I agree with you O_o

Seems OP has vanished I guess not wanting to explain why they wont pay for FTTC, but I think as long as FTTC is available in these areas then the closure of exchanges is ok.

My only issue is perhaps the handling of the situation would be better e.g. migrating people over to FTTC who are confirmed to have a significant drop in service spec at equal price point for a grace period such as 6-12 months.

If it just happened and the end user was not contacted at all so out of the blue line rate drops to 25% of previous performance then thats not a good process.

Chrysalis
AS Andrews post says higher up, offers are there for free FTTC service for x months.

However OR cannot contact customers direct and some ISPs are not as effective or honest about offering the deal to their customers.

CP / ISPs were informed about the closure at least 2 years ago with all the affects this would have on BB speed and the offered solutions. They could all have taken this on board if they wanted to.

Practically all lines on Chelsea will have worse ADSL performance due to the distance to S Ken being greater than the distance to Chelsea. (A map will tell you this)

Originally Ken & Chelsea refused to allow any FTTC at all due to their conservation status when FTTC was first being rolled out. It was only when residents banded together against the council stance that they changed their minds! Customers would then have been in a really bad BB area especially in the S.West area along the Thames where distance would have been multiple miles.

WilliamG

The phone number will still work as the Equipment is 'Cloned' in the new building and the lines then moved from the old exchange to the new equipment. When all the lines have been moved the old equipment can be removed.

In technical terms you just change the equipment number giving service to the line and connect the local pair to the new equipment. This can be set up in advance at the cabinet / manhole so the change can be done very quickly. ( Robotic code to change the software and reconnect to the previously identified pair.). This is what is now going on Cab / Manhole by manhole, the whole area will take several years end to end.

In reply to a post by WilliamGrimsley:

Aha, didn't think of that. Bah, understood. Is this a common occurence then? I didn't realise there was a possibility of exchanges shutting down across the country. I guess when other operators decide to take on Openreach further and start to dominate the country's network infrastructure, there may not be as much of a need for exchanges.

Not massively common, just as many have mentioned Chelsea has some of the most expensive property in the UK. Investment wise the landlord will have likely made flats or something similar (guessing)... I am in Chelsea in a couple of weeks and I will take a look where the exchange used to be to see what's there now - anybody know?

Where I live, Shepherd's Bush, there is plenty of EO lines. My actual address has 2 master phone sockets, one of the lines is registered to "Top Floor Flat, then my address" and that is EO. If you lookup my address by the flat Letter "Flat C, then my address" that brings up the other master which isn't EO.

I have one line which enters by the front door, then is pinned to the stairs all the way upto the flat. This ones fibre ready and a newer master socket.

I have another line where the cables go under the floorboards and then off to somewhere else (no idea where). This ones EO with no fibre.

I feel like the EO one predates the property being split into flats as it had one of these 1950s phones connected up.

Point is even in London not everyone can get fibre. Parts of east London are quite bad as well.

Edited by ukhardy07 (Fri 07-Apr-17 23:48:17)

ukhardy

The exchange will still be there, it will take another year or so to move all the customers across to S Ken building and empty the equipment out from the building. Once that is finished it is up to the landlord what he is going to do. Best place to find out is planning dept of the council.

Building could just be converted to apartments which is likely to be easier than demolition and rebuilding. The frontage looks like a residential building already and the structure is likely to be very strong to take the weight of the original telephone equipment.

Andy - on this point you way off beam.
..and this equally applies to house prices in rural areas
I live in one such "desirable" rural area such that house prices have in recent decades shot up.
I could never afford on my salary in my job sector to buy a house here had I not had the luck and good fortune to already be an owner way before it became an uber-wealthy area.

The result is that NEW incoming owners today are indeed very wealthy to be able to buy the properties such that broadband whether that is ADSL2+ or FTTC is frankly chickenfeed. They have to be very wealthy of have seriously high power jobs to (as you say) afford to live here.

However to EXISTING owners (who are the majority) whose incomes are basically the same allowing for inflation as they were decades ago with no mortgage anymore, the current (absurd!) prices of the local houses is a total irrelevance to the affordability or otherwise to them of any particular service or product - Broadband being one.
Meanwhile they (eg myself) can afford quite easily to continue to live here.

Ironically it is because the existing owners are in the majority and are staying put is precisely the reason why the house prices locally have risen so much - because desirable properties come on the market so rarely.

another reason why openreach cannot deal with end users direct is so stupid.

Thanks, all, for your comments.

A few points in response:

1. BT's claim that it has to close the exchanges because the leases have run out. This is disingenuous- BT like any other commercial leaseholder has the right to extend the lease under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. However, in high land value areas, doing a deal with the freeholder to relinquish the lease in return for a share of the redevelopment profits can be attractive.

2. Chelsea is inhabited only by rich people who would not notice the cost of transferring to FTTC. This belief may have come from too much viewing of "Made in Chelsea", but is incorrect. Take a look at the 2011 Census data for Kensington and Chelsea. The borough contains extremes of wealth and poverty, child poverty percentage is 24.8%. There are still people thousands of people hanging on in public housing who have yet to be redeveloped and sent to other parts of the country. My local church is providing free food to people and they are in desperate need of it.

3. My claim that Cabinets are placed on the footway, rent free. If I am incorrect on this, please supply details of what rent is paid and to whom.

4. ISPs are offering reduced priced FTTC to people affected. Not so. My DSL simply dropped rate as it was moved to WRSKEN and latency went up to 120ms, as the Talk Talk there seems not to have been sufficiently provisioned to cope. Nothing heard from the ISP (Post Office) whatsoever.

In reply to a post by ajseeds:

1. BT's claim that it has to close the exchanges because the leases have run out. This is disingenuous- BT like any other commercial leaseholder has the right to extend the lease under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. However, in high land value areas, doing a deal with the freeholder to relinquish the lease in return for a share of the redevelopment profits can be attractive.

We do not know whether the leasehold was contracted under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954 nor do we know the reasons why Openreach "were asked to leave" the property.

Whilst the business has the right to extend a lease upon expiration, the landlord equally has the right to object to the renewal. If the leasehold was contracted under the LTA, then it is likely the landlord would have sought possession either to demolish/reconstruct or to occupy the premises himself.

In reply to a post by ajseeds:

2. Chelsea is inhabited only by rich people who would not notice the cost of transferring to FTTC. This belief may have come from too much viewing of "Made in Chelsea", but is incorrect. Take a look at the 2011 Census data for Kensington and Chelsea. The borough contains extremes of wealth and poverty, child poverty percentage is 24.8%. There are still people thousands of people hanging on in public housing who have yet to be redeveloped and sent to other parts of the country. My local church is providing free food to people and they are in desperate need of it.

No one has stated that Chelsea is only inhabited by rich people, but the fact is that it is the most affluent area in the country. People earn the most in Chelsea, properties are the highest value in the country and rental costs are also the highest in the country.

We're talking about broadband which is virtually an essential service for many households. £5-10 a month is a relatively small amount in this context.

In reply to a post by ajseeds:

3. My claim that Cabinets are placed on the footway, rent free. If I am incorrect on this, please supply details of what rent is paid and to whom.

BT pays business rates on its network assets (over £700m a year now).

In reply to a post by ajseeds:

4. ISPs are offering reduced priced FTTC to people affected. Not so. My DSL simply dropped rate as it was moved to WRSKEN and latency went up to 120ms, as the Talk Talk there seems not to have been sufficiently provisioned to cope. Nothing heard from the ISP (Post Office) whatsoever.

The Post Office still do not offer FTTC. There are plenty of ISPs that offer FTTC and you could have moved and paid less (with an offer) than you do now for a fibre service.

In reply to a post by ajseeds:

1. BT's claim that it has to close the exchanges because the leases have run out. This is disingenuous- BT like any other commercial leaseholder has the right to extend the lease under the Landlord and Tenant Act 1954. However, in high land value areas, doing a deal with the freeholder to relinquish the lease in return for a share of the redevelopment profits can be attractive.

As I understand it, this right to extend does not extend to a right at a particular level of rent. I expect that any approach from BT about extending these leases was met with the reply that the landlord was not prepared to accept a rent not commensurate with the current open market valuation of the site. As the future direction of telecommunications infrastructure gives huge scope for consolidation of sites and, in high density areas such as central London, the costs of exiting these sites is a modest one-off cost (especially any metallic pair network rearrangement), it would be crazy for BT to lock themselves into a greatly increased rent over a long lease. Such an increase in opex ties up money that could be more fruitfully spent on capex on network improvements such as filling in FTTx 'not spots' (of which, as you say, there are still a lot in London, especially in areas with network topology challenges such as EO lines).

The disproportionate effects of exiting these sites fall primarily on ADSL customers - those who do not have access to or cannot afford FTTx. ADSL remains an important technology for now, but will continue to fade in importance as deployment of and advances in deeper fibre technologies such as FTTC continue. These deeper fibre technologies have been deployed with dependence on a much lower number of exchanges than the legacy metallic pair network.

Sadly, nothing can be done about the increased E side attenuation and consequential drop in ADSL sync speed. The huge leap in latency you report is strongly suggestive on underprovisioning and will hopefully be corrected in time. You are in something of a 'worst case' scenario, with an inexpensive ISP that is not known for customer support and service.