Calling all Milton Keynes residents

[Mort]

Hey all

Just put down a deposit for a house in MK. Very suprised to learn that its not a digital area, WTF is with that? I live in Luton at the mo which has got to be one of the biggest holes in the country, and I can get 50mb broadband here, yet 20 miles up the road, in a much nicer, more technologically and commercially advanced area I am told I will be lucky to get 2mb...

I am quite frankly disgusted by this, and pretty gutting I am going to either have to put up with it, or lose a deposit and find somewhere else to live (pretty drastic, but i am a web dev by profession and good net is pretty important to me).

What do current MK residents do, is there any kind of active campaign (see a few where last activity is 2007 ish) which would petition Virgin Media into sorting this mess out? The guy I spoke to on the phone there seemed to think VM were now going to be laying cable at new locations (something they apparently haven't done in 7 odd years), but no news to where this would be happening or when.

Any ideas? The thought of going back to less than 2mb fills me with all sorts of dread, and feels like going back in time half a decade or so

 

[Mort]

So your profession relies on a good net connection and never once though to check, not even when you were handing over thousands of pounds? Seriously?

Edit: vm arn't laying new lines because of the financial constraints on other parts of the corporation, read the F.T.

Yeah I know, dont I feel silly now altho I remember about a year ago I checked my mates postcode who lives on the same estate and said they were high speed broadband capable, infact thats what it said on the online checker for my postcode until i rang up...

Anyways the guy I spoke to on the phone said he read on their internal news site that new areas were in the process of being chosen for cable layage.

I was a member of the Milton Keynes Broadband Action Group many years ago when I lived there - http://www.bb4mk.org/

Might see what they are currently doing.

Yeah I looked on there but didnt seem to be much in the way of cable news, was all talking about adsl and wimax

IIRC there is meant to (finally) be some movement on MK in terms of better speeds/digital cable where they currently have analogue cable.
From what I recall for years there have been arguments between BT and NTL (now VM) over who is responsible for what part of the cabling, as it needs some expensive work done to allow it to work with digital services and they have been disagreeing over who should pay (or getting permission to do it).
IIRC BT own the actual cables running to the houses or something, but NTL/VM own the feeds.

The problem with ADSL there is even worse, as MK was largely built/laid out when there was a copper shortage I think there is a lot of Aluminium in use in the telephone cables...
Hopefully at a guess if they ever get the mini exchanges into the streets of MK that might solve the ADSL issues.

Yeah found similar info last night while i was looking about, seems pretty annoying that such a nice town is being held back because of silly arguements oh well, we'll see how it goes, looking like it wont be as bad as i first suspected anyways