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Provider That Claimed Fiber Broadband Wasn’t In Demand Sells Out Every Connection in Hours

Phillip Dampier December 9, 2013 British Telecom, Broadband Speed, Consumer News, Rural Broadband No Comments
Sold Out

Sold Out

An area Britain’s telecom giant BT pronounced “not commercially viable” for a fiber broadband upgrade sold out every available connection after residents successfully campaigned BT to change its mind.

The unassuming “Cabinet 82” in Hunslet (Middleton, north of Manchester, near South Leeds) was left off the telecom company’s fiber upgrade list because the company was convinced residents were satisfied with the DSL speeds they were getting and it wouldn’t be worth the cost to upgrade service.

Nearly 300 residents had complained about slow Internet speeds and requested a fiber upgrade for “Cabinet 82” since 2012, initially to no avail. After relentless complaints from local residents, BT changed its mind.

A newly upgraded cabinet with fiber to the neighborhood service was inaugurated earlier today and within hours, every available connection was sold, proving BT’s assumptions about customer demand for faster speeds wrong.

This is the best possible Christmas present for so many people in this previously under-served area,” Carl Thomas, a member of the Fiber for Middleton Coalition told ISPreview.co.uk. “From being able to work from home for the first time to enjoying the media-rich Internet to, in the case of a deaf family, being able to communicate with relatives via sign language over Skype this is quite literally life-changing.”

The example of Middleton has called into question the veracity of BT’s customer demand modeling scheme, a critical part of how the company decides which areas are most commercially viable for service upgrades. It turns out even in out-of-the-way suburban neighborhoods, there is tremendous demand for speeds far faster than what providers expected.

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Superfast Cornwall Inside a BT fibre broadband cabinet.mp4[/flv]

A short tour inside one of BT’s Fiber to the Neighborhood cabinets produced by Recombu. (1:50)

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