Exchange enabled, new cabinet and no FTTC

Hello

My exchange has been finally enabled for FTTC. The cabinet I am connected too has been recently upgraded to a bigger cabinet with air vents. Yet when I put in my phone number on the bt infinity website all it comes up with is a DSL option.

Is there a way to find out which and what cabinets are going to be / are already enabled for FTTC? By the way my postcode is M-K-4-5 * 5 - E - F

So is that cabinet 16?

WHich of the pics on this page does the new cabinet look like? Do you mean the original one has gone and this replaces it, or the two are fairly close together?

Check your phone number here, assuming it isn't a Sky or TalkTalk one. What does that say?

If it is one of those, use the address version. Do not use the pure postcode option.

It has been totally replaced by this one http://www.robertos.me.uk/html/bt_furniture_2.html
I have a BT line and using that website it only says what DSL I can get there is no FTTC related message

Not come across a total replacement yet.

The cabinet you indicate is usually not big enough to house both the copper pairs and VDSL kit. Also for many other reasons having the two in different cabinets is the usual situation.

The cabinet may not be live yet, it is not unusual to have to wait weeks or maybe months befween cabinet appearing and going live.

Well that is definitely a fibre cab, but if the PCP has been removed then that is a "first". To replace a PCP with that would require considerable redesign of its intestines. It would also mean that non-specialist engineers would have access to the FTTC gear, which isn't the case so far. The engineers installing FTTC to premises do not have access to the FTTC cabinet.

I suppose there is a faint possibility that the modern large PCP casing has been ditched in favour of the casing of that FTTC one with PCP innards, for ongoing volume cost saving, but this all sounds very odd.

Can the sound of the cooling fans be heard from the vents? (Many of us have risked the padded white van by listening at ours ).

I'm on the same exchange. It's only very recently (beginning of December 2012) gone live - my cabinet (P13) was in the first wave, but I'm in a completely different direction from the exchange (almost due east, on a 1980s housing estate with fairly decent underground ducting). I've no idea whether BT Openreach have rolled out to the PCPs beyond Flitwick town yet.

The FTTC twin for my cabinet was on the ground for well over six months before it went live - and it should have been one of the easier ones. Power came from a street light a few metres away, the FTTC cabinet is just a few metres away from the PCP, and I don't believe there were any ducting problems on this side of town.


I hadn't realised Pulloxhill is on the Flitwick exchange. That's fortunate for you, because it seems unlikely that any of the surrounding exchanges (including Ampthill and Silsoe) will be in the commercial roll-out.

BT Retail have been marketing Infinity fairly aggressively to me - I had two phone calls before Christmas and a letter today. I'd placed my order to upgrade my Zen ADSL service to FTTC before I got the first call from BT. The installation should take place on Tuesday morning (8 January).


If your phone service is from BT Wholesale (i.e. from BT Retail or one of the service providers using WLR), the 'by number' version of the BT Wholesale availability checker should indicate whether you can order FTTC. If you're not sure whether your line is from BT Wholesale, try anyway - the worst that can happen is it doesn't recognise you.

If that checker doesn't work 'by number', try 'by address' - it's indicating FTTC is already available to my address and, if I've correctly identified an address on your street from the postcode, to your street too. The 'by postcode' option is not showing FTTC availability for my street, so I'd regard that as useless.

Indeed it does have one of those cabinets on the opposite side of the street. I assume they are connected? Haven't listened for noises yet.

Interesting point about the phone line, I think ( for whatever reason ) I have mine passed to Sky a couple of years ago.
Though the number is recognized by the "by number" service.

If BT tries to market by phone, it won't get through. I don't answer calls from barred numbers unless I am expecting them.

Thanks for the info!

It does have one of this on the other side of the road. They should be connected? I have seen OpenReach working on both of them in the last few months.
I suppose, I should be patient.. waited over a year of delay, I could wait some more.

Thanks

BTW, I think the only reason why we are possibly going to get Infinity s because Virgin Media gets around Greenfield. I am keeping my fingers crossed...

Yes, they are or will be connected. Read this page.

Note that Infinity is just the BT Retail product. Most ISPs in the country now have their own FTTC products, just like with ADSLx. I've been on it with IDNet, and now Plusnet.

Who is your broadband with now?

In reply to a post by rento:

Interesting point about the phone line, I think ( for whatever reason ) I have mine passed to Sky a couple of years ago.
Though the number is recognized by the "by number" service.

A lot of Sky's ADSL lines are still with BT, mine was until I switched to Sky's fibre product.

Does the 'by number' checker indicate you can order?

As Roberto says, you have a choice of FTTC providers. You can certainly order with any provider that uses the BT Wholesale system.

Sky and TalkTalk are both present at the Flitwick exchange, but I don't know if they're offering FTTC service yet, as they have to order connections to the FTTC equipment and possibly upgrade their network.

The only other broadband provider with equipment at the Flitwick exchange (according to SamKnows) is O2 / Be, but they don't currently offer FTTC. I expect they will launch FTTC products once they've rolled out their new network.

It's probably worth looking at your existing broadband provider's FTTC products first. If you are a Sky customer, consider Sky. If you need a new provider, at the very least I'd compare Plusnet to BT Infinity - you may well find Plusnet a better deal. Only you can decide - you may find the various ISP forums here are helpful, though remember that people tend to post when they have problems, leaving a silent majority who will largely be having no problems.

In reply to a post by David_W:

... though remember that people tend to post when they have problems, leaving a silent majority who will largely be having no problems.

[cough]
Actually a silent majority who aren't aware they have problems.

Sorry to post in this very old thread but looks like I was barking up the wrong cabinet. Even though part of my village is served by a FTTC cabinet, I have just discovered that my cabinet it's a different one... the mega old pcp!! http://www.robertos.me.uk/html/bt_furniture_7.html
This cabinet is 0.9 miles away from the other FTTC enabled cabinets but very close to my estate. Strangely the other ones a quite distant from the village itself.

What is the chance of having this ancient cabinet upgraded, how could I try persuading BT?
My estate is peppered by Cabletel cabinets and manholes. Are they owned by BT ? Could I persuade them to connect those instead?

Cheers

Edited by deleted (Sat 09-Feb-13 20:04:21)

Nothing to do with the problem, but you need to delete the comma at the end of the link to the cabinet picture - it's being picked up as part of the url.

Re getting Openreach to enable the cabinet, not something I'm well up on.

Is Cabletel now part of Virgin Media, or is it dead? Anyone near you on VM Cable? It certainly isn't anything to do with Openreach.

Edited by RobertoS (Sat 09-Feb-13 15:53:41)

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Is Cabletel now part of Virgin Media, or is it dead? Anyone near you on VM Cable? It certainly isn't anything to do with Openreach.

CableTel IS NTL and NTL & Telewest merged and became VM when they bought Virgin Mobile.
http://www.fundinguniverse.com/company-histories/ntl...

All the cable works in this area (Farnborough, Hants) are marked CableTel.

Presuade maybe if you give them a few thousand pounds.

They would usually re-shell an old cabinet like that to give space for the new tie pairs to the fibre cabinet, which adds to the costs a bit and may be why your cabinet was not enabled.

With a two thirds population target millions are missed by the commercial roll-out, what does your postcode look like in terms of local authority BDUK project, your taxes may get the cabinet enabled in the next couple of years.

Link fixed...

No idea about Cabletel myself but Virgin Media does get up to a few hundred yards away from my estate.

I did ask VM about them and they said it would cost too much to connect us. Maybe the cabinets are out of date... who knows.

Nice, thank you!

In reply to a post by rento:

...Even though part of my village is served by a FTTC cabinet, I have just discovered that my cabinet it's a different one... the mega old pcp!! http://www.robertos.me.uk/html/bt_furniture_7.html

Sorry to post a little off-topic, but that isn't a mega-old PCP, is it? They're fibreglass and I think only got commissioned by BT from the mid 70s to late 80s? Someone else here will know, I can remember a similar discussion. There's one of those fairly close to me, and incidentally, it's now got a connected FTTC twin and they didn't need to re-shell it. I've posted this picture before, but just for reference, this is the inside of it:

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v217/gazzyk1ns/pcp...

With the vertical on the right, as we look at it, being the FTTC tie-in section.

These: http://www.robertos.me.uk/html/bt_furniture_0.html are far older (that particular one has had one of its doors replaced by a more modern spec one), and every instance around here which has now got a FTTC twin has been re-shelled. There's a PCP around here which I don't think is on RobertoS' site, I'll take a picture and see if he wants to add it. It looks like a complete version of what they took that^ replacement door from.

Edited by deleted (Mon 11-Feb-13 00:38:43)

Hi,

I am on the same estate as you and the same cabinet. The roads we are on (and the cabinet I think) are uadopted. I believe this might be part of the problem because permission needs to be forthcoming from the developer.

There appear to be two new cabinets one in Pulloxhill and one in Greenfield. I'm not sure who their client base is going to be because my understanding is that the older houses have overhead cables which causes issues (is this right?) and they haven't taken into account the new estates.

They have certainly been working to get fibre to someone in the area!

M

Greenfield and Pulloxhill ( the top only ) are getting / will get Infinity. Their cabinet is conveniently situated here much closer to the exchange ( well, all the 0.9 miles of it! ) whilst the one for the estate lives here.

The fiber only needs to get to the cabinet in order to have infinity working. I have no idea if they need to get a cable from Flitwick all the way to our cabinet in order to make it work or if they can extend the line from 1 of the enabled cabinets instead.

The irony is that our estate is covered by CableTel (now owned by Virgin Media ) manholes and cabinets and yet no fiber.

Well, one thing to note is that the lower piece of Pulloxhill actually has a new cabinet opposite here I noticed it while driving through on Thursday. So it doesn't appear to be a case of not being able to get a cable to us if they got one down there.

I would suspect maybe planning permission or some other red tape as the existing location is on an industrial estate would be the issue.

I'm on the estate (and your road), and have a problem with my BT broadband so will probably have an engineer out soon, I'll ask them then.

As an update, the local Openreach guys know nothing, and couldn't put me in touch with anyone who did.

I've done further research and found this for our street, which is based off a cabinet planning document done in December 2011 that was leaked

http://fttc-check.alc.im/results.php?postcode=MK455EF

this is the postcode for the pub in the nearby village of Greenfield

http://fttc-check.alc.im/results.php?postcode=MK455DD

this is the postcode for the pub further down the road in Pulloxhill

http://fttc-check.alc.im/results.php?postcode=MK455HD

It seems that even as far back as December 2011, we have been excluded from the planning process, where the nearby towns and villages have been included as part of phase 7a

This would point further to an issue around the cabinet location and planning (probably due to the fact it is on private land) rather than technical issues

If cabinet were likely to be on private land, then a wayleave would be needed and that usually involves paying money to the land owner, some want a lot, some might see the usefulness to the community, but even then it adds a layer of admin to getting the cabinet deployed.

My thoughts exactly. I'm guessing the land owner probably asked for an extortionate amount of cash, and Openreach have just said no.

The next step is, what can we on the estate do about it?

Can you find an alternate public pavement location for cabinet within 50m of existing one?

Lobby landowner, who may not have understood the situation, particularly if landowner is also a landlord in the area, the impact on rentability may be important