FAQ's

The site started out as a place for broadband campaigners to find out the latest information, submit "pre-registrations" and gather resources for their own campaign sites. Since the pre-registration scheme ended and BT began a planned rollout scheme in April 2004, things have changed immensely.

Nowadays the site has three different sections. As well as reporting the latest news in the broadband sector, SamKnows focuses upon the continued growth and availability of BT Wholesale xDSL, DSL from LLU providers and also broadband from the cable companies. There is also a section on Digital Britain, which is OFCOM's campaign to address the state of the nation's Internet access and improve it for those people whose service is currently far from satisfactory.

As far as we are aware, no other public website offers as much information on the state of broadband in the UK as this one. The site has featured in The Times, PC Plus, Computer Active, numerous Ofcom reports and many other publications. Whilst it is used predominantly by the public, ISPs and government users also account for a large proportion of the visitors.

This website lists operators who run their own network and deliver their entirely their own broadband services to end users (i.e. they are not simply reselling someone else's service). Whilst there are maybe 15-20 operators who fulfil this criteria, there are literally hundreds of other ISPs reselling their services. This is far too many to list and it would add no additional information; it would simply be repeating data shown elsewhere on the site. Even ISPs such as BT Yahoo!, which has well in excess of 1 million customers, is not listed on here directly because they simply resell BT Wholesale's products.

Local Loop Unbundling is the process by which third party network operators are able to install equipment in to BT telephone exchanges in order to provide their own services without having to touch BT's network. Only the copper pair from the exchange to the premises, which remains the property of BT, is used by the third party.

There are numerous reasons why an operator may wish to partake in LLU.

1. Firstly, BT tend to be very conservative in the services which they offer to end users. For example, BT's fastest broadband product is currently 8Mbps, whereas Be Unlimited have had a 24Mbps product available via their LLU network for over two years now. Operators such as Be use LLU as a means to offer high speed services in selected areas (typically the areas with the highest population density).
2. LLU is also used by many providers for cost savings. Instead of having to pay BT for it's IPStream products and access to the BT Central backhaul services, LLU operators can utilise their existing network and points of presence (POPs). Of course, the LLU operators still have to pay BT to house equipment in the BT telephone exchange. ISPs such as Pipex and Orange use LLU purely for cost saving purposes.

It is also important to note that those ISPs that do use LLU will almost certainly use BT Wholesale's IPStream products as well (in order to provide national coverage). This often leads to confusion, and you want to want to read this FAQ item as well.

The most common reason for this is that your ISP operates two separate ADSL networks. One network has nationwide coverage because it is simply BT Wholesale's ADSL product resold. The other network is their LLU (local loop unbundling) network. Your ISP may refer to these as "off-net" and "on-net" respectively.

Given that the BT Wholesale ADSL network is already covered extensively on this site, we don't focus on your ISP's network that runs on the back of this. We are only interested in their LLU network. This is because it is usually where their more interesting and innovative products can be found. Some providers do not differentiate products between their "on-net" and "off-net" networks. Instead they just use their on-net network for cost savings.

Examples of providers that utilise both BT Wholesale's ADSL products and their own LLU network are as follows:
Orange, TalkTalk, Tiscali, UK Online, Sky, Pipex, Bulldog, AOL and NewNet. Virgin Media use BT Wholesale's ADSL services to provide broadband to customers in area where their cable network is not present.

Non-profit organisations may use the data from this site free of charge and without the need to place any notices or acknowledgements on any material produced with the data. Businesses and government organisations are asked to place a notice near where the data is used, citing SamKnows.com as the source.

If you are looking for something more specific, please feel free to contact me directly. I'm more than happy to help out with data requests.

A page summarising the providers can be found here.

There is one core Web Service available via this website: the Availability Checker API. This allows you to check the availability of providers at an exchange, given a user's phone number, postcode or address. Access to the API is strictly granted on a per-request basis due to massive abuse in 2005/2006.

More information can be found here.

The availability data detailed on this site is gathered from a number of different sources in a number of different ways. Many providers provide us with an automated way for us to gather data (e.g. an XML interface). This allows us to check for updates regularly during the data to ensure we're providing the very latest data. Other providers will send us spreadsheets containing rollout changes every so often, which we incorporate in to our database and suplement with other checks as well. Finally, some providers offer us nothing at all, so we must gather the data ourselves entirely.

If you are wondering about the data for a particular provider, please click on their name in the menu on the left hand side of this page. The notes section at the bottom of that page should indicate the frequency with which the data is updated.

We strive to provide accurate and up-to-date information. Of course, there will be times when errors are made and things may not get updated, so if you see an instance of this please get in touch.

In May 2008 Ofcom announced that they would be deregulating 70% of the UK's broadband market. The full 115 page document outlining the reasoning and methodology can be found here (Mirrored here).

Within this document Ofcom has defined four classifications to be applied to exchange areas (see page 32). These are:

• Market 1 - Exchanges where the incumbent operator (BT Wholesale) is the only provider of broadband services
• Market 2 - Exchanges where two or three operators provided broadband services (including BT)
• Market 3 - Exchanges where four or more operators provided broadband services
• Hull area - Exchanges in Hull are served only by Kingston Communications

The Market 3 exchanges are the ones that the deregulation applies to. Ofcom deemed that there was sufficient competition in these areas to keep prices at a reasonable level whilst also driving innovation.