It sounds like their where multiple blockages in the underground ducts, which cause long delays for the fibre tubing to be laid (is black in colour), once this is laid then fibre will be blown through it to the cabinets.
Power to the cabinets is installed by the local power company or sub contactors working for them, as they are a seperate company their progress can be very slow and does slow the overall progress of the rollout.
Openreach engineers then work on the connectors in the cabinets and then it goes over to testing for a few weeks before being ready for live.
Edited by ccxo (Wed 05-Sep-12 14:17:13)