3 month RFS date slippage

Just back from hols only to find, to my dismay, that the RFS date for FTTC from the BT Wholesale Checker has slipped from end March to end June. The RFS for my exchange (Epping) is still end March.

So this is obviously related to my cabinet. There were some problems with blocked ducts before I left and BT had dug up an extensive amount of pavement in three locations on the route down the hill to the cabinet. Looking inside there were sections where the cables were just lying in earth without any ducting, and the ends of the existing ducting looked a bit smashed up.

However, on my return all the holes are filled and neatly tarmaced over, and there is no further work showing on Elgin. I presume they wouldn't have done this if the problem hadn't been fixed, and the fibre could be run.

So why a 3 month RFS delay? Is this just a standard slippage on the checker if a particular cabinet fails to be enabled by a set date prior to the previous date? Could the cabinet still in fact be enabled very shortly? (it already has Power).

Or could this be down to staff availability - if my cabinet 'missed its slot' then do the engineers go off to another area meaning my cab will be left uncommissioned?

Edited by Colin_London (Thu 22-Mar-12 11:12:37)

The duct may have been repaired, so now will required the fibre tubing to be installed, the fibre blown and then terminated.

Alas with limited teams, these teams will be working elsewhere now, and thus you end up slipping down the schedule.

Put it another way, the teams doing the various elements don't have the time to sit around while a duct blockage is cleared, they move to another town.

Same thing here. But I knew it was coming as the proposed new Cabinet is in a conservation area and had it's planning permission turned down in Oct 2010.

Since then nothing. All cabinets in surrounding streets have shiny new neighbours and the date on the tracker just goes back 3 months every 3 months.

Oh well.

Don.

Lol, mine has just slipped as well. Rather curious since I've seen BT engineers with laptops plugged into my cabinet. They seem to quote in three monthly periods so 'by end of June 2012' could just mean next month I suppose. Never trust a BT estimate

Interestingly SWMES had an RFS date of 31/03/2012. From plugging various phone numbers into the checker it seems that one cabinet has gone live and all the others are now pushed back to 30 June. superfast-openreach.co.uk says SWMES is accepting orders and all the cabs seem to be humming, so it may only be a week or so in actuality.

Thanks Mr Saffron,

It seems a common frustration for those on here whose cab has some sort of issue that makes it a non-straightforward install. It seems that as soon as a problem occurs which pushes a cab outside of the 'ideal' installation programme envelope for an area, it falls off the radar and there is no obvious 'sweep-up' plan in existance to get it enabled.

In my case (Cabinet EAEPP08) they have fixed the blocked duct within two weeks of the original planned fibre installation, yet we are now looking at an indeterminate delay for them to come back to blow the fibre which is the only thing left that needs doing

I'm on Mortlake (LSMOR) which was originally scheduled to be ready for service in June 2011. My phone number/cab reckons it'll be June 2012 now - after it just recently slipped from March 31.

Originally it started going back 2 weeks every 2 weeks a few days before the new deadline, so I started a google doc tracking the estimated dates, but shortly after I did that it went back to Dec 31.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AmMvOoR...

I've read that this has something to do with Richmond council denying planning approval up until recently (even though I'm just over the border in Wandsworth ) And saw recently on Elgin recently a bunch of work by BT, one about 600m from me. So hopefully, fingers crossed, it'll get activated sometime before June 30.

In reply to a post by Colin_London:

Thanks Mr Saffron,

It seems a common frustration for those on here whose cab has some sort of issue that makes it a non-straightforward install. It seems that as soon as a problem occurs which pushes a cab outside of the 'ideal' installation programme envelope for an area, it falls off the radar and there is no obvious 'sweep-up' plan in existance to get it enabled.

In my case (Cabinet EAEPP08) they have fixed the blocked duct within two weeks of the original planned fibre installation, yet we are now looking at an indeterminate delay for them to come back to blow the fibre which is the only thing left that needs doing

I think my cabinet is the one that the fibre reaches first. We're apparently getting our service from a nearby exchange (Banbury) and if the cable follows the logical route my cabinet would be the first one it comes to. There was also some curious digging and a trench leading away from my cabinet out of town which tends to confirm that idea.

The Headend/Handover point maybe located at another exchange but the fibre will most likely go through the existing local exchange.
Just clarifying in case you thought it was going to be direct from the distant echange to the your local exchange area cabinets..

In reply to a post by Ribble:

The Headend/Handover point maybe located at another exchange but the fibre will most likely go through the existing local exchange.
Just clarifying in case you thought it was going to be direct from the distant echange to the your local exchange area cabinets..

Thanks for that. I wasn't sure. I had asked before but never really got a solid answer. If was driving from Banbury to my exchange then the route would take me past my cabinet. The exchange was there before my cabinet but the road was originally the main road. If I were laying a fibre link now I'd prolly go along the new main road outside of town and then up the hill. But it's all guesswork. It's a bit of a shame if the backhaul fibre goes past my cabinet and then a feeder has to come all the way back in the same duct, lol.