It had always seemed wrong that we were on poor copper. For the first few months we got by on 4G but though the speed was reasonable, the reliability was dreadful. The Superfast Cymru campaign initially indicated that we were possibly covered so I kept looking back - then it ended. Further, the BT copper came into the corner of our garage - as the builder had been told it should for fibre - and we do not have a BT master socket.
I checked the Welsh government help - and they were offering money, up to several hundred pounds, towards other options such as wide area wifi and satellite. But, being in a town, the options like wide area wifi did not cover us (they seemed, naturally, to assume towns would be covered by BT). And my experience of satellite was that it would not be a desirable option.
I used the Ofcom site to check the availability to the other 56 houses in the road and made a list. Quite obviously, the first 40 or so were covered by Superfast. Then us with poor copper (claimed 10, actually about 4). But the most recently built houses has Ultrafast. I put this information together and got in touch with our Welsh Assembly member which had said he was compaigning for universla broadband.
A few weeks later, two extremely pleasant BT Openreach people knocked on our door, on a Saturday afternoon and said they had done a survey of the whole road and absolutely confirmed my report. They had my email and a map which they had filled in with detals for all the properties. They did not have the evidence as to why we were without decent broadband, but they thought it could be done with the minimum expense as the ducts and manholes are all excellent, there is capacity, and it probably "just" needs the final leg from green cabinet to us to be installed. (If I had to do this again, I would have put the extra effort in to plot my Ofcom information onto a map.)
I also complained to Ofcom because their map said it would be updated within a few months and three years later, they still don't have our houses on it! They also identified us as being in an area properly covered by broadband.
Less than two weeks later another very friendly and professional BT Openreach engineer arrived, checked everything in the street, and pulled ropes ready for drawing fibre. And we got an email letting us know it was expected to be completed by the end of September.
My view is that somehow we got missed. The original planning included us but as each house was built (which was pretty much one at a time) and connected, we were missed.
Anyway, I have explained at length so that anyone else can adopt the same plan if they needed.
