From personal experience, it does work. You want things to get to the point where some senior executive at BT says "can you sort this cabinet out" because that's easier than dealing with all the noise from residents, councillors and MPs. The squeaky wheel gets the grease.
I guess it's just a dice roll. /shrug
Deploying fiber can be done in a fairly low-impact way and as long as planners don't put up roadblocks, deploying fiber to remote locations isn't a massive challenge, as a number of rural deployments demonstrate.
[1] https://www.gigaclear.com/about/case-studies-testimonials/ [2] https://www.gigaclear.com/fastershire-rollout-schedule/
I see they're based here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-tayside-central-275016... in yet another disused nuclear bunker.
Unfortunately the area we live isn't serviced by them - but they were very good at checking availability!
About as accurate as you'll ever get.
It does not take into account rusted, damaged wire, open cabinets where rain & moisture can enter, etc.
This tool gives me an estimate of 13 Mbps on my line - I actually only get 6, and when seeing the building's electrical & phone line cabinets, I can understand why, but as a consumer you shouldn't be required to manually try to estimate how "good" your phone line is - the ISP should be giving you an estimate you can trust.
Was amazed to see quite expensive new houses (£500K+) with no access to broadband available.
But guess how many people in house building remember to do that?
So instead they have the houses mostly finished and the sparky asks OK where do these phone points connect to? So that's when BT is called. And then BT will shrug and say you can pay our normal fee, you get copper cables, we can't promise how good the Internet service will be.
The part that's sad is people will stand there, talking to a sales person about their £350k house, checking things on their phone, and not think to ask - wait, this does have high speed internet - right? You aren't trying to sell me a brand new house that lacks Internet access are you?
Took them ages to get POTS - You can see why Civil engineers make Architect jokes
Most ISPs don't seem geared up for FTTP, so it's good for BT, as most people will just go with them.
We bought a house last year in a rural area in Scotland - not far from Edinburgh and were appalled at the broadband options. We get 20Mbps down and 1 up which is enough for most things (barely) but that was one of the fastest speeds we saw (apart from one house in the wilds of Perthshire that had 400Mpbs....).