Delay between cabinet install and order acceptance?

Hi, my local exchange in Chislehurst has been fibre enabled for some time but the install rate for cabs was v. slow due to it being a conservation area and Openreach not doing too well with the local planning department.

About a month or so ago, an FTTC cab appeared at the corner of our road with the sticker proclaiming "Faster broadband here" or something similar (powered from cab P25 where our line goes). However, the wholesale checker is still claiming an availability date of 31st December 2012.

Is it normal for a significant delay between cab installation and it going live for order acceptance, or have OpenReach just not updated their system yet? The relevant postcode is BR7 5ES if that's any help.

Any and all suggestions would be welcome.

Edited by Memphis (Fri 02-Nov-12 19:53:06)

Round my way there are a couple of cabinets that were installed back in July that still aren't live although one of them is having the power connected next week apparently.

Annoyingly the other one is the one that supplies the house I'm moving to in a couple of weeks time and BT phone number checker doesn't even give a date for FTTC availability yet.

When the new fttc cabs first went in, it was about 6 months until I could order it. Just a waiting game I did speak to an openreach engineer working in one of the cabs for a heads up when it would be going live, fortunately within a week or two, he was right.

So within the last fortnight or so, the cab has had some more work going on, this time the "contact us" boards around it implied that power was being connected to the cab. Yay!

However, the checker on this page tells me that:

We're sorry that the work we are doing to bring fibre broadband to your area is taking longer than first planned. This can be for many reasons that include blocked underground cable routes, issues with providing electrical power to the cabinet and issues with the cabinet’s location. Please bear with us while we work to resolve this which may take some time. We will continue to work on this and apologise for any inconvenience this has caused.

Aside from the fact that the checker shows the cab location in the wrong street (always impressed by how a company can get something so basic wrong), if the power has already been hooked up, what would be left for them to do? Would the fibre already have been run or is it likely that this still has to be done and the cab fully comissioned?

The cabinets are staged at the Factory so there should be very little commisioning to do just some basic checks to ensure it has survived the journey and the power is connected etc. Half a days work at most

I've asked before for a link to some official documentation saying that, but you didn't produce. Are you sure it isn't just an idea that seems logical to you?

It certainly took more than half a day to commission every cabinet I saw being installed here.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 21-Nov-12 23:01:01)

I believe there is an issue with the power installation at this cabinet, which i understand is an earthing issue, which is delaying its integration.

Edited by Ribble (Thu 22-Nov-12 08:49:59)

That was an issue I saw recently too - It could have been that an area that was mainly granite was hard to get a good earth from, conductivity-wise.

I think that was a reason for having the conductive cement for the base - it gives a much larger contact area.

Loads of our cabinets have required extra earth rods according to the work permits, we're just soil and chalk around here, perhaps the odd patch of Clay.

I thought it was just crane off lorry, 3 bolts and a couple of wires and it would be ready to provide 100's of FTTC connections?



BTW it is a Friday