Previous discussion here:
http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/briti...es-coming.html
What is certainly new is the banners, so yes I'm sure they are limbering up for finally switching these on. As shown in the previous thread, BA have been trying to get this to work properly for years, without much success. The machines had such a high failure rate it was frankly cheaper to get humans to do it, similar to the experience of self service check-in at locations other than LHR. Those of us who travel on Lufthansa and SAS are well used to these gates, the Lufthansa version is also "tuned" to enforce priority boarding, by the way. And even if they are not, people think they are!