Another 9 FTTC Exchanges Released

BT have realased another 9 exchanges today. THey are still a very long way of completing the 194 Exchanges that they had down for Q4 of this year, To date they have only managed 39 and seme to have slowed down to about 3 a week now so it is clear that almost all the outstanding ones will go out to March 2013. There is a possibility that they well release a few mor this year but that is ulikely to be much more than 6 meaning a 121 that they have failed to complete

Am sure you could do better.
Calling Open reach now to demand they put you in charge.
Also my exchange in Kilmarnock has gone live but not on there twitter page, so it could be much much more than 9

Edited by deleted (Mon 10-Dec-12 16:42:16)

Bob

Still not sure where you get your '39' exchanges from.

From Twitter feed there are 57 new since start of October but not all get on the twitter feed, they did 20 last week but none appeared on twitter only on the spreadsheet.. From the spreadsheet there are 77 new, ok two were for Mar 13 but i wouldn't complain at that.

I agree that they will fall far short of the 194 but would have hated to have had any target at all in the weather we have had. You certainly can't fibre when you can't even see the manholes for water, let alone pump them out!

they are running at 9 a week at present, over the last 4 weeks 7,0,20,9. So we may get another 27, more likely 18 with Christmas/New year in the way. I wonder who will get the present they want this Christmas?

Be nice to see more than half (97) completed, I would count that as success from a weather prespective!

Iwish

Kilmarnock is on the Excel list, not all make the twitter feed. There were 20 that didn't last week, I think Kilmarnock was one of them. Now 1283 done in total.

Thats my point. He is fast to shout only 9 have been done cause he seems to think twitter has the best information.

You are a very strange person.

lol at the openreach twitter announcer.

to give you an idea the announcement for leics is 2 exchanges not 1.

interesting now suburb exchanges in leics have gone from not available to end of 2013 dates.

Bob

What are you going to do with your life when they finish 18 month ahead of schedule?

Link please.

He's pulled the information from the OpenReach Twitter Feed.

As others have said, not every exchange gets announced on there, like my local exchange at work, Sandwich. So therefore it is unreliable to use this source as a measure.

In reply to a post by Spasch:

He's pulled the information from the OpenReach Twitter Feed.

You miss the point ... He is continually posting "facts" with nothing to back it up and often totally incorrect facts or ones he wants to bend to his way of thinking. How many times has he been asked to support his assertions and failed to do so.

I have been informed by my roll and bacon that only 14 exchanges have gone live this month and that's that.
sorry but my wife's roll and egg has challenged my roll and bacon on that fact.
Will try find out more from my tea tonight

Edited by deleted (Tue 11-Dec-12 13:23:38)

I actually make it 1,282 on latest spreadsheet but won't quibble over 1 exchange. I also have a copy of spreadsheet of 4th Sep 2012 and that shows 1,127 FTTC enabled exchanges.

This then gives 155 Exchanges enabled between Sep 2012 Spreadsheet and Dec 2012 Spreadsheet.

In reply to a post by Bob_s2:

BT have realased another 9 exchanges today. THey are still a very long way of completing the 194 Exchanges that they had down for Q4 of this year ....

What's the problem? September to December is Q3 of this year for BT.

Thing is though, unless your cabinet is also accepting orders on that day or within a very short time afterwards (1 week) then BT Openreach announcing exchanges as accepting orders is meaningless to all the other potential customers , as their placeholder dates for cabinets are just as meaningless also

Even [email protected] provide duff info

XXXXX 32 is waiting on the fibre network installation to the DSLAM.
The council have stipulated that this is night working only. We have set up this works in week commencing 3rd Dec.If the works are completed satisfactorily, we are hoping to continue with the build and meet the end of December.

However, further unforeseen engineering problems and adverse weather may affect this date.

Regards

XXX XXXX
Customer Engagement

Was what they told me via e-mail regarding the cab im connected to
So far they still haven't done this work, just like they haven't unblocked a duct even though the job has appeared on the local councils street works page several times since June 12 each time they have failed to even start the work, But have managed to do other work, including completing other FTTC cabs , Which doesn't really sprise me,
I thought the night working only bit was suspect, council would not object to normal day working, the road is not a main road, or a paritularly buisy road , and is mainly made up of dwelling houses

Edited by tommy45 (Tue 11-Dec-12 19:11:51)

How do you mean tommy? If even just one cabinet is available for use on an exchange that exchange is accepting orders, makes sense to me.

You yourself might not be able to place an order but the exchange is capable of accepting orders if others can.

In reply to a post by GMAN98:

How do you mean tommy? If even just one cabinet is available for use on an exchange that exchange is accepting orders, makes sense to me.

You yourself might not be able to place an order but the exchange is capable of accepting orders if others can.

But if your cab isn't accepting orders which most of them are not on my exchange (only FTTC cabs that are inside virgin media cabled areas are enabled here) Does make the announcment pretty much useless information as the majority of VM cable customers will be happy to stay as they are,or still within their min term ,So customers will be few and far between, but for those who's cabs are not accepting orders(non VM cabled areas) The announcement by BT openreach that there exchance is accepting orders means very little to them,because they still cannot order,
Bt openreach should have to enable at least 50% of the FTTC cabs it has installed before it is able to announce exchanges as accepting orders ,IMO

As until they have all the installed cabs completed and accepting orders they have not achieved anything in my book this announcement of exchanges by them seems to done to draw peoples attention to this as if it's some milestone in history , when in reality the exchange accepting orders is only a small part of a very much bigger job, that remains unfinished for months afterwards

No your point makes no sense at all.

So... lets say there's an exchange with 100 FTTC cabinets, you are saying that at least 50 should be enabled before you can say the exchange is accepting orders?

Are you serious?

So meanwhile while your statistics is being satisfied over 6000+ (lets say they are all 128 cabs) can't order FTTC even if they want to, because you say they have to reach the 50% threshold first

What a crock. If one person on an exchange can order FTTC it is "accepting orders"

Do you not understand what those two words mean together?

I can understand why you might be miffed if you cannot place an order but what are your woes to anyone else? Why shouldn't they be able to place an order just because you cannot?

As soon as one cab is live the exchange can accept an order, for yourself you need to keep an eye on the website for others they can order away.

TTEnt
My error I had counted the header row!

One of my copies was from 25th Sep and I was taking that as the start of the qtr as no more were announced until Oct.

The difference makes 58 between 4th and 25th Sep so shows what is possible in a normal month ( Sep weather was about the last time we had normal weather for any length of time!)

Latest 'Coming soon' sheet only gives 86 left for Dec 12 so some have already slipped, but only 89 for Jan to Mar 13 so they will have a chance to get back to the latest forecast by the end March.

Then 398 for the rest of 2013 and 61 for 2014 to finish the 'Future exchanges', although they have kept adding more to this list as they went through the programme, so they may exceed this total at the end. I assume this was to achieve their coverage figures as they found it impossible to do some cabinets on the first choices ( Kensington and Chelsea is a big hole to fill on it's own)

This will make 1916 exchanges in total, to give the 65% of population availabliity that they forecast from.

From Talktalk and Sky coverage at this sort of exchange figure that would leave around 10-15% of people on these exchanges without FTTC/FTTP ( They claimed about 80% coverage at around 2000 exchanges).

I think it highly likely that when Openreach say an exchange is accepting orders it means Openreach customers can order.

Nothing to do with end users being able to order until one of those customers, i.e. BTW, Sky and TT, enable it.

Tommy

You have to look at the scale of the task.

Take Hereford as a nice defined area, with from city centre areas, through suburbs to rural outskirts.

From the Dec 11 file. there are 104 cabs of which 26 were not planned at that date.

Openreach wouldn't be able to install all 78 at once as the amount of resource would exceed the locally available, so they would do several batches.

Each batch would only be a size that the Openreach engineers could cope with likely orders over the first weeks of the go live period ( otherwise people would complain about the wait). Say 20 Cabs with 400 on at 10% would give 800 installs over 10 weeks is 80 per week at 4 per day per person is 20 people. They are unlikely to have this many free in the area but possible.

So the 2nd batch would follow 10-12 weeks after the first to spread out all the resource peaks. It takes 4 batches to do the planned cabs spread over a year!.

To wait until 50% are done would just lengthen the order to install time when go live happens, so they might as well start when the first couple are ready to spread the installs over a better profile in each area.

Are you going from a "private" copy of the hidden exchange/cabinet spreadsheets, or from the public information in the Openreach "where & when" website?

The reason I ask is that the public files now seem to include a lot of the North Yorkshire BDUK exchanges - some in the latest 'Coming Soon' list for March 2013, and the rest mixed between 2013 and 2014 in 'future exchanges'.

That makes around 120-130 exchanges that are publicly visible in those lists that haven't been officially announced yet.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

I think it highly likely that when Openreach say an exchange is accepting orders it means Openreach customers can order.

Nothing to do with end users being able to order until one of those customers, i.e. BTW, Sky and TT, enable it.

Openreach customers don't enable exchanges they enable handover points. Exchanges going into an AO state is irrelevant to SPs and is purely for the benefit of Joe Public.

There's a fair whack of infill going on as well, cabinets not done in the first pass getting upgraded as they've had fibre brought closer to them with another cab being enabled and the maths then making sense.

In the areas I've been working with of 9 cabinets covering the area only 1 was enabled in the initial phase however another 3 have since been added due to the sums changing with hopefully a 4th being added to that list shortly.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Openreach customers don't enable exchanges they enable handover points.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I simplified. Logically, getting a GEA link installed enables the CP's MSAN to take FTTx feeds . Same thing in real English as opposed to technical jargon!

Maybe I should have written a book.

Exchanges going into an AO state is irrelevant to SPs and is purely for the benefit of Joe Public.

Really? Evidence please. Surely it is up to CPs to inform Joe Public when they are able to accept orders, not Openreach who does not accept orders from Joe Public.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Really? Evidence please. Surely it is up to CPs to inform Joe Public when they are able to accept orders, not Openreach who does not accept orders from Joe Public.

Easy - go find one of the examples where a cabinet was taking orders before the exchange was actually marked AO. There have been a few here and there. Cabinets going back to an existing L2S at an existing handover point. I think Chrysalis is one.

EDIT: Yep he is - http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/t/4186181-re-...

Service providers take handovers from switches not exchanges, from their point of view the bit that matters is that the availability checker indicates availability, this is at a cabinet level.

Edited by deleted (Wed 12-Dec-12 10:07:14)

Falmouth exchange which houses an often visited by press fibre handover node if memory is working right, takes feeds from eight surrounding exchange areas.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Falmouth exchange which houses an often visited by press fibre handover node if memory is working right, takes feeds from eight surrounding exchange areas.

Indeed. This is one of the steps Openreach are taking towards closing exchanges and reducing their number from thousands to hundreds to dozens eventually.

yes that seems to be the case, I was live before my exchange even said AO.

The only check thats really relevant is what the cabinet status is. BTw had their systems ready for orders whilst my exchange was still CS.

I think all these comments taken together only go to prove that the various human administration pathways, coordinated across multiple competing companies, don't work at the same rate, or as efficiently, as the technology itself.

Wwombat

I have copies of the Openreach info taken at various dates, approx end of month depending on when I downloaded them and when Openreach updated them.

I didn't think the N.Yorks batch was relevent to the posts but had spotted and commented on a different thread.

We have another 13 Exchanges appeared in the list today (not on twitter yet!).
ALLOA, BILSTON, BOURNE, CHICHESTER, CIRENCESTER, DORCHESTER, FAREHAM, GREAT YARMOUTH TOWN, HINDLEY, LANCING, MANACCAN, PRUDHOE, WEST KENSINGTON.

So now up to 90 in the quarter out of 194, 7 to go to get to 50% of forecast..

Which forecast? Openreach Q4? We are in Q3.

Soo annoyed now been waiting all year for my Exchange to go live, first had a September date then December now gone to March next year. yet my exchange was one of those announced on the Twitter feed on the 1th that had had gone live.

SLWD

If DR was cheaper think I would have gone and done that by now.

Edited by deleted (Tue 18-Dec-12 21:54:57)

Well your exchange is showing as live on the Openreach where and when, just have to wait for your cabinet to be enabled.

The September/December/March dates are all end quater holding slots- just a estimation of when the work will be finished, the actual dates are not published beacuse the rollout works at best speed so work can be completed ahead or behind schedule as resources allow.

Just keep checking the BT wholesale asdl checker with your bt number or use the address checker if non bt phone ie sky/tt etc.

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

Roberto

Q3 forecast was as downloaded on 27/09/2012.

I was looking for someone today and noticed that there are another 14 showing on the accepting orders list since Monday! still none on twitter. This is the first time I have noticed 2 sets in a week, (but I don't often look at the list twice in a week).

Now accepting orders:-
ABERDEEN LOCHNAGAR, BOROUGH GREEN, BOURNEMOUTH, ESHER, FOLKESTONE,LEIGH; GREATER MANCHESTER, LYMINGTON, MIDHURST, PADDINGTON, PAGHAM, SHOREHAM, SMALLBROOK, WESTON-SUPER-MARE, WOBURN SANDS.

So now up to 104 in the 3rd quarter ( Oct-Dec) 53% of those forecast, a surprising recovery in the last month with 56 so far announced.

I know someone on here was looking for Woburn Sands to complete so they will be happy even if installation isn't until mid January.

The coming soon list has also been updated, with nothing now left in 2012.
158 showing as March 2013 and 75 at June 2013.

Haven't done any analysis yet on what has moved where or if all 58 June sites are new.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

Roberto

Q3 forecast was as downloaded on 27/09/2012....

All that's bugging me is that Bob_s2 keeps talking about the lack of achievement, (as you have no doubt noticed ), against the forecast of 194 for Q4. So without finding the original forcasts I had no way of knowing which of you had the right quarter number/forecast numbers.

I tend to think you will be the right one [cough], and he just doesn't understand FY quarter numbering.

In reply to a post by kitcat:

Roberto

Q3 forecast was as downloaded on 27/09/2012.

I was looking for someone today and noticed that there are another 14 showing on the accepting orders list since Monday! still none on twitter. This is the first time I have noticed 2 sets in a week, (but I don't often look at the list twice in a week).

Now accepting orders:-
ABERDEEN LOCHNAGAR, BOROUGH GREEN, BOURNEMOUTH, ESHER, FOLKESTONE,LEIGH; GREATER MANCHESTER, LYMINGTON, MIDHURST, PADDINGTON, PAGHAM, SHOREHAM, SMALLBROOK, WESTON-SUPER-MARE, WOBURN SANDS.

So now up to 104 in the 3rd quarter ( Oct-Dec) 53% of those forecast, a surprising recovery in the last month with 56 so far announced.

I know someone on here was looking for Woburn Sands to complete so they will be happy even if installation isn't until mid January.

The coming soon list has also been updated, with nothing now left in 2012.
158 showing as March 2013 and 75 at June 2013.

Haven't done any analysis yet on what has moved where or if all 58 June sites are new.

ABERDEEN LOCHNAGAR might be AO but I think its only a small % of cabinets that are ready.

How BT are reporting this is a large % of sod all.

First exchanges for Jan-Mar 2013 ( Q4!) have just been announced on the twitter feed. The excel sheet has not yet been updated

13 Exchanges enabled from 158 forecast, 145 to go. So started off on the right trend to complete them all!

Barnwood, BM Central, Buxton, Chipping Sodbury, Cullompton, Ely, Hesketh Bank, St Barnabas, Toll Bar, Tregony, Westhoughton, Willenhall and, Wolverhampton.

Some of the Cornwall ones are now seriously small, Tregony only has 470 premises according to Sam Knows

Second set of exchanges for Jan-Mar 2013 ( Q4!) have just been added to the excel fie, nothing was announced on the twitter feed.

8 Exchanges this week

So now 21 Exchanges enabled from 158 forecast, 137 to go. So still close to the trend trend to complete them all!

ARKWRIGHT, BISHOPSWORTH, DEDDINGTON, ELLESMERE PORT, MORRISTON, NEW MILTON, SIDMOUTH, WADSLEY BRIDGE

Deddington is FTTP and was announced last year as the Fibre Only Exchange trial site. I would be interested if anyone in the exchange has already got FTTP fitted and whether they have the new voice solution over the fibre, also if the copper was removed from the house when the installation was done?

And 55 new exchanges announced for 2014. In BDUK areas?