Many of the comparison Websites say that my Road - Whatman Road Honor Oak can get fast fibre broadband - however when you speak to the provider they say they can only provide their basic service which would be fine if I didn’t have to work from home - Open Reach and BT can put you on a waiting list as they say there are only so many lines in our area (I live in a 2 flat property and I know upstairs have fast broadband from BT - so its very inconsistent - I would like to know who we have to lobby to get more Superfast Broadband capable lines in our area? - for many of us working from home we need more than the basic service. - Any thoughts?
1 Like
Try using BT Wholesale DSL Checker. It’ll tell you what cabinet you are on and whether fibre might be coming soon.
3 Likes
Zen internet. Best rated by Which several years running. Not the cheapest, but super fast and low contention.
1 Like
Even that website has its faults. Plugging my phone number in it says I have FTTP KCI Access Level 2 which means my order has been booked (KCI 3 means delivered) - it has been about 7 years since it was delivered
1 Like
Interesting… I’ve recently signed up with Plusnet who told me there was no fibre on our street (Taymount Rise). I’ve since found out my next door neighbour has it…
That’s the best checker I’ve seen. Gets it exactly right and details that I have FTTP even with a spare port at my ‘premises’ should I want another ISP on it.
Apparently I could get up to 1000Mbps on that fibre too - if I could afford it!!!
1 Like
Unfortunately, it only works for BT related information. So won’t work for anything related to Virgin or any other broadband provider that uses a different infrastructure to BT.
2 Likes
Hmmm - this claims Waldenshaw has ‘FTTP on Demand’ Available…they’ve never told me this or advertised it. 330Mbps. Mind you the kids have pretty much all moved out and 80Mbps seems fine even for Netflix 4k so… do I need this?
Also I wonder why only 330 and not 1000 like @ForestHull - jealous. haha
1 Like
Apparently I can also get “up to 1 Gb” but says speeds will likely be lower. I suspect it’s go to do with how far you are from the cabinet, whether you can have FTTP or not etc.
1 Like
I suspect it’s more to do with the cabinet/hardware. Fibre light signal goes quite a long way before it needs a repeater, surely?
basically no household needs 1000GB. I can happily stream 4k movies at the same time as downloading on XBOX and working on 80GB. Max BT will offer is 330 and that is massive overkill residentially
1 Like
This is a problem I’m having right now on Devonshire Road. Full fibre has been laid in the street but because we live in a flat (a block of 8, we’re all joint freeholders) Openreach are currently unwilling to install it in our building.
The reason other properties in your same street can get it will depend on the building and how the telephony in your building works - the issue is if your phone line comes in through an external distribution point or an internal one.
Because in a block of flats like ours, even though it’s a converted house, all the flats are connected to BT’s infrastructure by a distribution point inside the building. This will likely be the same for most blocks of flats other than maybe small converted terraced houses.
Until OpenReach decide they want to work on these internal distribution points inside blocks of flats then there’s nothing that you can do. I know, I’ve been trying for months.
Adding insult to injury: because FTTP has been laid in Devonshire Road it means they stopped upgrading cabninets in the street for FTTC - and that means my cabinet is still a really old hunk of junk and we can only get plain ADSL My internet max speed is 15Mb down and 0.9Mb up. If one person streams Amazon Prime, most other stuff just stops. It’s frustrating, but without even Virgin in the area to act as competition I’m stuck with it for the foreseeable.
So weird - more efficient to fibre a flat and get 8 customers surely? My son lives in Bermondsey and his apartment block has Hyperoptic (lucky bugger) because they mostly focus on flats for efficiency of install.
Now that would be fast! 
I assume the same infrastructure supports business packages and retail where 1Gbps might be required.
Never say never! At the moment we’re streaming very high-resolution video (probably as high as it’ll ever need to be) - but that content is only 2D.
When holography (for example) hits the mainstream, bandwidth requirements will go up by another order of magnitude.
Businesses do need and can get - a neighbour gets that much and he can’t get networking gear fast enough to pipe it through
We have 1.2 Gbps, which is a full FTTP line running at full capacity, ie all 4 x 300 Mbps circuits. Zen is the ISP. It’s been amazing for working from home.
And we have managed to max the speed out by streaming 4K, partner doing video calls, me on constant video with my team, and with all my work equipment. So never say never!
1 Like
Do you come at all closer to saturating the feed?
BT own EE!
Recent highest download usage in 24 hours was over 230 GB, so the answer is probably sometimes but certainly not always. I work in devops.