Cab relocation

When I enter my postcode on www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/where-and-when/
It says the following;-
'This is the intended area for the cabinet that will provide fibre broadband services to your postcode. Unfortunately there are other underground utility services in the approved location for this cabinet. We are seeking an alternative location.

When we plan where to locate a cabinet it is done on the basis of underground utility records (for example gas, water and wastewater) available to us at the time. It is rare and unfortunate, but in the case of this cabinet the records were not complete or incorrect and we cannot install our cables in the position originally planned. We are therefore looking for an alternative solution but this will take some time'

I wonder what my chances are of getting fibre next year...

Better than mine

Whys that, FTTP?

I have nothing fibre wise, and waiting on Surrey CC to get going.

So long as they are looking for a solution then there is hope for you.

So long as they are looking for a solution then there is hope for you.

I was thinking about asking for a retention deal from BE if I'm not going to get fibre for a while. I turned down a deal this time last year because I hoped the March date for fibre would materialise

You are not the first and will not be the last.

BT has excellent records of where their cables/ducts are - almost to the inch, so much so that when they visited a site near to me they said "do not drill here" but what did the idiot boring holes for piles do ... he read the old plans and ignored the warnings resulting in 20,000 lines being taken out.

The other utilities records are no where as good as BTs which can explain why British Gas take four attempts to find a gas main!

BT will have asked for the various location plans for gas, electricity, potable and waste water along with cable services and others such as traffic signals and based their design on that along with the guidelines for where each service should be located under a footway. It is only on digging will they find out that a service was not registered or is in the wrong place. So, back to the drawing board and towards the end of the queue.

The cabinet was moved about 30yds further down the road about 8 years ago to allow for a new road/site entrance & mini roundabout layout. I should think the unknown services would be from a demolished hospital & nurses accomadation which used to be a Victorian workhouse.

I think im in a similar position. I live right next to the cabinet you are talking about, on frederick road. Still waiting for a reply from open reach on a status update.

Yes that's the one.

When I emailed Openreach I received this strange statement;-
'Hastings 29 is deferred and will continue to show deferred until it is enabled or cancelled
The reasoning behind this is that we cannot find a suitable location as unable to access the existing telephony cabinet.'

I think we will just have to wait & hope Openreach find a solution

In reply to a post by Als:

Yes that's the one.

When I emailed Openreach I received this strange statement;-
'Hastings 29 is deferred and will continue to show deferred until it is enabled or cancelled
The reasoning behind this is that we cannot find a suitable location as unable to access the existing telephony cabinet.'

I think we will just have to wait & hope Openreach find a solution

I wonder which bright spark decided to fence off the PCP so that it is inside the area of what was the aborted Ore Valley Millennium Development.

Somehow I don't think Openreach are trying very hard because there's a padlocked gate next to it. Is it really that difficult to try and find out who has the key or get someone from the council to cut the padlock off???

I'm quite sure I saw a van parked next to the cab & two guys lifting the duct slabs earlier this year, so a locked fence gate or access is not the problem.

Edited by deleted (Thu 27-Dec-12 22:34:44)

The email suggests they don't have access to the PCP behind the fence which is neccessary so that the tie-ins to the fibre cab, wherever it gets placed, can be installed.

Edited by simon194 (Fri 28-Dec-12 00:34:55)

They must have access to the PCP, otherwise no lines could be added to any premises served by it, and many faults would be un-fixable.

I asked Openreach if access was the problem;-
'We need the land owners permission to access the existing telephony cabinet so that we can interconnect it to a new fibre broadband cabinet.

Without this access, we cannot progress the upgrade further and therefore, we have deferred the upgrade out of our program.'

This was an accessible cabinet that had to be moved. I would have thought that BT would have ensured they would be able to access it at its new location befor they moved it...

Wierd.

So if you have a line fault that needs a pair swap, tough! No phone.

"Access" in the BT Openreach reply may mean a level of access above opening the PCP doors and work on the insides. It may be that the issue is that landowner permission is needed to dig a trench to lay ductwork between the PCP and FTTC twin, but that access to the PCP innards for routine work remains available.

Sounds feasible. Thanks .

In reply to a post by Als:

I asked Openreach if access was the problem;-
'We need the land owners permission to access the existing telephony cabinet so that we can interconnect it to a new fibre broadband cabinet.

Without this access, we cannot progress the upgrade further and therefore, we have deferred the upgrade out of our program.'

This was an accessible cabinet that had to be moved. I would have thought that BT would have ensured they would be able to access it at its new location befor they moved it...

A bit of a cop-out on Openreach's part really. I'm pretty sure Sea Space still owns that bit of land.

On a positive note, work is supposed to start on developing the site in 2015 so the fence will eventually be removed or replaced.

I phoned Seaspace this morning & explained the situation. They said that I'm not the first person to speak to them about this & they had never been asked for a key to access the cabinet.
The lady took my details and will get back to me when she has more information.

I've just received this email from Seaspace;-

'Further to your call to this office regarding the BT box on the land fenced off in the Ore Valley. We have contacted Open Reach and they confirm that the padlock on the pedestrian gate giving access to the site and the BT box is a BT Ingersoll padlock, it appears that this is a BT standard padlock. Our office has not been provided with a key to this padlock.

Open Reach have informed us that the engineer who attended on site and could not get access would log the call as such and his office would then provide him with a key so he can then access the site'

Frustrating

Openreach left and right hands and no-one with a clue, never mind a key, seems the case. Access clearly isn't the question, so you aren't getting the full story.

Earlier on it looks like an acceptable site for the new cab or trenching, or not mentioned - power supply could be the problem. Keep digging? Have Seascape been asked for permission to do any of those? Sounds like they are cooperating with you just fine.

Edited by RobertoS (Mon 14-Jan-13 16:23:35)

I've just forwarded to nga.enquiries the name & email address of the person to contact for Wayleave access.

I dont know if you have checked with BT whole sale, but the news isnt good.

https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.html

WBC FTTC Up to 58.1 Up to 20 -- 31-Mar-14

Were screwed. Obviously they have no real plans to sort this cabinet out and are just putting some far away date to cover themselves.

7MB it is then!

Yes its really annoying that because of OR's incompetance that we now have to wait until next year sometime. I would bet that OR would be super efficient at giving us fibre if Virgin was an alternative.

Edited by deleted (Mon 04-Mar-13 08:06:06)

Offical Openreach reponse to the March 2014 date on their FAQ, also they have said that any cabinets that where previously March 2013 should be enabled by then.

http://www.superfast-openreach.co.uk/faq/

Q: My cabinet has been repeatedly delayed, and now appears to have been moved from March this year to the end of your programme in 2014. Why has this happened?

A: Deploying fibre cabinets is a complex engineering challenge, which involves not only provision of fibre, but availability of power connections, planning consent for the cabinet itself in some cases, road closures, traffic management permissions and space within our duct network to make the necessary connections.

In a small number of cases we encounter problems which can delay the cabinet by several quarters, and take time to resolve; in the vast majority of cases these are caused by power provision and local planning permission. We work closely with the power companies and local authorities to minimise such delays.

In order to avoid repeatedly delaying these cabinets, we have moved their due dates to the end of our commercial programme to reduce multiple changes to the likely activation date. We will continue to seek solutions for these cabinets and where possible will activate them before the end date given.

In reply to a post by SalJam:

I dont know if you have checked with BT whole sale, but the news isnt good.

https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.html

WBC FTTC Up to 58.1 Up to 20 -- 31-Mar-14

Were screwed. Obviously they have no real plans to sort this cabinet out and are just putting some far away date to cover themselves.

7MB it is then!

All the cabinets in an area near me have been done, and speaking to an Openreach engineer they should be completed by March 2013 as per the When and Where list (its one of the few that's listed for March 2013). But the ADSL checker says March 2014 for all of its cabinets at that exchange (that I checked); it seems the date on the ADSL checker now is nigh on useless.

Edited by deleted (Mon 04-Mar-13 15:14:29)

Deploying fibre cabinets is a complex engineering challenge

Yep, they couldn't find the key to the Ingersoll padlock they own.

In reply to a post by dogcat:

it seems the date on the ADSL checker now is nigh on useless.

Did those who complained to ASA believe we would get any other result? BT weren't ever going to give us more accurate dates

It is of benefit to those whose cabinet kept being delayed by 3 months. Instead of following wave upon wave of hope & disappointment, they can now just be thoroughly disappointed once and for all.

Well to play devil's advocate, you could look at it either way, couldn't you? Degrees of hope and disappointment are all in the mind of the frustrated user. With quarterly updates, BT were saying "There is a possibility this cabinet will be live by then". People simply had to Google to be told that, for example, "March 31st" was a standard placeholder date. Forcing BT to limit things to yearly predictions has only muddied the waters, because knowing that maybe you'll have fibre by this time next year and maybe you won't, or maybe you'll have it in 3 weeks if you're lucky, is useless. Also, the promise of the predicted date hasn't been strengthened at all; so someone predicted to have fibre by March 31st 2014 might still not get it. What should happen then, only predictions which can be guaranteed to go live within 5 years?

I think people who complained must have phrased their complaints poorly. What they said was "The predictions for my cabinet turned out to not be true!", when what they meant was "I saw a predicted date and immediately assumed that I would definitely have fibre by then.". We all increasingly want more information from BT, and at best this has done absolutely nothing aside from deter BT from volunteering the best guesses they can make. Which is something.

Misguided complaints have resulted in a worse situation for everyone waiting for FTTC. Of course BT can sometimes screw things up horribly, or overlook things which are obvious to a small child, but in that case the complaint needs to be specific, diplomatic, and directed at the right people (i.e. not the ASA). The bloke in Colchester here who has finally managed to circumvent some ridiculous red tape and BT's seemingly automated way of doing things is a good example of what can be done if there's a genuine mistake or oversight on BT's part; or even if there's something which BT have identified as a prohibiting issue, but somebody local knows otherwise.

Edited by deleted (Tue 05-Mar-13 04:23:03)

BE There offered me a cheap retention deal 14 months ago & I turned it down because I assumed that OR would enable my cab by March '12. And then they couldn't find their padlock key. They obviously can't afford a pair of bolt cutters to remove their own padlock so I'm not too impressed with them

I appreciate the size & task of OR's fibre roll out but I think their PR could be a lot better.

Yes, don't get me wrong, I think your particular situation is a bit ridiculous (or rather, how it has been handled). It's not acceptable that BT apparently can't access one of their own PCPs, for several reasons. I'd be fuming too. If it's the case that "access" means they can't dig trenches and lay ducts then they surely can't have come up against much more red tape than usual, they always have to inform someone of their plans, and I think it was established a while ago that BT won't be deterred by a spanner in the works on the first try; they'll usually re-apply very soon, with alternate plans. Even if "access" in this case does refer to digging trenches, etc. then they should have had a key for standard access to the PCP, which they are saying they haven't. So there's misinformation there somewhere which BT/OR should sort out.

I should have made it clear that my post wasn't directed towards you - it just seems that a lot of people with no such issues must have complained that BT "estimated" their ordinary PCP would have a fibre twin by a certain time, but because of whatever issues, it hasn't happened. I'm not sure that many people have become aware of FTTC coming to their area, used the BT checker, seen a placeholder of 3 months ahead and had their cabinet go live around about then. If anything, I think the complaints should have simply forced BT to make it clear that it's a placeholder date, and they should indeed provide what non-confusing/seemingly nonsensical information about exchanges and cabinets they can. To be fair, they have started doing the latter. Unfortunately in your case, it's resulted in BT apparently saying that they haven't got the resources to open a gate to access their own PCP.

You could write to the local press and say that for anyone connected to that cabinet, who hasn't got, or can't use, a mobile (the elderly or children, perhaps...) then a fault which requires OR to access the PCP to correct would render them unable to dial 999 in an emergency. It's a bit of a hyperbolic route to take, but if all else has failed... and if BT/OR really can't access that PCP, or at least they currently don't think they can, it's a true scenario. Even if it turns out that BT have to publicly explain that they can access the PCP "normally", then at least that'll be that cleared up and you can get back to them with their previous emails to you, and so obviously their own public admission means that the information they gave you was wrong. Again, possibly a bit extreme, just thinking aloud.

Edited by deleted (Wed 06-Mar-13 03:01:02)

I think the other issue with that PCP, als is refering to, is that it has ended up on private land due to the local council failure to properly survey the area before "selling" it on for redevelopment. So now other permissions are required to do any digging near it, although Openreach decided to use the "no access" excuse.