Wonder if they'll be digging Oxford Road up again, they've only just finishing 6+ months of work (Gas mains replacement), with any luck they'll have put the cables in at the same time (if they're going underground, that is). Then again, this is England so they probably won't have thought that far ahead.

Old Boris had a rant about that - there's a thread somewhere in the News section if you haven't already seen it

Most of the buildings on Oxford road in Manchester are either commercial properties, the BBC or the University/MMU until you hit Rusholme. The BBC and the students don't want it (students halls already have 100mb/s ethernet to the rooms and the BBC has bandwidth to burn), the commercial properties aren't the type to need it (why would a restaurant need fibre broadband?) and anyone who lives in Rusholme can't afford it or they wouldn't be living in Rusholme in the first place.

They'll put fibre into the blocks of flats near Oxford Road train station, have it contended between the various flats so people get little better than 'standard' broadband and charge a huge whack for it without having to pay anything like the upstream costs they would have if they'd actually networked up the whole of Oxford road, then declare the thing to be a rousing success. What a con.