actually available here yet, so all those who ordered it had it removed from their package, in some cases meaning they were being asked to pay more for TV and broadband than for triple-play.

Next: An aspirational date for some additional homes to be ready by the end of February was mentioned. We're half-way through March and absolutely nothing visible has happened to progress this. In fact, going by the dates that roadworks are being booked for in neighbouring districts it's perfectly feasible that no work will start until at least June with no additional availability of services until July.

So just missing that 'hoped for' availability by the end of February marginally.

I have no idea what's going on with either of those issues as those in VM who may actually know what's going on haven't responded to me since January. I use the word 'may' as I'm not especially confident that anyone has any idea what's going on.

I have no doubt that the member of staff who gave me the information did so in entirely good faith, although I'm not so sure about a couple of months of mushroom treatment.

Anyway: those unable to get information or being provided incorrect information don't get too disheartened. Even going pretty much right to the top and pulling every string available as a former member of staff doesn't help. It seems quite literally no-one has any idea what's going on on the ground with regards to Project Lightning, or if they do they don't talk to the rest of the business let alone to us mere mortals.

It's nothing personal. Don't mistake non-existent or simply wrong internal and external communication for anything malicious.

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In other news after sitting waiting for a few months to order a second line to improve connectivity to this property for small business use to augment the existing FTTC connection I've finally gotten the hint that VM don't appear to know hindmost from cubitus so have ordered an alternative solution.

Definitely seems more than 2 years ago when I was meeting with VM at the local council's offices being invited to join trials, with a second ducted connection to the property for a fibre overlay being mooted.

What a mug allowing myself to be used liaising with the community and deflecting criticism.

For all their faults at least BT did what they said they would when they said they would, and managed upgrades to provide additional capacity to the area.

Here the Leeds South hub is stuck on the old platform leaving a number of nodes congested after being due for upgrade in mid-2016, then November 2016, now March 2017 though I've no idea why anyone would take that seriously.

Wish I could be so cavalier with promises, so indifferent to timelines, and then go silent on a whim in either my day job or with my business.

Virgin Media are trolling me - home office broadband and moving

Walk out of my street and onto the road that serves ours to find this:

Virgin Media are going right past the entrance to our street on their way to properties across the road.

It'll be interesting to see what impact VM passing an area served by cabinet 82, albeit maybe 20-25% of the properties served by cabinet 82, has on the extremely high FTTC uptake here.

Predictably this work has caused complaints. This is, perhaps, something that Virgin Media are getting quite used to by now. Digging pavements is slow, expensive and, albeit briefly, disruptive.

I have been having some issues with my home office service's reliability and performance that make my desire for a backup that uses a different network all the stronger.

Less than half usual performance

A quote for FTTP on Demand not only gave a huge price but I was also told they weren't willing to progress the order due to my road's status.

For many reasons we've been considering a possible house move. Unavailability of alternative broadband options for my home office goes onto the list. It's nowhere near the top but has to go on there.

Over half of the UK has the choice of BT and another fixed line operator.

The vast majority have a choice of BT FTTC and either a >8Mb Openreach ADSL line, cable, wireless or 3G/4G. Sadly we aren't, and have no prospect of being, in that cohort.

FTTC is good enough for most purposes, is far cheaper and faster to deploy so made economic and business sense - I have no complaints about that solution being here. It'd be fine as a primary line for us if we had a backup solution however no cable, no worthwhile ADSL, no wireless and no 3G or 4G puts us almost back to the position we were in during the Fibre for Middleton campaign that saw BT deliver superfast broadband to us.

Maybe we should move to an FTTP-enabled rural village or hamlet; more FTTP serving houses in those than Leeds Central. In common with many other urban areas the fibre to premises in Leeds Central is all delivered to apartment buildings by Hyperoptic. FTTP is by far the most reliable broadband out there so if you can get it, do.

We're between rock and hard place, and while it seems as far as broadband goes the in thing is to complain relentlessly on forums and the comments section of ISP Review, the usual and more constructive solution is to get out from between that rock and hard place.

Update: I just had a local resident ask me when he could expect Virgin Media to cover his street. Had to tell him that if he was lucky it would be 2019. If unlucky never, and that it was extremely unlikely he would have better broadband options than the ones he has now, which are 1Mb if he's lucky or 40-60Mb depending on where in his street he is. 

This estate has a household income over 3 times that of the rest of the ward, and far more home businesses and home workers. Much of the estate will have broadband of at best 1/8th the performance of the rest of the ward and more likely 1/14th to 1/25th by 2019.

There's a digital divide.