On Monday (4th October 2010), BT announced Race to Infinity, a competition allowing members of the public and businesses the chance to vote for superfast fibre broadband to be installed at their exchange.

What is the Race to Infinity?
The Race to Infinity is a nationwide competition run by BT whereby members of the public and local businesses can vote to get our superfast fibre broadband, BT Infinity, in their exchange. The top 5 exchanges with the most registered interest as a % of the total telephone exchange size on 31st December will be added to BT’s fibre rollout plan. Exchanges need to get a minimum of 1,000 votes in order to enter the race. People will be able to register their interest via the web site (www.bt.com/racetoinfinity) from 4th October to 31st December 2010.

So after the race has finished, BT will upgrade the top 5 exchanges with the most votes registered as a percentage of the total telephone exchange size. But each exchange would need at least 1,000 votes in order to enter the race.

The Isle of Purbeck has 4 exchanges, located in Corfe Castle, Studland, Swanage and Worth Matravers (5 if you count Wareham). This would mean each exchange would be racing against each other, with Swanage and Wareham having a tactical advantage over the rest as they have a lot more people and businesses being served by their exchanges. Corfe, Studland and Worth have a limited number of residents and business with Studland and Worth falling way short of even the required 1,000 votes to enter.

So if Swanage or Wareham managed to get a high percentage then they could possibly be in for a chance, but I suspect Corfe will struggle to even get close to the required 1,000 mark. Interestingly I wonder what BT would do if two towns, one say with a larger exchange ended up with exactly the same percentage — would BT decide to upgrade the larger town in favour of a better profit margin?

To be honest, I feel the whole idea of a race is a bit weird and farcical. BT have already said that most large exchanges would be upgraded over the next two years and smaller exchanges will follow after 2012. There is currently no date set for any of the exchanges in Purbeck though, which would mean we will end up sandwiched between Poole/Bournemouth and Weymouth/Dorchester who already have or will have super-fast broadband by 2012.

To vote or not?
Campaigning BT for faster broadband is always a good idea, so YES, I would definitely suggest voting. But don’t get your hopes up, all I can see this really doing is giving BT a better indication of just how much of a demand there is across the whole country.

Alternatives?
FibreCity is behind the 100Mbps network in Bournemouth. There are rumours that they are looking to expaind their network, but it is unclear if it would be ever be available in the Isle of Purbeck.
Link to FibreCity www.fibrecity.eu.

There is also a strong indication that C4L will be testing their 100Mbps Wireless Broadband in Purbeck at some point. If this happens then there would be no need to use a telephone line, meaning we wouldn’t have to rely on BT’s infrastructure anymore — which has been the main cause of the fluctuations and Major Service Outages (MS) over the last year.
Link to C4L www.c4l.co.uk.

Your Thoughts
What do you think of BT’s Race to Infinity?

If you are a resident of Purbeck (particularly if you are on the Corfe Castle or Worth Matravers telephone exchanges, though the problems may be more widespread) and are experiencing problems with your broadband connection (mainly fluctuating and inconsistent download speed at random times of the day and night, recently made worse by severe packet loss during afternoons and early evenings), and you wouldn’t mind your name being included in a complaint/report to the BT Chairman’s office, please get in touch either via email to info@purbeckbroadband.co.uk or the contact form.

Our ISP, Fast.co.uk, is willing to log a complaint/report with the BT Chairman’s office on our behalf on the issues we’ve been having with our broadband connections in the last seven months (we have supplied lots of evidence and hundreds of speed tests etc. in that time). But to give the complaint/report more weight, they would like to hear from other Purbeck residents who are having similar problems. The more residents who come forward and put their names to the complaint/report the more likely it is that BT will take it seriously. As things stand we have reached an impasse: our ISP can’t do anything more because BT Wholesale refuse to acknowledge that there is an underlying problem with broadband performance/speeds in some areas of Purbeck.

So, if you are as fed up as us with the quality of your broadband connection and want to help us try to do something to improve it, please get in touch. The more the merrier, as it were. A little community action and we might get this sorted before Christmas!

Download speed and throughput are fluctuating again today. I’m also seeing packet loss. Nothing new then.

Just to let regular visitors to Purbeck Broadband know that lack of updates from us doesn’t mean that all is fine. I experience fluctuating download speed and throughput at various times throughout the day – it is rarely consistently fast. We tend to only add an update to the blog when things are worse than “normal”.

For the last several hours download speed has been yo-yoing again – throughput is inconsistent. To make things worse, I’m seeing 5 – 10% packet loss during nearly every ping test. I was hoping to find the situation had improved after taking a two-week holiday, but if anything it’s worse than before I went away.

This issue started in December 2009. We’re now into June 2010 and there is no end in sight. It amazes me that BT can get away with providing a substandard broadband service for so long. My ISP has proved useless in getting BT to do something about the problem.

The problem of degraded, inconsistent download speed has returned. My download speed is currently fluctuating minute-by-minute, second-by-second – there’s no consistency whatsoever (for the last couple of hours throughput has rarely been higher than 2.5 Mbps on my 7 Mbps line, and ping times are inconsistent again). I’ve had enough. I’m probably going to switch to an ISP that has a better record of dealing with BT’s BS. It will cost more per month but I’m willing to accept that if it means a more consistent broadband connection.

If you’re having similar problems please complain to your ISP.

I’m currently seeing almost 100% packet loss to some websites while others seem to load perfectly (like Purbeck Broadband). Sites that aren’t loading include Twitter (pinged: 85% packet loss, site not loading), Facebook and the New York Times (pinged: 100% packet loss, site not loading). Anyone else having problems accessing certain websites? There was a similar issue a couple of days ago – it affected both Worth and Corfe but fixed itself after 30 minutes or so.

I’ve also been having the usual problems with wildly fluctuating download speeds most of the Easter weekend.

Update 9:25 p.m.: Still no improvement – I cannot access a number of websites because of severe packet loss. My download speed has also nosedived in the last 20 minutes. I suspect this issue is affecting other households but it’s difficult to get any confirmation at this time on a Bank Holiday.

Update 10:38 p.m.: I hope I’m not tempting fate, but things seem to have returned to “normal”. It’s doubtful we’ll get to know what caused this latest issue – it wouldn’t surprise me if it was related to the problems we’ve been having in this area for the last several months. Download speed remains inconsistent.

As of 11.30 am (1st April 2010) there appears to be a problem with broadband in the Corfe Castle and Worth Matravers area.

We are awaiting a response from our ISP and will update this post with any news/info.

Unfortunately, this is not an April Fools, and we would be interested to know if anybody else is having similar problems (please leave comment below).

Note: if you are having problems, please report it to your own ISP so that the problem will ‘hopefully’ be fixed ASAP.

Update – 12.33 pm Service has returned to normal (whatever that means). There is no explanation yet, hopefully our ISP will be able to inform us of the reason.

Update – 13.05 pm BT acknowledged a fault in the Corfe Castle area, but were unclear as what was causing the problem!

Update – 13.31 pm BT have said there is an Internet problem in the Dorset Area affecting 01929 and 01305 dialling codes:

Dialling codes affected: 01929, 01305
Estimated time to resolve: 2hrs
We are aware of a temporary problem in the Dorset area that may be causing some users difficulties accessing the Internet. Our engineers are working to resolve this problem and we apologise for any inconvenience this may cause.

Update – 14.37 pm – Looks like the fault has been fixed, but latest update suggests it affected most of south Dorset – area codes affected: 0130, 01300, 01305, 01308, 01929!

Update – 16.30 pm – BT have said this mornings outage was due to a “power issue” in the Salisbury area (see comments below for details).

It seems that degraded, inconsistent download speed is becoming the norm again. Before this week things seemed to have improved with longer periods of consistently fast service, but since Saturday there’s been a decline in the quality of my connection. Download speed is fluctuating wildly minute-by-minute, second-by-second – there’s no consistency whatsoever (for the last couple of hours throughput has been yo-yoing between 1 and 5.5 Mbps, sometimes in the space of 15 seconds). It’s completely unacceptable.

If you’re having similar problems please complain to your ISP – and please let us know by leaving a comment. We need to draw as much attention as possible to this issue so that BT make an effort to find and fix whatever’s causing it.

Download speed in Worth Matravers is low and inconsistent again today, Monday. As I type it is less than a third its normal level. It has been fluctuating wildly all morning (throughput is yo-yoing). Ping times are also very inconsistent (pings to bbc.co.uk are between 17-160ms). I had similar problems on Saturday.

Five months have passed since this issue first appeared. There have been several Major Service Outages (MSOs) in that time but no overall improvement in the reliability of broadband in Purbeck. It’s incredibly frustrating.

BT have issued a Major Service Outage (MSO) for the Swanage exchange (degraded service) – anticipated clear time is 16:36.

Download speed in Worth Matravers is inconsistent at this time. I’m also seeing inconsistent ping times and occasional packet loss. Hopefully it is related to the Swanage MSO. Monday and Tuesday were much better.

Update 17:15: Download speed (6.7 Mbps) and ping times seem to have returned to normal (in Worth), though past experience suggests they could deteriorate again at any time.

The Swanage MSO anticipated clear time is now 19:30.

Thanks for the update, Andy.

Update 22:50: As expected, download speed has become inconsistent again – currently about half usual. Occasional longer ping times too. Still hoping it’s related to the Swanage MSO, which is still ongoing (next anticipated clear time is 23:30).