Aborted installation

Unfortunately, things were too good be true (an appt one month from the cab 
going in). Ordered FTTC from AAISP a week ago, got appointment for today.

OR installed modem (wall mounted), then he was obviously having 
some problems so he had to go back to cab where he was for at least half an 
hour. My worst fears were realised when he came back and said none of the 
ports in the FTTC cab had been enabled! That meant getting another engineer (Huawei? PCR engineer?)
to do the cab work, and a new appt for me. OR called back and said the cab 
would be done this afternoon, but I would have to wait until Monday for a 
new appt! Particularly annoying as it will hopefully be a 5 min job at home, assuming the cab is fully functioning.

As I was going to be the first customer on this cab, clearly they had not tried it before. Has anyone heard of this happening? Doesn't the Wholesale checker check these things?

Yeh, happens occassionally. Often the filters are not installed so all the ports are disconnected.

In reply to a post by chrisadsl:

My worst fears were realised when he came back and said none of the 
ports in the FTTC cab had been enabled! That meant getting another engineer (Huawei? PCR engineer?)

The other engineer is someone else from Openreach. The engineer that comes to your house often knows nothing about the workings of the fibre cabinet and may never have even seen inside one. During your home installation he only accesses the old copper cabinet.

What does he do - just pick the next free pair to & from the fibre cab and "loop" your line in??

Happened to me last week, as I was also the first person on the cab. Engineer called to say he was at the cab and was about to start work. 15 minutes later, he calls back and says he reverted everything and cannot proceed due to an issue with the ports on the Dslam.

Plusnet got straight onto it, and a new appointment was arranged for 31st, they then got openreach to expidite the appointment as it was their fault. They are now coming tomorrow afternoon now.

Edited by deleted (Tue 22-May-12 14:24:37)

At the PCP they identify the exchange and distribution sides of the line and break the circuit. The exchange side with Dial Tone is connected to a pair going into the fibre cab, and the Distributuon side is connected to the corresponding pair returning from the fibre cab with the Dial Tone and xDSL signal.
In the fibre cab everything should be connected through. There are plugin filters that connect through the circuit and allow testing of each port .
In a situation where a port is faulty the installation tech will be given alternative ports to try, but if they are all faulty then it suggests that either the filters are missing/not inserted fully or maybe a missing/ faulty VDSL card.

Edited by deleted (Tue 22-May-12 19:38:56)

No, the port to be used is allocated already, just as an exchange DSLAM port might be, so it's virtual path to the ISP is built prior to the visit.

In the fibre cab everything should be connected through. There are plugin filters that connect through the circuit and allow testing of each port .

The purpose of the filters in the FTTC DSLAM cabinet, is to remove the any ADSL signal coming down the pair from the exchange.

And to allow testing of the individual ports by the PCR techs.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

In the fibre cab everything should be connected through. There are plugin filters that connect through the circuit and allow testing of each port .

The purpose of the filters in the FTTC DSLAM cabinet, is to remove the any ADSL signal coming down the pair from the exchange.

Well I think he said he tried all the ports (maybe a slight exaggeration!)

But is there no polling of these ports to alert them that they are not in use?

PCR = ?

Appt for next Monday now confirmed. Hopefully all will be ready and he won't need to spend much time in my home.

The cabinets are not installed fully loaded so may only have 1 card (48 ports) or 2 cards ( 96 ports) potentially available

Edited by deleted (Wed 23-May-12 17:32:33)

In reply to a post by Alexir:

In reply to a post by chrisadsl:

My worst fears were realised when he came back and said none of the 
ports in the FTTC cab had been enabled! That meant getting another engineer (Huawei? PCR engineer?)

The other engineer is someone else from Openreach. The engineer that comes to your house often knows nothing about the workings of the fibre cabinet and may never have even seen inside one. During your home installation he only accesses the old copper cabinet.

Thats interesting, never knew that. I thought in some cases the old copper cabinet was removed entirely?

In reply to a post by Ribble:

The cabinets are not installed fully loaded so may only have 1 card (48 ports) or 2 cards ( 96 ports) potentially available

Does this allow them to build capacity quite easily as demand increases? Can the cabinet cope, for instance with every line eventually getting FTTC?

The large Huawei 288 port cabinet has upto 6 cards. Usually a cabinet will be installed with 1 or 2 cards and associated filters. Additional cards and filters are installed as and when demand requires.
Openreach are typically planning for upto 50% takeup per cabinet, so a 288 port cabinet is expected to cater for ~500 properties connected to the PCP.
There is scope for an additional cabinet to increase capacity.
PCR= Private Circuit Repair. A group of Openreach techs who maintain the FTTC cabinets.

In reply to a post by Ribble:

The large Huawei 288 port cabinet has upto 6 cards. Usually a cabinet will be installed with 1 or 2 cards and associated filters. Additional cards and filters are installed as and when demand requires.
Openreach are typically planning for upto 50% takeup per cabinet, so a 288 port cabinet is expected to cater for ~500 properties connected to the PCP.
There is scope for an additional cabinet to increase capacity.
PCR= Private Circuit Repair. A group of Openreach techs who maintain the FTTC cabinets.

Thanks for the expansion. But can I assume that the PCR has done the job, if they've confirmed the new appt?

I should expect so. They usually get these issues resolved quickly

Never come across a case where the copper cab was removed totally, a new sleeve housing the active VDSL kit can be used which goes over the old cabinet.

I had hoped mine would have been resolved yesterday, but shortly after arriving at the cab, the installer phoned and said the same issue still existed so he couldn't proceed. I hope the fibre engineer who sorted your's out did a better job than the one who fixed ours.

In reply to a post by TLE:

I had hoped mine would have been resolved yesterday, but shortly after arriving at the cab, the installer phoned and said the same issue still existed so he couldn't proceed. I hope the fibre engineer who sorted your's out did a better job than the one who fixed ours.

Oh dear. Really sorry to hear that! A&A are going to call OR again tomorrow to ensure engineer is allocated to work on Monday. I asked them when they do to check that the cab work has been completed!

Well looks like my worst fears have been realised. AAISP have just called to say that despite OR previously having assured them that the cab works have been done, they now say that Monday's appt has been cancelled as they haven't! And despite OR having called me last Monday to make the new appt they have not been in touch again. A Telent van did turn up last Monday afternoon at the cab, but who knows what was done.

A&A will try to escalate on Monday morning. Not very happy, as this will be the second day I've taken off, and the remaining work will only require a short time in my home.