Cabinet Question on new Housing Estate

My exchange is due to be upgraded by end of March (ESBAT). My postcode is EH48 2GQ

I moved house in December to a new large housing estate and when I check my postcode in the leaked July spreadsheet, my new postcode wasn't listed. On the December spreadsheet it listed this (ESBAT BATHGATE EH482GQ {ESBAT}{P39} 0 100% 3.62 7a Yes FTTC) I thought great.

All the checkers says I can't receive FTTC and nether can my neighbours on the same postcode/streets next to me. What I can think of is that there is a new cabinet that is not listed on the spreadsheet and is much much closer to the new phase of the estate.
This is PCP39 http://g.co/maps/aj2qj
This is PCP47 http://g.co/maps/yb9xy
This is PCP15 http://g.co/maps/phquu
This is a map showing my house, new development, the PCP's and exchange http://g.co/maps/6x59a

What I can guess is that originally I was due to be connected to PCP39 but since then they have installed PCP47 and I have been connected to that one and PCP47 is not due to get upgraded.

Do BT review this regularly or will I have to get the estate to registrar their interest?
I know its all about economics etc but it seems strange to miss out the cabinet when there is lots of new houses getting built

Have you tried your phone number into the BT Wholesale checker? Postcode alone is useless at this level.

Unless someone tells BT that new houses are being built, before a request for phone lines goes in, then they often don't know about it.

So a lot depends on what developers have told BT

it seems strange to miss out the cabinet when there is lots of new houses getting built

Equally it seems strange to build lots of houses without installing modern connectivity from the outset.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Have you tried your phone number into the BT Wholesale checker? Postcode alone is useless at this level.

Yeah, telephone number says not available.
If I input my parents and in-laws it says it will be available from 30 March.
A drive around town and it shows lots of new cabinets (ECI 128).
I guess until a new spreadsheet is leaked or if someone has access to it when it becomes available, I won't know what my postcode says.

I understand that it would be down to the developers as well as BT, is there been previous instances that other cabinets have been upgraded after the initial upgrade?

Thanks for the responses so far!!

I understand that it would be down to the developers as well as BT, is there been previous instances that other cabinets have been upgraded after the initial upgrade?

I've heard of cases where BT aren't putting FTTC in because the roads aren't adopted hence are not public highways where code powers apply. In those cases the developers have to agree.

Usually developers work with Openreach and put in (free issue ?) ducting etc to BT standards to facilitate subsequent delivery of USO telephone service.

The issue with new build eastates is that they are unlikely finished before the plans for a area are made, so the new cab will not be included in the inital rollout and will likely be included at a later date i have seen this happen on local new build estates.

Also since their is no other service then BT, the cab can be pushed down the list of those needing to be done.

In reply to a post by yarwell:

Usually developers work with Openreach and put in (free issue ?) ducting etc to BT standards to facilitate subsequent delivery of USO telephone service.

The developer will get stores and paid ~ £120 per plot for houses and ~£50 per flat to build onsite duct and boxes. The ~ is down to whatever the current agreement with the House Builders Federation is.

Offsite 'network reinforcement' is built and paid for by Openreach up to ~ £3400 per plot afterwhich the developer has to stump up.

Recently some OLOs have seen a competitive advantage in doing deals with the developer installing their kit and not deploying Openreach plant whatsoever.

Edited by deleted (Wed 28-Mar-12 21:49:33)

Hi,

I live in a ~5 yr old estate which is now run by a resident owned management company.

Our cabinet is currently off the December PCP to postcode spreadsheet, and I strongly suspect it is because our run is not adopted.

Can anybody explain how I should engage with Openreach and ask then to do what they need to do?

I don't expect the Management Company will have any issue with the work being carried out.

Thanks

Can anybody explain how I should engage with Openreach and ask then to do what they need to do?

A starting point would be to get your neighbours to register interest with Openreach.

Your local council highways department will tell you if the road is adopted, if that's unclear. If it isn't adopted you could get in writing from the management committee their stance on having a FTTC cabinet erected and power trenched in plus other streetworks as necessary.

To actually engage with Openreach I would start with Twitter but someone may have a better idea.

Thanks for everyone's input. I am in the process of letting everyone know on the housing estate about the situation and trying to get everyone to register their interest.

Here is hoping!!

The managent company has its own email address etc, why not email openreach under their contact us and they should likely forward you to the correct department.

Openreach won't win any awards for being open or particularly reachable...

I eventually found a way to send them a message, but it wasn't by them revealing an e-mail address. It was one of those awful online forms when you're really not sure if/where your message goes.

I await any response, but I won't hold my breath

have also tried Twitter, but their account (@openreach_news) is news feed only & they don't reply. Nice!!!

Might be better if the management company were to chase, as that would represent a larger group of people and be taken more seriously.

Might be better if the management company were to chase

I'm the chairman of the management company, and have entered the Mgmt Co email address in the online form.

Anyone know the CEO of Openreach?

In reference to www.ceoemail.com/se.php?id=9593:

The e-mail address you require is
olivia dot garfield {at} openreach dot co dot uk

Edited by deleted (Wed 11-Apr-12 15:18:41)

Hello,

I live on your estate, in fact just round the corner from you and I am also interested in getting fibre service. It looks like I am connected to P38 though so shouldn't be long.

I live in wester inch, just off leyland road. I believe i use the same cabinet as previous poster, BT infinity website has again pushed back the date of availability for this cabinet, now the 31st december, the 3rd time it has changed this year, getting fed up of it really. Is there anything residents can do collectively to speed up the process?

That though is normally a part of the planning process for new estates. Small developments may slip through though.Part of the planning process is to ensure the existing utilities can cope ie Phone, Drains, seweridge, gas & electric as well as road network

Openreach has policies on how developers should take account of the comms requirements - and their latest update (Version 6, April 2012) included fibre requirements too.

PDF from here.

And there are even BSI documents now for cabling within properties.

Great for new properties - where the developer pays attention properly.

That doesn't help residents on estates that were built 15 years ago though. And even if an estate (of houses) has a management company, they're normally focussed on trimming trees.

I have done some digging about and spoken to BT Wholesale. I currently live in Russell road of the Wester Inch Estate up in the Taylor Wimpey end where they are still building. According to BT I am connected to Cabinet 43 at the traffic lights on Leyland Road. This cabinet is not due to be upgraded due to it not being financially viable, i.e. not enough people connected to make it worth while the expense.

Also none of the cabinets down the line in the estate have been done, 39 and 15 so 43 would be the last in line.

What they did say was to contact the local council as there are grants/funding available to help finance the rollout of fibre in the local community, so like a whippet out the trap I did so. Within a couple of days he got back to me with an email and an very nice covering letter in the post. He has noted the request and has passed it on to the correct department within West Lothian council. I have since then had a couple of emails saying that he is still waiting on a response.

So long and short is, PM me if you want the details to do the same and hopefully when can get fibre installed within the estate if enough interest is shown to BT to spend their pennies.

Cheers

In reply to a post by Archetype486:

My exchange is due to be upgraded by end of March (ESBAT). My postcode is EH48 2GQ

I moved house in December to a new large housing estate and when I check my postcode in the leaked July spreadsheet, my new postcode wasn't listed. On the December spreadsheet it listed this (ESBAT BATHGATE EH482GQ {ESBAT}{P39} 0 100% 3.62 7a Yes FTTC) I thought great.

All the checkers says I can't receive FTTC and nether can my neighbours on the same postcode/streets next to me. What I can think of is that there is a new cabinet that is not listed on the spreadsheet and is much much closer to the new phase of the estate.
This is PCP39 http://g.co/maps/aj2qj
This is PCP47 http://g.co/maps/yb9xy
This is PCP15 http://g.co/maps/phquu
This is a map showing my house, new development, the PCP's and exchange http://g.co/maps/6x59a

What I can guess is that originally I was due to be connected to PCP39 but since then they have installed PCP47 and I have been connected to that one and PCP47 is not due to get upgraded.

Do BT review this regularly or will I have to get the estate to registrar their interest?
I know its all about economics etc but it seems strange to miss out the cabinet when there is lots of new houses getting built

I can assure you BT don't give a monkey's about houses that may be built, they only care about existing and active lines. In addition their biggest criteria seems to be proximity to existing fibre network which new estates aren't too hot for apart from maybe the very outside.

I got fed up so emailed BT again and this is what they said about Wester Inch Village:

Dear Mr Xxxxxxx,

Thank you for your enquiry. You are connected to the Bathgate Exchange, cabinet 43.

Our deployment is based on the commercial criteria for each cabinet and your cabinet 43 fails to meet the commercial criteria. This is because the cabinet is too small to provide a return on the investment based on the costs for the construction and on-going running costs of providing a new FTTC cabinet.

Where cabinets are not commercially viable Government funding is available to county and borough councils. It would be worth contacting them to enquire if they have discussed funding with BDUK to help upgrade cabinets such as yours.

Details are available at:-

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bduk-broa...

You can also register your interest on the Openreach website at:-http://www.openreachfibrebroadband.co.uk/where-and-when/default.aspx

Regards,

Julie


Julie Cummings BWA613

Network Investment Customer Engagement

In reply to a post by scooterb696:

I have done some digging about and spoken to BT Wholesale. I currently live in Russell road of the Wester Inch Estate up in the Taylor Wimpey end where they are still building. According to BT I am connected to Cabinet 43 at the traffic lights on Leyland Road. This cabinet is not due to be upgraded due to it not being financially viable, i.e. not enough people connected to make it worth while the expense.

Also none of the cabinets down the line in the estate have been done, 39 and 15 so 43 would be the last in line.

What they did say was to contact the local council as there are grants/funding available to help finance the rollout of fibre in the local community, so like a whippet out the trap I did so. Within a couple of days he got back to me with an email and an very nice covering letter in the post. He has noted the request and has passed it on to the correct department within West Lothian council. I have since then had a couple of emails saying that he is still waiting on a response.

So long and short is, PM me if you want the details to do the same and hopefully when can get fibre installed within the estate if enough interest is shown to BT to spend their pennies.

Cheers

Looks like cabinet 15 is being upgraded right at the Tesco end of Wester Inch Village, shiny new Fibre cabinet been installed, hopefully they will continue up the line with cabinets 39 and 43.

If you want FFTP in West Lothian then buy a house at the new Taylor Wimpey development at Polkemet?whitburn, Whitburn exchange still to be upgraded but I guess those houses will be the first to benefit

Sounds very much like if you want fibre the only choice in your area is still All Bran

Hi all,

First post here.

I am also a resident in Wester Inch Village connected to cabinet P39 and unable to get Fibre broadband (I found this thread through extensive googling!).

I have been in contact with BT retail and also Openreach who have advised that cabinet P39 is now "out of scope" and will NEVER be upgraded (according to them). Their most recent correspondence is thus:

When planning our deployment, we must ensure that the DSLAM cabinet is located within 100m of its associated telephony connection cabinet and that there is adequate access to power and existing telephony infrastructure. Also, ensuring that the cabinet does not obstruct pedestrians, or provide a danger to road-users. To further enable the location of the DSLAM, we must accurately survey for other utility underground structure and obstacles. However, there are occasions when we cannot actually find a site to erect the DSLAM that fits with the above criteria. Unfortunately we haven�t been able to find a suitable location to place the cabinet ES/BAT 39 within 100m of the existing cabinet due to other underground ducting, cables and structures preventing ourselves from erecting the DSLAM and providing interconnection to our existing infra-structure and it has been removed from the upgrade program. Which means that unfortunately you will be unable to get fibre broadband.

I was perplexed by the reluctance of Openreach to divulge any other information other this, so I decided to write to my local MP (West Lothian Council) who returned the following response:

Good to hear from you and thank you for contacting me about this matter. I was not aware of this planning situation prior to receiving your email, however I will raise it with the Council Head of Service responsible for planning and will get back to you as quickly as possible.

They took about 10 days to investigate and sent me the following letter through the post:

With regards to your recent enquiry regarding the BT Fibre cabinet in leyland road, initial discussions took place between The Council and BT regarding the sitting [sic] of the new cabinet in Somewhere Road, at which time the council highlighted that this location would be unsuitable due to the restrictions this would place on the footway. There was, however, a grassed area this location where the cabinet could have been located. The council did not refuse permission, and were willing to accept alternative options. This situation was left with BT to consider either the grassed area or alternative locations, but they have not advised us of their decision

So there you have it - the reason that cabinet P39 is not upgraded and never will be upgraded is because West Lothian Council did refuse the installation of the DSLAM beside cabinet P39 but offered BT to put it on the grassy patch beside the cabinet. According to Openreach's email to me, this is not a suitable location but BT haven't bothered their backside to get back to West Lothian Council to say "we can't put it there". I am waiting on Openreach coming back to me with a solid answer that the pavement beside cabinet P39 is the ONLY location for it then I will write to my local MP again to attempt to get this decision overturned. If you look at the DSLAM for cabinet 15 at the start of the estate, this cabinet is on the pavement so they've obviously authorised the planning permission for this one. I don't understand why it wasn't granted for the second one.

In a nutshell, it's West Lothian Council that have blocked this and I intend to fight it.

A link to google maps showing were the cab / pcp is would be nice .

In reply to a post by btbert:

A link to google maps showing were the cab / pcp is would be nice .

It's on the original post, but here is P39:

https://www.google.co.uk/maps?ll=55.887551,-3.630939...

Also for reference, this is cabinet 15's DSLAM right on the pavement adjacent to a speed limit sign. How on earth this was approved, but they cannot approve one beside the other cabinet makes no sense.

http://i39.tinypic.com/2m4egep.jpg

Hi BigG33,

I am a resident on Leyland Road also; closer to the Taylor Wimpey end, but before the second set of traffic lights. I believe I am linked to Cabinet 43. Do you know if it's the story the same with regards to this cabinet?

I have only lived there since August 1st and the slow broadband speed is probably my only gripe about the place. I'd have thought that modern internet comes with a modern housing estate. Alas, that is not the case and I am stuck with 400kbps download speed. It isn't exactly terrible, but I managed to reach 1.5mbps in my previous home in Armadale! It's safe to say I have downgraded to one third of my previous speed, which is not ideal.

Any input would be appreciated, as I too would be up for trying my best to help get this sorted with BT and the council.

Regards,

Darren

Edited by deleted (Wed 30-Oct-13 13:59:48)

The only space is immediately to the left of the existing Cab, The verge will be full of duct , see the manholes, and to the right there is another cabinet for someone else.

The Road around the corner is unadopted on google, see the state of the surface, unless this has been completed/resurfaced and adopted by the council BT will have no rights to put a new cab on the pavement there.
It is back to the council , or the owner of the flats who could give permission to site it the other side of the fence! (To benefit all the residents)

With regards to Cabinet 43. I was in contact again with Openreach and received the following:

Dear Sir,

Our deployment is based on the commercial criteria for each cabinet and your cabinet fails to meet the commercial criteria. This is because the cabinet has too few premise connected to it, rendering it too small to provide a return on the investment based on the costs for the construction and on-going running costs of providing a new FTTC cabinet. When calculating the commercial viability of cabinet areas we take many factors into account. These include ensuring that we locate the cabinets in accordance with all national and local planning laws, ensuring that the cabinet does not obstruct pedestrians or provide a danger to all road-users. We must ensure that the DSLAM is located within 100m of its associated telephony connection cabinet and that there is adequate access to power and existing telephony infrastructure. To further enable the location of the DSLAM, we must accurately survey for underground structure and obstacles etc.
We do look at the demographic nature of the potential customers within a cabinets working area, however, we focus on the amount of connected lines at the time - this is the most efficient way to deploy fibre broadband whilst keeping within our finite budget. As such we look at the potential return for our investment over quite a number of years, with the prospective number of take up of the service being a large percentage of households.


Where cabinets are not commercially viable Government funding is available to county and borough councils via the BDUK initiative, (details about BDUK are available here - https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/bduk-broa... )
The Scottish government with its own and local councils funding plus funding from BDUK and in partnership with BT, may see your cabinet upgraded. However the areas for deployment are still being and planned, for details of the roll out please go to the website - http://news.scotland.gov.uk/News/Scotland-gets-digit...

If you have any further questions, please ensure you have read the FAQ's on our website, http://www.openreachfibrebroadband.co.uk/faq/ . If your question is answered within the FAQ section, we will not respond to your e-mail.

Regards

So it looks like there is still too few houses connected. I did ask the question how often the re-valuate this but they didn't answer my question.

There is a Wester Inch Association (http://westerinchvillage.org/) that we talk about it and members of the council do attend.

We need to get as much residents as we can to register their interest on BT site.

Regards
Archetype486

Edited by deleted (Tue 05-Nov-13 07:38:48)

No, you need to look at the BDUK scheme.

However many residents you get registered BT are not going to build your cabinet out as part of their commercial rollout. That finishes in May of 2014 and it's too late to get new cabinets added. The span between a cabinet receiving the 'yes' and actually being built is around a year if there hasn't been any pre-planning.

Sorry for the grim news, I have been through this process myself but long enough ago that the local cabinet was able to be added to the roll out and confirmed Openreach were running off of data that was 3-4 years old. I believe they've fixed that now and run on the number of connected lines as well as estimated premises passed.

I dont know if that is 100% true. I am still in negotiation about adding a new cabinet to commercial rollout. Dont know how much sucess I will have.........

Define 'negotiation'.

It took me months to break through stone walls.

Re: Cab 43

From my rough calculations around 500 properties connect to Cab 43 and development is still ongoing.

I wonder if they have based their 'not commercially viable' on out of date data.

In reply to a post by mackayd:

Re: Cab 43

From my rough calculations around 500 properties connect to Cab 43 and development is still ongoing.

I wonder if they have based their 'not commercially viable' on out of date data.

This is familiar.

Hi,

I found this thread through a Google search after speaking to BT today.

Is there any milage in a bit of people power? I'd be happy to help if we can get some more Wester Inch residents to ask for Fibre.

I live on Reid Crescent, just round the corner from the cabinet in question, and get around 500kbps download speeds.

Email me [email protected] if I can be of help.

Cheers

Ben

I contacted the local councillor a while ago and all seemed very positive at the time, but turns out everything falls on deaf ears as usual with these folk.

I don't know what data they are using to make their calculations but can almost say it is well out of date. I have seen inside cabinet 43 and all the punch downs look pretty full to me.

I am guessing cabinet 15 got done as the fibre passes right past it on the way to Blackburn and they have made no attempt to bring the fibre in to the village to 39 and 43. 43 is in an ideal location for adding a DSLAM as plenty of space and power right next to it. Considering a DSLAM initially only has about 140 ports, I would say there is way more than this currently connected to cabinet 43.

I deal with BT on a daily basis in my job and can honestly say they are the most unhelpful bunch of ***** ever. They never get anything correct first time.

All we can really do is get as many folk to register interest on the Openreach site as possible to show there is the demand there (even if folk have no intention of signing up for it). I would be quite happy to organise leaflets to be put through doors but would need a few volunteers to help handing them out.

Scoorter - i can assure you it will not be done under commercial plan commercail plan finishes Spring 14 -(last cabs decisioned for commercial deploymnet months ago)- suggest you email http://www.digitalscotland.org/superfast-broadband/ to see if covered in their intervention area for goverment funding -

if not identified in their intervention area then suggest you see in you can get some prviate funding or developer to fund it seperately -- that the only way it will be enabled or deployed

Another Wester Inch resident who has registered on this site to try and get some traction going. It amazes me that a new development in a relatively well off technological area has no support for any form of fibre broadband! I'm just around the corner from cabinet 39 and I'm fairly satisfied with the speeds I'm seeing - ~7Mb down although ~0.5Mb upstream can be a pain at times. I'm more than happy to pay more for increased bandwidth and to make a big improvement on upstream speeds.
Any other contacts out there that can be used?

This this the reply I got from Openreach at the begin of December: I seems that Openreach has not looked at any of the details within my emails and have supplied me with a generic response. I can see how people think that registering interest would still make a difference. I was one of them.
There may be some hope based on this link but could take a few years West Lothian Newsletter

Dear Sir

Thank you for your enquiry

You can register at link attached, if there is enough interest the cabinet may be considered for introduction into the programme - http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/expression-gen....


If you have any further questions, please ensure you have read the FAQ's on our website, http://www.openreachfibrebroadband.co.uk/faq/. If your question is answered within the FAQ section, we will not respond to your e-mail.

Regards

Tim Whitcomb

NGA Enquiries

Archetype

Thx.
I emailed Councillor Willie Boyle about this a week ago and got a response yesterday and I am quoting the full response:

"I keep asking about this but it appears to be a frustrating and slow process."

Not sounding too helpful - no mention of any progress or what they are actually doing.

OK so went a bit further with this and contacted digital scotland with regards to the funded rollout to reach the rest of the country and this is what I got back, and looking at the plan it looks like 2016 for us

Hello,

I have conducted a search of our intervention area for the Digital Scotland Superfast Broadband Programme. I can confirm that the Postcode you quoted EH48 *GF is a location which will be considered for the rollout.

Our contract was awarded to BT who will also be contributing £106.7 million to the programme. At the moment technical surveys are being carried out to confirm a detailed plan of the rollout. Currently a high level plan is available on the following link http://www.digitalscotland.org/media/16354/ros_17101... which shows what areas are initially thought to benefit and when, this is likely to be amended as the technical survey details become apparent.

We hope to release further details in the first quarter of this year on www.scotlandsuperfast.com

I did manage to get a non generic reply from Openreach at the start of December when I asked them how old the data was that used to access the cabinet.

However they just said :-

The assessment of the cabinets in the UK is quite an extensive task, as such I do not have precise details of when the cabinet was last assessed.

I was also in contact with one of the local councillors who has said that it has been escalated to BT via the Scottish Government.

And another new Wester Inch resident interested in this topic. Having come from Virgin cable I'm rather disappointed at how slow my only option is.

Hopefully we'll at least get fibre in 2016, even if there's no way to persuade BT to review things sooner.

So they have modern up to date houses but have to use carrier pigeons? seems a bit hap hazard to me

I think you mean "newly built out of date houses" .

Still probably the developer's fault.

A couple of avenues that may be worth exploring. I have registered interest on both for Wester Inch in the hope that it may raise awareness....


https://www.hyperoptic.com/web/guest/home

http://www.gigaclear.com/

Found this thread after some extensive googling trying to figure out what speeds I'm likely to get.

Moving into Lang Drive towards the end of the year around the back of Russell Place. House spec states it comes with FTTP but I've been unable to find anywhere that states we'd be likely to get more than 2Mbps over the phone line.

I suspect I'll be in the same boat as most of you in that we'll be unlikely to have Fibre and as such have registered my interest on all the sites listed above.

Just to update this thread. It appears either BT or the council roads department have mapped out the position of the new fibre cabinet just round the corner from cabinet 39. It is sprayed on the ground with BT markings and the outline of the cabinet on the grass verge.

Further update. Cabinet 43 has now also got markings on the pavement and the location of the new fibre cabinet marked on the grass.

Don't see anything upcoming on http://www.roadworksscotland.org/ but hopefully both PCP 39 & 43 will be upgraded before end of the year.

I don't live in the area mentioned, however it seems awful that provision of modern infrastructure (at least insofar as it makes it easy to supply service later via ducting or fibre) isn't mandated as part of building regulations.

other services, insulation, fireproofing etc are all mandated.. why not connectivity. When do the councils/government get themselves in gear over this

other services, insulation, fireproofing etc are all mandated.. why not connectivity.

Note that many new properties are being built that have no mains gas and in some cases no mains sewerage both of which some might consider more important.

Both cabinets in question are due to be upgraded from June onwards and complete by end of year. These are being rolled out as part of the digital Scotland project. The fact the markings are down on the pavements means it might happen sooner. These cabinets were not meant to be upgraded until 2016/17 so progress is being made.

It will probably happen sooner as the infrastructure is there at cab 15 which will be a splitter node for the 2 new cabinets.

Unfortunately BT rely on contractors to do the cabinet installs and run the power from the nearest supply.

There's now Openreach works showing up for both cab locations on http://www.roadworksscotland.org/ Cab 39 27/05/2015 - 09/06/2015, Cab 43 18/05/2013 - 20/05/2013.

Edited by mackayd (Sun 19-Apr-15 00:11:33)

In reply to a post by mackayd:

There's now Openreach works showing up for both cab locations on http://www.roadworksscotland.org/ Cab 39 27/05/2015 - 09/06/2015, Cab 43 18/05/2013 - 20/05/2013.

Good find. Roll on the summer for a number of reasons!

Building work started this morning on cabinet 39 so things are definitely moving now.

There are new roadworks showing up for the Cab 43 location 22/06/2015 - 03/07/2015. This should be for the fibre cabinet (finally).