Openreach have told me FTTC is available, but BT won't offer me higher speeds.

[OpenS]

As the title suggests, I have opted in for Openreach to tell me when FTTC is available in my area, and they got back to me very quickly with an email saying it was available. Furthermore I checked, and almost everyone in my area is using FTTC. When I ask BT if I can upgrade to this service, I'm told it's not available in my area, and I've had the same experience when I ask other providers. Is there any way for me to resolve this?

[imjolly]

enter your phone number and post the results including  notes.  it may be FTTC is available but there is a waiting list

BT Broadband

[OpenS]

Thanks for the quick reply. Here are the results from that website.

[WSH]

So, what do you actually mean by higher speeds and are you confusing FTTP with FTTC?

Full Fibre (FTTP) is not available to you.  FTTP on Demand is a business product and you’d have to pay a substantial amount toward the install, possible into the thousands.

The best FTTC/VDSL speed there is 30Mb/s.  (In reality, looking at the range quoted, I’d say you’d be lucky to get 25Mb/s).  Either way it depends on if there is spare room in the cabinet.  (It does say it is ‘available’, so there should be room in the cabinet).

[OpenS]

Full Fiber is not planned for my area so that is off the table. As of now I am getting Copper Broadband speeds. I want to upgrade to "Fiber to the Cabinet" broadband. When I asked to register my interest, openreach almost immediately told me that it was available for my address, however every provider tells me that only copper broadband is available at my address.

Is there a way for me to see if the cabinet is full? Or is there any way to request for additional space to be made? I've also heard that sometimes there are database errors where providers incorrectly see addressess marked as unavailable when they shouldn't be. If that's the case then I'm not sure how to fix it. Any advice would be appreciated. Sorry if I wasn't clear on anything.

[WSH]

The fact BT’s checker says ‘available’ means it should be, well, available.

I’m not sure where you’ve got those figures from but they look like the theoretical max for the three techniques, FTTP, FTTC and ADSL rather than actual speeds for your address.  I take it you are on ADSL at the moment?  What speed are you getting and how does it relate to the 25Mb/s FTTC the checker suggested earlier?

[VeteranISPUser]

Hi @OpenS   So what speeds are you getting? According to your results, you should be getting 22-30 mbps on FTTC.

[WSH]

Just to clarify a little bit more, the FTTC technique is theoretically capable of “up to” 76Mb/s.  In reality it depends on a number of factors like how far you are from the cabinet.  (Speeds really drop off past 400m or so).  How noisy the line is etc.  To get 76 you’d have to be right next to the cabinet, on an absolutely first-rate line.