Openreach put back FTTC by 3 months, yet again.

The date for FTTC has been put back another 3 months, less than a week before the last date. This has happened more times than I can remember. I estimate more than 4 times which makes it more than a year. So if openreach aren't going to enable my cabinet why are they still lying to me to get my hopes up only to be let down less than a week before. If they are going to enable it then why mess me around. I don't mind if its going to be a year but tell me that rather than giving me false hope.

If I'd had known a year ago I would have looked elsewhere although my only other option is Virgin Media and they can't do static IP (They are really missing a trick there but I realise that it may be due to technical reasons).

Does anyone have any idea how I can get a reliable likely date for FTTC activation?
I don't want to wait yet another 3 months to be told it will be another 3 months.

At this rate I'll have to move house or win the lottery and get a fibre lease line. At the moment the latter seems more likely than getting FTTC.

I understand that noone here is able to do anything about it, but with no mechanism for complaining to openreach this is the only avenue for expressing my annoyance and frustration.

Thank you.

Ignore the date. It's just a place holder and does not mean the date has been "pushed back".

Basically if the cab has not been enabled by the end of the quarter they just move the date on another quarter, regardless of the actual date it may be live. It could still go live tomorrow, or a year from now!

The other option is for Openreach to say 2014 for everything, and then shock people when it arrives early.

The civils part of the job means lots of variation, ask anyone who has built a house about the assorted delays in getting water, gas, electricity connected to get an idea.

Same thing happened to my exchange. I didn't expect it to go live this month as planned... we don't have any fibre cabs in our town yet.

They are not that variable and BT ought to be able to publish a provional list and firm up the date on a weekly basis against actual progress.. Far to difficult for BT but most other companies can manage schedules

Which other telco is doing this sort of scale job in the UK, to show how it should be done?

BT is far from perfect, but without spending more time which equals money on this side not sure that they can do.

Working for a house builder and dealing with services to over 400 units a year, thought I'd comment on that comparison.

Service companies can be a nightmare, depending on who you go with but The Competition Commission has meant it has opened up the elec and gas to many different providers which is good for competitive prices and good service, you can threaten to not use them again on other sites if they do not perform!

Water and Telecoms are dealt within the eastern region by Anglian Water and BT (we can use Virgin in the very small number of sites that may actually have cable to the boundary) and as such BT monopolise telecoms in this region.

Generally both have standard turn around times for the calling in of mains and services which as long as our site agents give adequate notice they can call these in ahead of the dates required.

From a personal and professional level BT have too many people not knowing what each other are doing, I hated dealing with them that much I�ve moved my line over to sky.

On a professional level the openreach engineers have just had a reshuffle in this region so they�re covering each others area locally and no one really knows what�s going on.

I am in complete agreement that communication is crucial on such installations to ensure that accurate dates for the connections are given to the end user/customer. Especially those of us who are on not so good connections waiting for the day this will go live, only to be let down again. Okay there may be slight changes due to work loads etc, but shuffling the dates back 4 times is a bit too far isn't it?

I have seen all the little green new cabs installed in Lowestoft, and I have little/no confidence that the date given of June 2012 for FTTC will be met, I'm not getting my hopes up and will face the fact that I will have 2.5mb for the foreseeable future.

Anything else is a bonus.

Edited by deleted (Tue 26-Jun-12 15:24:46)

In reply to a post by Adsl24:

Ignore the date. It's just a place holder and does not mean the date has been "pushed back".

Basically if the cab has not been enabled by the end of the quarter they just move the date on another quarter, regardless of the actual date it may be live. It could still go live tomorrow, or a year from now!

explain mine then.

mine has moved back when still 3 months to go, from sept 2012 to dec 2012. not even in the quarter yet.

What ground for a complaint do you have? I would suggest none.

Have BT made a binding contract with you to provide service by a specific date? No.

they are already doing more than they need to by publishing their internal forecasts - what other company publishes their actual rollout for new products? Do Samsung state exactly when their new televisions will be launched much more than a week or two in advance? Do Apple say when the iPhone 6 and iPhone7 are to be released? NO - so why should BT for their products?

I appreciate your response MHC to Pullance and what you state is correct.

I can also understand the frustration of seeing various dates come and go with the ongoing waiting game.

There is a large project management team within BT running the rollout ... The project plan will be absolutely enormous - nearly 6000 exchanges and maybe 200000 cabinets ... The resources available - hardware and human all need to be considered and the moment we get a speed of really bad weather, rain, snow, wind &c then the installation resources will be diverted to restore normal telephony service. Ten making sure the other suppliers - who also have a large number of tasks on which the project relies, get their work scheduled correctly. Throw in Local Authorities and their objections, damage caused by careless contractors for other utilities blocking ducts ...

One small issue can affect a large number of tasks as it cascades through the project activities. Maybe BT should say - project completion on 31 Dec 20xx and leave it at that!

I would not relish running that project - I have directed major comms projects with up to 500 locations and £250m of capital expenditure and believe me, it really is a hair pulling job.

A complete nightmare making it all pull together and work as it should do, local engineers stated that Yarmouth and Lowestoft should go live at the same time and that is the end of June...

You may be able to answer do only a few of the cabinets go live at a time as they gradually roll it out from an exchange, or will all the cabs go live in one big hit?

It is always a few cabs at a time - at the very least so that OR dont have to installed all the FTTC connections in one go!

One person, working full time. could not only communicate every exchange update as its known.. but would also have time to blog and tweet updates.

its really not hard.

Usually they roll out the cabinets over quite a time once the exchange is ready. Many cabinets never get done at all, so even if your exchange is showing near, don't get too hopeful.

In reply to a post by Moradin:

One person, working full time. could not only communicate every exchange update as its known.. but would also have time to blog and tweet updates.

its really not hard.

How many people are needed to supply that one updater with the information, and where do they get their information from - including the sub-contractors doing some of the work?

Cearly l you have never managed major projects. Yes at a high level it looks very complex but as you drill down it becomes simpler and you can firm up the dates on individual exchanges and update the schedule in line with actual progress

In reply to a post by benbird7:

A complete nightmare making it all pull together and work as it should do, local engineers stated that Yarmouth and Lowestoft should go live at the same time and that is the end of June...

You may be able to answer do only a few of the cabinets go live at a time as they gradually roll it out from an exchange, or will all the cabs go live in one big hit?

If only I knew!

Some project management "guess work"

Upgrading an exchange and installing cabinets are probably two major task groups in the plan. I would guess that cabinet work and exchange work start at much the same time ... then once an exchange is fully tested those cabinets installed and ready will be activated - they certainly will not wait for all to be completed. It may be that they do a cabinet activation task once or twice a week but certainly they would not wait months.

And if an issue arises that delays completion of one cabinet, the team may skip the next one and move on to try and keep others on schedule and then return to the missed one in the slippage time included at the end of the phase.

BT do not make all these changes and delays just to annoy people - they really are the best guess at a specific point in time and it probably annoys the project management team just as much as they have to rework the plan, reassign resources &c &c &c.

Are you saying that BT are incapbler of managing a project and managing a project plan and schedule?

You are probably right though as their roll out seems to be a bit of a fiasco. Stick a pin in the calaender put a date down and push it out 3 months a week or so before the end of the previous quarter

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

Cearly l you have never managed major projects. Yes at a high level it looks very complex but as you drill down it becomes simpler and you can firm up the dates on individual exchanges and update the schedule in line with actual progress

Which is exactly what happens once you get within a few days of a cabinet going live. The BT Wholesale date jumps around madly.

Prior to that there is too much uncertainty to make it sensible to waste man-hours with irrelevant updates.

Thanks for your response MHC and the others that contributed, I'll have to be patient and keep checking the checker from time to time, at least I'm not too bad speedwise. I know some people in this south heavy town who can barely get a connection due to the length of line from the exchange.

Shame there's not an option to enter your postcode for an update when it will be ready at your local cab, saves the checking then. I know you can register interest but that's a general thing for the exchange to see potentially how many people would want it isn't it?

Edited by deleted (Tue 26-Jun-12 16:54:19)

Slight correction, Openreach has 85,000 cabinets in the UK

With the number of external factors it will be difficult to keep to dates, and impossible due to local issues that residents may not even be aware of. e.g. if a duct clearing team is delayed in next door town by extra work, then dates may slip for cabs in another town.

Planning and project management is great, and am sure someone has details of which teams are working where, and a constantly shifting set of chess pieces.

Openreach has chosen to just give the public three monthly sized windows. At least those with a date know something is coming, millions of us watch and can only wonder what will happen by May 2015

It was just a guess - although 14 per exchange sounds a little low and works out at around 200 lines per cabinet and when there are some cabinets I know of with just 5 or 10 connection lines.

In reply to a post by MHC:

It was just a guess - although 14 per exchange sounds a little low and works out at around 200 lines per cabinet and when there are some cabinets I know of with just 5 or 10 connection lines.

It is a bit low because my local exchange has 94 PCP's connected to it and if I recall Kensington and Chelsea has 108 or something like that.

Approximately 88,000 PCP's according to Openreach. Kensington and Chelsea borough is served by several exchanges and probably quite a bit of E/O. Only about half the cabinets were in line to get FTTC.
Plenty of exchanges with just a handful of cabinets.

Edited by deleted (Wed 27-Jun-12 00:21:16)

I've had this too, a little frustrating. They've multiple times had roadworks permission to put in the cabinets, March, April, May, and June, yet each one comes and goes without anything been done with the slots

I registered my interest in upgrading my existing BT B/band to FTTC months ago, and their forecast date has moved backwards since. However, my existing service is speeding up, and more than justified leaving Orange (with all their false promises of increasing my download speed). So I'm now less hyper about FTTC, and will just go with BT's flow of updates re when FTTC is fired up @ our local exchange.
http://speedtest.net/result/2031001949.png

In reply to a post by arfster:

I've had this too, a little frustrating. They've multiple times had roadworks permission to put in the cabinets, March, April, May, and June, yet each one comes and goes without anything been done with the slots

They have done the same thing when scheduled to clear ducting or put in new ducting, so it isn't only the actual cab installs that don't get done on time or first time, in this area they seem to have left everything until last minute with next to no planning, they remind me of council workers they operate in a similar fashion,

I've got a 61db downstream att and sync anywhere from 2600kbps to 3600kbps depending on router, this will not increase as just too far from the exchange.

Roll on FTTC!

Well if BT actually new how to run a project they would be getting all this information in any case. If they do not they have not got a hope of running a project properly

BT really do not seem to have a cliuse as to manageing resources. How an earth they can slip exchanges 9 months is beyond credibility.

The constant excuses that it is complex just does not realy wash. Housebuilder probably have greater challanges and if they slipt a site 9 months heads would probably roll.

Housebuildrs have to deal with Councils, Utility companies, materials suppliers, sub contractors etc etc and they have to manage that and stick to a schedule.

I suspect if a site manager turned around 7 days before a site was due to complete and told his management that it would now be 3 moths late would be in for a very uncormfortable time. With BT anything seems to go. Having a monopoly seems to play a great part in it and there still seems to be a lot of the old nationalised company attitudes within BT.


No one expects the BT schedules not to change but they at least should be realistic and not fiction

Agreed.

In reply to a post by Anonymous:

BT really do not seem to have a cliuse as to manageing resources. How an earth they can slip exchanges 9 months is beyond credibility.

The constant excuses that it is complex just does not realy wash. Housebuilder probably have greater challanges and if they slipt a site 9 months heads would probably roll.

Housebuildrs have to deal with Councils, Utility companies, materials suppliers, sub contractors etc etc and they have to manage that and stick to a schedule.

I suspect if a site manager turned around 7 days before a site was due to complete and told his management that it would now be 3 moths late would be in for a very uncormfortable time. With BT anything seems to go. Having a monopoly seems to play a great part in it and there still seems to be a lot of the old nationalised company attitudes within BT.


No one expects the BT schedules not to change but they at least should be realistic and not fiction

That's what happens when you axe 35,000 jobs just before there is a substantial demand for new broadband connections. I had to wait over 3 months to have a new phone line installed.

Well if BT actually new how to run a project they would be getting all this information in any case. If they do not they have not got a hope of running a project properly

Yeah, and I bet they can't spell 'knew' either !

All very well but the 3 monthly dates that we see are obviously aren't the actual Open Reach plan.

Since this is a multiple concurrent plan with multiple end points rather than a "we will start now, lock ourselves in a room for three years and at the end switch on all cabinets" it is obviously better for OR and its subcontractors to "do the work able to be done" rather than hang around until able to complete exchange a before moving on to exchange b.

If they plan to enable 10 exchanges in a month a lot of the time it won't matter which 10 so work that slips can be made up elsewhere.

The problem is that they seem to have published ALL of the PCPs that MAY be enabled by the end of a quarter when they know it will never be achieved but they can't know at the start of the quarter which ones will be.

In many ways they would be better off just stating "this line is planned for FTTC" and not quoting any dates.

But then we would complain that we want dates!

They could give updates every month instead of every 3 ,
but every 3 mths is fine as long as the info is accurate(well more accurate than is currently) but that's a monopoly for you

Yes, OpenReach updated their list earlier in the week and my exchange was also put back until September. It is not really suprising as the end of June is Friday and if your exchange isn't live by now it isn't going to be done 'By June'.

Crowborough (the exchange I'm on) at least has activity and there are cabinets springing up all over the place. The estimate is late July / early August from the person I was talking to.

Steve

I'd rather have no information is better than inaccurate information on dates. Like you said advise that FTTC is coming but don't specify a date until it is accurate.

Nit picker!

By now BT should have a good feel as to how long it typically takes to enable an exchange so the intialdates should be reasonably accurate and they could also update the plan dates as they progressed,

Currently though the dates are pure fiction as how else can you explain the constant 90% slippage at the end of each quarter. If properly managed the nunber of exchanges over running should only be in the 5% region

Yes changes this week. Barnwood has gone back from September to December. That make a mess of my plans!

Simon / MHC

Looking at the stats on the fact sheet 3388 exchanges have 11.7% of premises so these have very few cabinets each and are mainly rural.
There will be a lot of EO lines so that will push the average per Cab up quite a bit as well

The other 2500 exchanges have most of the 85k cabs, say 75k this is 30 cabs per exchange and the bigger ones have over a hundred.

What people forget is that this isn't a greenfield housing development where the developer controls all the access rights. This is project managing up to 20000 developments a year if they are going to do 60000 cabs in 3 years!

Nearly every cabinet needs Pavement or Roads digging up for Fibre access and again for power each of which needs council permission. You have to site each one that needs permission again from the rights holder to the land.

Some rights owners or councils will not give permission, see Kensington and Chelsea, so cabs slip from what BT wanted to do, none of which is forecastable until they start to ask for permission.

The slippage is nothing like 90%. I downloaded the openreach files and still have the old copies. In Dec11 there where 697 live exchanges and 506 more planned by June 2012. According to the site now there are 1092 live exchanges. That make 9.1% slippage and some of those may only be days, (waiting in hope for mine to go live now!)
Someone with the latest spreadsheet may be able to say how many Cabs are now live nationally. Assuming the legendary min 10 cabs per exchange thats a min of 10000 cabs and may be closer to 20000 which to me seems a fast rollout rate.

We ought to give credit where it is due even if we would all like it done faster (especially where we live).