Cabinet powered up - how long now?

My cabinet has been in-situ since February, and the last work on it was undertaken at the end of April (when the fibre was installed).

Since then it has sat there silent and powered off, but today for the first time I have heard fan noises coming out of it.

The BT wholesale checker is still showing 30 June as RFS date, but does anyone know whether, now the power is on, we're likely to get service sooner? I'm desperate to place my order!

Edited by Colin_London (Mon 21-May-12 21:27:13)

Maybe sooner, maybe later.

Had a friend who recently had their cabinet sit humming for a few months, then someone came along and dug up the power feed and then covered it again, service became available the next day.

Sounds like you are in a similar position to me. My FTTC cabinet was installed in March and the power is being idone at the moment. We too have a June 30th date.

Once the power is on and Openreach have commissioned the cabinet then it could well accept orders before the 30 June RFS date. Most of the cabinets in Colchester had an RFS date at the end of March but went live a good couple of weeks before.

I would recommend checking your telephone number on a daily basis.

http://www.dslchecker.bt.com/adsl/adslchecker.welcome

Regards
Mike

Thanks Mike,

The power cable was put in back in March and connected at that time (I went past as the electrician was connecting it into the isolation switch in the left hand side panel of the cabinet). But it has never 'hummed' until today.

I'm guessing that they have actually commissioned it now and switched it on as part of that process, but as none of the cabinets on my exchange seem to be accepting orders yet i'm guessing there is still something to do at the head-end.

***EDIT***

Just checked a telephone number for a business off another cabinet and it is now showing as available So it seems my cabinet needs to be added to the database....

***EDIT***

Have checked several locations on various cabinets around Epping now and it seems the cabinets that went in first are now live and accepting orders, but there are some that went in a bit later (including mine) that are still showing as 30 June.

The fact that my cabinet started humming today and the other cabinets are now showing as accepting orders cannot be a coincidence - will keep checking the checker to see if it gets added (wonder what the lead time between commissioning and database update is?).

Edited by Colin_London (Tue 22-May-12 00:58:52)

Oh great Openreach were back again yesterday with some sort of pressure washing truck so obviously our duct is still not clear despite the fact they have put cable in further down the road.

Don't know if they fixed it because the gas works are still going on along the road and i was on my way to work. And then I bet they'll find the place where the gas workers destroyed the BT duct so won't be able to progress.

Will we ever get FTTC?

In reply to a post by Colin_London:

Oh great Openreach were back again yesterday with some sort of pressure washing truck so obviously our duct is still not clear despite the fact they have put cable in further down the road.

The "sort of pressure washing truck" wasnt blowing fibre through was it (did you see any water - that wouldnt be used with fibre!)?

You may not have had an acknowledgement of your problem report - but was this visit because of that?

Perhaps you should have stopped and told the BT staff what you knew.

It had a big tank on the back - like a mini petrol tanker and lots of rubber pipe. It wasn't an Openreach branded vehicle but there was an Openreach engineer looking into a pavement cover.

In reply to a post by MHC:

You may not have had an acknowledgement of your problem report - but was this visit because of that?

Perhaps you should have stopped and told the BT staff what you knew.

No this was 100 metres away from the location I advised. I would have stopped but the guy was obviously busy talking to the 'tanker' operator and I would have missed my train if I had waited.

Trouble is the gas works have not been correctly registered on the Roadworks database so it looks like Openreach turned up to do work only to find the gas works in the way

In reply to a post by Colin_London:

In reply to a post by MHC:

You may not have had an acknowledgement of your problem report - but was this visit because of that?

Perhaps you should have stopped and told the BT staff what you knew.

No this was 100 metres away from the location I advised. I would have stopped but the guy was obviously busy talking to the 'tanker' operator and I would have missed my train if I had waited.

Trouble is the gas works have not been correctly registered on the Roadworks database so it looks like Openreach turned up to do work only to find the gas works in the way

Just checked on Roadworks.org - the BT work is to clear blockage outside number 42 whereas my report was for outside number 30. The gasworks still don't show despite being there for nearly two months now!

One question - when they were installing two months ago they were putting flexible black cable in the ground - is this the fibre itself or the sheath they 'blow' it down?