FTTC Ashington Exchange

There's a few of us on here waiting on FTTC to be installed in Ashington or the surrounding towns/villages but so far all discussion has been in unrelated threads started by others.

I thought we could all post the latest activity we've spotted around town.

Last week i noted that a long trench had been created on Hawthorn Road (top block, between Castle Terrace and 1st Avenue) to clear blocked ducting.

Today fibre was being laid next to the cab at the top of Alexandra Road. This was the first time I've seen fibre being actively laid.

This is not the Fibre being laid, as Fibre is not laid. What you probably saw is them laying the "empty" pipe, and once in place, they "blow" the fibre through the tube from the head-end exchange or nearest point of presence. But either way, yes, thats a good step forward!

Thanks James, I had laser eye surgery this morning and my wife was driving so I didn't get a good look at what they were doing!

The tubing looked narrower than I've seen previously, so I thought it was fibre rather than the tubing. I'll have a better look tomorrow.

Hope it went well and you can see the benefit (no pun intended, sorry!)

Yeah, the tube is very thin, as the Fibreoptic cables that are blown through are so thin like a piece of string.

There is a large number of CABs been installed over the past couple of months including mine (PCP 55), three others within 800 metres or so and three or four that I have seen in Stakeford south of the river.

Presumably we don't know whether we are all connected from the exchange (or if any of us are) - the main exchange seems to be Cramlington which was enabled a while ago (first in Northumberland?) followed by Bedlington which the first OpenReach spreadsheet indicated was actually provisioned from Cramlington.

BT roadworks in Choppington lane could be to get the fibre here?

And Blyth was enabled on Monday 14th May - lucky *****

The Ashington exchange seems to cover some reasonably long lines so FTTC will make a big difference on availability but with the demise of Alcan and other employers there must be many people who won't be able to afford it.

I recently got Sky reinstalled after a year away (finally offered me a deal worth having) so I'll be looking to join their fibre product come go live. Currently with Be but at over 2 miles from the exchange I'm only getting 4.5Mb.

There are two sets of BT roadworks on roadworks.org on Milburn road and Sixth and Seventh Avenue from 16th - 24th May and 17th - 29th May. This seems longer than a simple CAB installation.

Does anyone have any more info on this?

My cab has been installed for approx 6 weeks and no one has been back to it as far as i am aware.

Im looking forward to getting fibre as i only get 2mb at the moment. The bt checker says i can get 56mb - thats a 28x increase so i will definitely be signing up. Im going for sky though as soon as they have the equipment hooked up in the exchange.

Roadworks.org has a few electricity connections listed and some work by BT on Milburn Road and Newbiggin Road.

There is also some new spray paint on Hawthorn Road on top of a BT manhole cover. Arrows pointing in various directions and the word "Coil"

I had hoped we were nearly ready for go live but this suggests more work is needed.

Just a few days left till then end of the month. Still no new cabinet in my street, guess maybe I am connected to another one.