IF you’re one of the 30,000 BT broadband customers in the Balmoral exchange area, it looks like you’re in for a real treat – super-fast broadband of between 40 and 60 megabits from early next year. Lucky sods – I’m on the Belfast City exchange next door but one, where it would be nice to get eight. Yous probably won’t even use it. If you want to know if you’ll get the service, type your postcode in here.
I’ve been catching up on some reading, recently. Most pleasantly surprised by John Drennan’s latest opus from Gill and Macmillan, Cute Hoors and Pious Protestors… It’s early days yet, but I was struck by this paragraph, part of a dissection of Fianna Fail near the beginning: One of the more fatal consequences of our colonial [...] read our review »
Colin Neill’s first novel Turas peeks into a world in which many Ulster Protestants feel uncomfortable. It’s 2020 and the Irish unification that unionists and loyalists confidently predicted would never happen has become a reality. President Adams is ensconced in Phoenix Park. The newsreader reported that … a short ceremony at Stormont had confirmed the [...] read our review »
Extract from Greg McLaughlin and Stephen Baker: The Propaganda of Peace: The Role of Media and Culture in the Northern Ireland Peace Process. Bristol: Intellect Books. 2010. Political opponents Ian Paisley and Martin McGuiness were confirmed as First Minister and Deputy First Minister of a new executive in May 2007, closing yet another chapter in [...] read our review »
I thought that exchange closed, is that the one on the Lisburn Road, down from the barracks?
boo, belfast malone.
Are lines still arent adopted properly yet. if you want virgin you have to pay the racketeers at BT protection money for the pleasure.
It sounds like BT are operating some kind of VDSL2 trial. This will necessitate the installation of new street cabinets; telephone lines will be routed to these. Let’s hope they don’t have to dig up too many roads to run fibre cables to the cabinets or move the telephone lines.
All this talk of 40 and 60mbits seems a bit optimistic. Having high bandwidth in the access network does nothing to deal with the bandwidth of the site being accessed or congestion in the core network. I don’t believe that internet access will appear to these people to be noticeably faster than an existing good 8Mbit/sec ADSL line. However, it does open the door for things like video on demand over a phone line. Virgin Media customers already enjoy this capability.
our* naturally.
Gonzo i’m glad you posted this, if Boucher road/Kennedy Way/Stockmans Way industrial estates come under Balmoral I would fully undrstand and endorse the proposed site.
However something tells the back of my mind they don’t and therefore BT are only catering to the very wealthy of our society, strange when statisically they use the internet less than their less well off counterparts in poorer areas of the city.
Or perhaps the decision maker lives in the area….. ah descrimation at it’s finest
Obviously not your traditional route(r).