Sky join the party

Sky (Easynet) have also installed equipment in the Wansford exchange very recently, as I discovered an ADSL2+ connection in Wansford today at 16M :-

Modem Status    ADSL Link Up

DownStream Connection Speed     16380
UpStream Connection Speed       1117
VPI     0
VCI     40

Faster services from Talk Talk !

Gosh - Wansford has some new equipment.

Talk Talk have installed their own equipment in the BT exchange at Wansford, so they can now supply ADSL2+ services to our area. They may not have the best reputation, and we all hate call centres, but T-T can now offer line rental with evening & weekend calls and broadband for under £20 per month.

ADSL2+ will mean speed increases to over 8M for most Wansford and Yarwell residents. Further out you may also gain a few hundred kbits/s which might be significant in Wittering.

Money allocated

DCMS have announced the allocation of money by BDUK to bring superfast broadband to the "Final Third" ie areas like ours that are unlikely to get it through normal commercial methods.

Northamptonshire has been allocated £4.08m and Cambridgeshire (including Peterborough) £6.75m which is around £50 per property in the areas where government funding can be used without offending EU "State Aid" rules.

The local BBC TV ran a news item about Cambridgeshire's allocation.

Oundle goes faster

Talk Talk have installed their own equipment in the Oundle telephone exchange, bringing the residents of Oundle cheaper and faster services.

Their ADSL2+ service predicts for a house near the Co-Op:  Your estimated speed range is between 5.4 and 12.7meg 


Wansford exchange appears as "scheduled" on their exchange checking tool, so perhaps they have changed their mind ? 

Northamptonshire want help

Northamptonshire County Council are collecting expressions of support for their bid to BDUK for superfast broadband funds, please fill in the form at surveymonkey.

NCC also have a Superfast Northamptonshire blog

Meanwhile, up the road in Stamford in Lincolnshire there's a hive of construction activity as BT install streetside cabinets to provide "up to 40 Mbits/s" broadband over the phone line. These cabinets contain electronics that supply a VDSL signal over the copper phone line, the cabinets themselves are fed with fibre-optic connections so the length of copper in the circuit is reduced to that from your house to the cabinet, rather than the full distance from your house to the telephone exchange.

Customers within 500m of a cabinet should see the full service speed, currently 40 Mbits/s down and 10 Mbits/s up. Villages connected to the Stamford Exchange including Ryhall, Belmesthorpe and Uffington have also had cabinets installed, look out for small green cabinets on the roadside :-

Possible price reductions

OFCOM have announced a price cap on the charges BT Wholesale can make to retail ISPs on Market 1 exchanges like Wansford. The cap applies to a product called "IPStream Connect" which is currently used by six ISPs - BT, Sky, Talk Talk, Virgin, Orange and Entanet.

The price cap should reduce wholesale costs by about 11% below inflation but whether we see that as lower retail prices, more capacity for peak times or more profit for the ISPs remains to be seen.

An unintended consequence is that lower prices from BT Wholesale make it less attractive for other providers to install equipment. Talk Talk for example said this measure would reduce their expansion plans. On the other hand it may create an incentive for BT to introduce faster ADSL2+ services which are free of this price cap.

Update on BDUK submissions.

I had a chat with Doug Perkins at East Cambs who is heading the Cambs county initiative. Their strategy is to prepare a bid for submission towards the end of the year. The only overlap with Wansford exchange area will be the Huntingdonshire District Council area to the south of the Nene - Stibbington, Sibson, etc. Apparently Sue Bedlow at the Economic Development Unit at Huntingdonshire is involved in this.

Wittering, Sutton and "Wansford north of the river" fall into Peterborough City unitary authority, I had a holding email from them and will update when more information received. Doug Perkins said that Peterborough were attending a BDUK event so something is happening. The challenge will be to get the rural fringes onto their agenda, given that Peterborough City already has Virgin Media cable and BT rolling out Fibre to the cabinet (FTTC, including "BT Infinity") in the Ortons, Yaxley etc.

Cambridgeshire AWOL

There appears to be white space on Peterborough City and Cambridgeshire on a map of Broadband activity recently presented by BDUK :

At least Northamptonshire County Council has submitted a Local Broadband Plan and that plan includes Wansford exchange in its first phase. Speaking of Northants, they have a somewhat underused forum for discussion of their broadband project at their blog site.

A little searching turned up a rather amusing response "  No results found for "cambridgeshire broadband plan". " which rather confirms what the map says. The same result is achieved by searching for "Peterborough broadband plan". Northamptonshire at least achieves a single hit.


I did find a somewhat empty site Cambridgeshire Broadband Together led by East Cambs District Council. Nothing was to be found on Peterborough City Council web site. I think I shall have to ask.

Connection problems at Wansford exchange

Not really related to Faster Internet, but the Wansford exchange does seem to be having a rough patch with faults. I have had three cases, and an Openreach engineer confirmed several others, where a user can't get onto the Internet and their router has a solid DSL connection to the exchange.

The symptoms of this are a solid DSL light showing a good connection, and a sensible speed displayed in the router's web pages. The Internet light will be off, or red instead of green, or Amber instead of Blue on a BT Home Hub. The router web interface will show no IP address, there may be an error like Authentication failed, No PPP session, LCP down or similar.

If you change the router login to bt_test@startup_domain the above symptoms persist - you can't even log in to the test user (which needs no password and should work on all lines).

So if this happens call up your service provider and tell them you have a good ADSL signal but no PPP session, that the bt_test login doesn't work and that some of your neighbours had the same problem and BT Wholesale had to make changes at the exchange.

Most "help"desks will have you changing filters and monkeying around with all manner of things, but you either need them to report it to BT Wholesale or get them to arrange an Openreach engineer visit who will then have to do the same. Don't be put off by threats of visit charges, if you have an ADSL signal with 448k upstream and a sensible downstream speed then it isn't a problem with the phone line or wiring.c

Some good news

I contacted Talk Talk about the possibility that they may install equipment at Wansford to increase competition and provide faster services, they replied that they do not intend to invest at Wansford Exchange.

Rutland Telecom have not replied to my enquiry about exchanged based and/or cabinet based services, it is some weeks since I contacted them.

A fibre to the home (FTTH) system builder was conceptually interested in Wittering, but needs some local enthusiasm and contacts to take it further. Anyone ?

Meanwhile, the latest Northamptonshire superfast broadband newsletter (pdf download) reveals that our exchange features in the first phase of their bid to BDUK for broadband improvements...

 

Band 1 contains over 35,000 residential premises and almost 1,500 commercial premises.  The 14 exchange areas that would be initially in this band are: 

Broughton, Byfield, Kislingbury, Middleton Cheney, Weedon, Long Buckby, Brixworth, Towcester, Silverstone, Roade, Bozeat, Thrapston, Oundle, and Wansford.  

 So our lobbying does appear to have raised the profile to good effect.

Aspirations from one side of the line

The Northants Newsletter sets out their vision as:-

Our vision is for Northamptonshire to be at the leading edge of the global digital economy.  This means that a minimum two-thirds of premises should have access to broadband speeds in excess of 10mb/s by 2014 and at least 9 out of 10 premises should have this by 2015.  By 2015 all premises should have access to the broadband at the national minimum speed of 2mb/s.  By 2017 all premises should be able to access superfast broadband up to 100 mb/s products with a range of download and upload speeds available to meet requirements.

Be interesting to see what Peterborough City and Cambridgeshire aspire towards.

Northamptonshire Newsletter

Northants County Council have produced a newsletter in support of their broadband activities. Download it from here (pdf file, 280 kBytes).

Northamptonshire Broadband Survey

Northants County Council are preparing a bid to BDUK for funds to enhance broadband provision. They have an online survey to record speedtest results and your views on price and service along with what you might be able to do with a faster connection.

Comments can also be made direct to Ross Griffin Telephone: 01604 236641

So Yarwell and Nassington residents connected to the Wansford telephone exchange can make an input. As both villages are cabinet fed there is at least a modest cost technical option for increasing speeds.

I also sent in an email with comments to bigidea@northamptonshire.gov.uk , reproduced below :-

I thought I would send in some comments beyond what the broadband survey form permits.

I live in Yarwell (PE8 6PS) at the top right hand corner of the county, we are fed from the Wansford telephone exchange which lives in Peterborough City (unitary authority) / Cambridgeshire.

My business is doing computer support / repairs / broadband installations.

Yarwell village is largely capable of getting the full 8M service available from the exchange ie speedtest results of over 6M subject to congestion etc. Some cheaper service providers deliver much lower throughput at busy times but this isn't a function of the infrastructure - I can record a speedtest of 400-600 kbits/s at the pub (PE8 6PR) which is closer to the exchange than my house, but if I take the same laptop home and run the same speed test I get 4500 - 6000 kbits/s ie 10 times faster on a more expensive service provider (the pub uses Tesco).

Nassington village (PE8 6QB) is further away and sees speeds from 1.5 - 5M as you move along the distance / speed curve from the exchange.

Wansford exchange is a "Market 1" exchange with only BT Wholesale broadband services on their 20th Century network and hence 8M maximum speeds. If it had been upgraded to 21CN then Yarwell would benefit from speeds over 8M (maybe 12 - 16M at the points nearest the exchange). Nassington would only benefit slightly if at all. We would also get faster upload speeds that currently are only available on more expensive business products (832k vs 448k).

As a Market 1 exchange we have a price penalty and less competition. Talk Talk have told me they don't intend to install equipment at Wansford which would have offered faster speeds and reduced prices.

Both Yarwell and Nassington have BT street cabinets (one each) feeding the majority if not all properties. We could therefore receive "up to 40M" services if a fibre optic feed were laid to the cabinets and an additional cabinet with electronics installed - so called FTTC with services like BT Infinity. We are unlikely to be attractive targets for BT to provide commercially, and as yet I haven't had any success getting interest from alternative providers like Rutland Telecom who also do FTTC.

So we have a degree of market failure here at the edge of the county where we are limited to 8M maximum broadband, have lower upload speeds, less competition and no prospect of Next Generation Access through commercial provision - we are in The Final Third. Nassington has additional penalties through being located further away from the telephone exchange.

Cabinets - can you help

If we want to get faster internet access via our local BT street cabinet it's handy if we know where they are. There's one in Parkway in Nassington (numbered 2, below) and one at Yarwell cross roads (5). I found two in Wittering - a larger new one on the main road in off the A1 Townsend road at its junction with Burghley Avenue, and another small ancient one (8) not far away on a corner on Burghley Avenue.

If you are connected to one of these, and if BT or another operator puts a new active broadband cabinet next to it (or close enough to connect to it) then up to 40M downstream / 10M upstream services would become available. If you are in Wansford and your cables go direct to the telephone exchange then FTTC isn't an option at the moment, sorry. Nassington and Wittering would benefit most, as they are about 4 and 5km from the exchange so using the cabinet chops a big piece out of their copper cable length and hence reduces signal loss dramatically.

So, dear readers, where are they situated ?

Hello World

Welcome to the first entry in the Faster Wansford blog at fasterwansford.blogspot.com

I'll be sharing some thoughts on options for getting faster internet access into Wansford and surrounding villages, focussing on those served by the Wansford telephone exchange ie Nassington, Sibson, Stibbington, Sutton, Thornhaugh, Wansford itself, Wittering and Yarwell.

It is now coming up to 8 years since we got first generation ADSL broadband in Wansford, following a successful campaign to hit BT's "trigger level" for the exchange. 8 years is a long time in technology and we are still using the same first generation ADSL technology with a single wholesale provider in the exchange. In recent years other exchanges (Stamford, for example) have seen the arrival of cheaper and faster services from other wholesale providers like Talk Talk, Sky/Easynet and Be/O2. BT have also moved on to "up to 20M" broadband using ADSL2+ technology in Stamford, but not here :-(

The next step in broadband speed is to use fibre optic cables, either direct to the home or (more likely) to a local street cabinet where new equipment would be installed to use the shorter copper line from there to your home. The latter is called FTTC (fibre to the cabinet) and BT's own product is called "BT Infinity" although several other ISPs use the same system. BT recently ran a "Race to Infinity" inviting users to "vote" to receive Infinity in their area, Wansford came 609th out of 2500 with 94 votes or 4.33% of lines.

As we came in the top quarter of eligible exchanges there's clearly a demand for faster services, so I was inspired enough to create this blog. Comments and contributions welcome !