Bangor and Caernarfon

Well, in an incredible surprise, just as soon as it's announced, fibre cabinets have started appearing around Bangor and Caernarfon. Amazing how fast BT can move with half a billion quid in government subsidy.

There's no information from Open Reach and the superfast-Wales site is not being updated yet (and is down many evenings; I worry for my connection when the planning organisation can't keep Apache running).

The cabinets are quiet at the moment so I assume are not powered up.

Does anyone have inside information regarding go-live dates?

BT are throwing FTTC cabs out like confetti! They've being doing all down the coast (I'm in Rhyl).

They seem to struggle to power them in a timely manner unfortunately. Just keep your eyes peeled on the usual sites. If your REALLY desperate to know then it might be worth emailing [email protected].

They will give you the blurb that Superfast Cymru have taken over but will end up telling you any news about your specific cabinet if they have any.

Cheers
Matt

nOw2

Even more of a surprise, on the Openreach site Bangor is now live! It appeared this morning on the excel file.

I suspect only a few cabs will be live but they must have started before everything was annouced to move that fast.

Have to find out if anyone can order, fancy trying out some Bangor postcodes on the checker?

I am doubtful if any are switched on.

Cabinets:
1 - no
4 - no
5 - no
7 - no
8 - no
9 - no
10 - no
11 - no
12 - no
13 - no
14 - no
15 - no
17 - no
21 - no
23 - no
24 - no
26 - no
27 - no

Found I have an absolute sod of wiring here. I have a cabinet 150m from my house, but I'm connected to a cabinet 800m away! What's the chance I could ask BT to wire a 2nd line in from the nearby cabinet? There is pole carrying phone cables from it literally on the back boundary of my property.

Edited by nOw2 (Mon 18-Feb-13 20:53:45)

Aha, heres's the answer:

In reference to www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-wales-21544791:

The first street box to provide superfast broadband in Wales will be installed in Gwynedd.

The fibre broadband cabinet will be unveiled in Bangor on Friday ahead of plans to launch superfast broadband in the city as early as spring.

So, it's not really available yet.

Also, considering the number of active FTTC cabinets in Wrexham and elsewhere I wonder how exactly Bangor is getting 'the first street box .. in Wales'. Shoddy journalism

i'm on cab 27 lets hope they start in reverse order.

now theres the quandry of who to chose for unlimited or larger limits at cheaper prices than Zen can currently offer. Been an absolutley brilliant 10 years Mr Tang but looks like a move is likley

Edited by deleted (Fri 22-Feb-13 12:06:46)

I'm testing post codes but nothing is showing up yet. I don't really expect to see anything but hope springs eternal. I lived on the high street a couple of years ago - ADSL is near perfect there so I wish they'd started further out! The cable quality or maybe routing in Bangor's outskirts is really awful so fibre is a real boost. My parents are nearly the same distance from their exchange in a different town: they get 15+ and I get 4mbit/s!

Choose very, very carefully if you are thinking of moving from Zen.

I've been with Zen since 2005 and the support has been impeccable, though yes several times the cost of bandwidth has been an issue. My parent's connection remains on Zen.

I switched my connection to Sky for LLU and now spend 4 months in 12 seriously regretting it. There is zero support. I'll be switching back to Zen for fibre. (this years Sky problems)

04 may 2003 customer here. Id rather not move but £46 for 200gb seems quite expensive when there are others out there offering unlimited packages for £20. My fear is as you rightly point out that they will be of a similar quality to bt openworld who i was with and stuck with for 12 months of absolutly terrible service something i will never forget or forgive in my lifetime. Zen were and have been for the most part a breath of fresh air.

The LL57 1YE area is showing as taking up orders for infinity btw.

edit :good to know about sky not being an option, thanks. I kinda guessed that because i work in the construction/service sector and work in a lot of student accomodation and from what i've noticed they are constantly downloadin/streaming whether they are in their rooms or not, all on sky when i've asked. Maybe the extra £20 a month is worth it after all i'll weigh it up.

Edited by deleted (Fri 22-Feb-13 13:00:25)

In reply to a post by bigbadpirate:

The LL57 1YE area is showing as taking up orders for infinity btw.

Cabinet 6 - I happen to know exactly where that is: opposite the top of Orme Road outside the flats.

I was expecting something in the town-centre itself. This covers the far end of the high street, though the cabinet itself is ~400 yards away on a different road. Still, onwards and upwards.

edit:
Actually, cabinet 2 also. This is the cabinet outside the cathedral which features in the BBC video now included on the news story (which has also been corrected so it doesn't claim this is the first FTTC in Wales).

Edited by nOw2 (Fri 22-Feb-13 16:05:53)

In reply to a post by nOw2:

In reply to a post by bigbadpirate:

The LL57 1YE area is showing as taking up orders for infinity btw.

Cabinet 6 - I happen to know exactly where that is: opposite the top of Orme Road outside the flats.

I was expecting something in the town-centre itself. This covers the far end of the high street, though the cabinet itself is ~400 yards away on a different road. Still, onwards and upwards.

edit:
Actually, cabinet 2 also. This is the cabinet outside the cathedral which features in the BBC video now included on the news story (which has also been corrected so it doesn't claim this is the first FTTC in Wales).

journalists eh, all have the morals of allycats.idk? ?

Any more news on the Bangor cabinets? Seen some with the "Fibre here now here" stickers but not on my new cabinet 17.

A cab doesn't have to have a sticker on it to be live. Just use one of the many checkers with either your phone number (it won't work if you're with Talk Talk or Sky) or your postcode. If they say "yes", or even "maybe yes", then phone up the ISP of your choice and order it.

A cab doesn't have to have a sticker on it to be live.

Indeed. Many cabinets have superfast stickers that are not ready for service. Tut, tut

A cab doesn't have to have a sticker on it to be live

Indeed. Many cabinets have superfast stickers that are not ready for service. Tut, tut

I can confirm No stickers on the cabs in my area either, lol.

Although, I am not living in Bangor/Caernarfon but instead living in Llanelli (S.Wales) I too have seen a load of new cabinets shoot up!
Also, The date for the official time scale for BTO FTTC Deployment (as reported on the Openreach checker) in my area ranges from between 30th Sept 2013 and Dec 2013 for almost all of the postcodes which I have been diligently keeping an eye on

I have tested both TalkTalk and BT Infinity websites with several postcodes in and around my area and they are indeed showing as capable of ordering the 80/20 packages, there are some which are showing slower speed estimates but the majority are high estimates..

But wouldn't you know it I am unfortunately unable to sign-up for FTTC at this time.
I also bet most of the people who are actually able to get it probably don't even know they can, but that's Llanelli for you

Edited by majika2007 (Tue 02-Apr-13 09:41:15)

From the 10 or so postcodes/numbers out of the 27 i've tried more cabinets are becoming live. Cabs 1,5,6,7,11 are accepting orders. The cabs dont seem to be getting done in any numerical order - cab 3 insn't live. What's irksome is that they seem to be upgrading people that were already on 20mb connections and BT wonder why the uptake is slow ^^. There are people on this exchange that can't even stream youtube, cab 18 - Rhiwlas cabinet for example. Can anyone explain what criteria they use in prioritizing cabinets/areas?

Edited by deleted (Tue 02-Apr-13 13:56:25)

In reply to a post by bigbadpirate:

From the 10 or so postcodes/numbers out of the 27 i've tried more cabinets are becoming live. Cabs 1,5,6,7,11 are accepting orders. The cabs dont seem to be getting done in any numerical order - cab 3 insn't live. What's irksome is that they seem to be upgrading people that were already on 20mb connections and BT wonder why the uptake is slow ^^. There are people on this exchange that can't even stream youtube, cab 18 - Rhiwlas cabinet for example. Can anyone explain what criteria they use in prioritizing cabinets/areas?

Exactly! I'm in in the same spot stuck on a 2mb connection!

Cabs that are easier to complete and closer to the fibre spine will be ready earlier.

In reply to a post by Ribble:

Cabs that are easier to complete and closer to the fibre spine will be ready earlier.

so the cabs are chain linked to the exchange? don't know why i thought every box would have a seperate feed to the exchange. thanks.

No, Each cab has its own fibre back to the aggregation node, but the multi fibre cables still branch off at nodes as they move away from the exchange/aggregation point.

Yeah, Ribble is right - the cabs aren't numbered in a modern way, when it comes to referencing them for something like FTTC. They were numbered when they got put there in the 1950s and then later - the numbers have absolutely no meaning now, except to OR engineers who have to go to "cab 3" or whatever, i.e. location purposes.

Cab 1 in my town is nearly on the bypass (which obviously wasn't there when it was installed), and the one right in the very centre of town, outside the post office, is number 6. Again, that's just because there were 5 cabs already installed from the exchange when they decided to put that one there.

Edited by deleted (Tue 02-Apr-13 21:33:42)

Just hope mine is enabled soon as 5 people trying to use a 2mb connection is not fun.

ashmo,

Don't worry, not long now. Most cabinets are powered up now. I've been on a walk today, every one I passed was humming but some indeed not accepting orders yet.

In fact, my cabinet - about 1 mile closer in to Bangor from you, I think - was activated on Friday and my order was in by Friday evening. Roll on the 19th!

Sounds good checking 5 times a day haha hope its soon

cab 27 been commisioned since last weekend but not accepting orders. I stopped and asked the guy (outside contractor, telnet i think) what he was up to.

Just got an email from openreach took 3 weeks but basically any cabs that are currently not enabled will be in June same time as Caernarfon and Menai Bridge.

Thank you for that update ashmo. I suppose june is still technically spring at least till the 21st lets hope they keep their word.

looks like the cabs are still being worked on so keep checking, router logs showed a 1.5hr downtime last night at 1am so i just checked and wholesale says FTTC for cab 27

now then do i stick with zen or bail and hope the BT managment have found some morals since the btopenworld days.......unlimited does seem tempting. time to do some research.

Edited by deleted (Wed 17-Apr-13 12:35:00)

Cabinet 8 is "live". My install was 9.30am on the 19th, and I was in the first port, '701' IIRC.

Against my better judgement I stuck with Sky, because I couldn't afford the downtime of moving the phone line and cost was a very big consideration (Sky is cheap, but cheap for a reason..).

OpenReach have since spent the next two days and around 10 hours on-site replacing nearly everything as I have sync on the modem but no connection from the router. The fault absolutely must be at Sky, but the 5 minutes the engineer got with 1st line support got only "not our fault". Quality investigative work there by Sky.

Of course, Sky are sending out a new router. I've already tried next door's identical FTTC router and flashed my Billion with Sky FTTC compatible firmware. The Billion even provides some debugging showing that nothing is coming back from the exchange; I have a synced but dead line.

Currently "enjoying" my third day without internet.

Sorry for the rant, but after the build up I wanted to vent, and have a little cry about not following my gut feeling and switching back Zen

Caernarvon has just been announced on the Openreach site as accepting orders so the first Cabs should now be live.

Anybody found a live Cab and tried ordering yet?

My cabinet still not enabled grrrrr

Openreach just been, one of the new ex forces guys (or soon to be ex). Fast friendly efficient, will be a credit to BT as soon as they give him a job, good luck in your interview but pretty sure you don't need it

76 down 17 up and pings dropped from 50 to 19-20. BT unlimited was a temptation but stayed with Zen, didn't like what i was reading on the BT forums about bad latency in the evenings.

Does anyone have any idea where the cabinet is in Glasinfryn? And if that one is scheduled to be upgraded to fibre?

Thanks.

That 's cabinet 14, which is on the Bangor exchange so should be scheduled to be FTTC enabled. I believe we are getting near universal coverage so it should just be a matter of time. Don't know where the cabinet is.

There's a cabinet going or gone up in Caerhun according to roadworks.org, which would be a very good sign that you'll get one too.

Oh, it looks like this is indeed cabinet 14 in Caerhun:
http://goo.gl/maps/5HNB8

If so, that'll put you up to 2km away from it.

Email from openreach today

When rolling out fibre broadband, we don�t necessarily upgrade all the deployable cabinets at the same time. This may be for our planning or local planning reasons, engineering resource or technical issues. Progress is being made on the build, however, we are currently being slowed down by blockages in the underground duct network which is preventing the provision of the fibre cable from the exchange. The predicted go live date is now late June.

Thanks for the info and the link to the cabinet location much appreciated. Now just playing the waiting game, I used to live a stone throw away from the exchange in Bethesda, and enjoyed speeds of 18-20 mb on normal broadband and dropping down to 1-2 mb is a killer haha.

Does anyone know of any Superfast broadband enabled cabinets outside of Bangor itself, within the exchage area? Will all cabinets be superfast enabled? Is so, based on what evidence?

yes cab 27 is enabled, was on a 5.5km bad line previously.

Thanks for that info. Where is cabinet 27?

I live in Pentir, fibre optic cable was laid a few weeks ago, but no sign of any cabinet. I guess I'll just have to be patient.

Most cabinets should be upgraded eventually, but the only evidence for this is that the programme is intending to provide 96% coverage which is certain to mean virtually every cabinet. I think the key thing here is the removal of the excuse of "not financially viable" which resulted in a large number of cabinets being missed in the original commercial rollout in Wrexham.

Although the Bangor exchange covers a big area I would think every village is going to be covered somehow; problems are going to be remote isolated houses and those >2km from their cabinet. It remains to be seen how/if alternatives to FTTC will be provided for them.

cab 27 is Talybont.

cab 13 - Llandegai is 0.5 miles closer to Bangor. That hasn't been conected yet from a quick check i just did on that schools telephone number, quite surprizing as i've seen a lot of work being carried out on the cabs in the previous months. It's been pointed out in this thread it's impossible to guess wheres's next from box numbers.

Edited by deleted (Thu 09-May-13 16:50:57)

just checked my mums number and cab 22 Penchwintan is now accepting orders

We have been told that our phone line travels from Bangor to Talybont, then crosses the Ogwen somewhere around Halfway Bridge, then doubles back toward the One Stop services. Must be close to 5 miles by the time it gets here. We have been getting BT broadband at .4 meg, not enough even to watch a Youtube video. How can I get in touch with Openreach to find out when or if we will get better service? Afraid we might be in the 4%, not the 96%

Just had an email from openreach to say that my cab (17) has now been enabled but all the chekers and even the BT one say no?????

In reply to a post by twrmelyn:

We have been told that our phone line travels from Bangor to Talybont, then crosses the Ogwen somewhere around Halfway Bridge, then doubles back toward the One Stop services. Must be close to 5 miles by the time it gets here. We have been getting BT broadband at .4 meg, not enough even to watch a Youtube video. How can I get in touch with Openreach to find out when or if we will get better service? Afraid we might be in the 4%, not the 96%

My line is 8km and I get 150kbps-500kbps. I'm on the Llanberis exchange, the whole village of around 100 houses in the same situation, and our cabinet itself is 3 miles away. The only official information you can get from Openreach is via the Superfast Wales site, and there is no official information about individual cabinets. The Superfast Wales site also has just sent out a "news"letter to those who registered with the site, but with absolutely no new information in it at all and is just a PR exercise, except that the project is due to end in 2016 - I had thought that it was originally stated to be 2015?

See what you mean about the Superfast Wales site not being much help. I tried this site
https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.html
and it said our phone number was served by cabinet 13. Anyone know where that is? It also said the max ADSL download speed was 2 meg. Hope that's out of date.

Cabinet 13 is situated at the entrance to Llandegai Village. I'd love to get 2 meg lucky if I get 0.5. Does anyone have any info as to when this cabinet is likely to go live I am tearing my hair out at the moment with my broadband connection.

Out of the Blue cab 17 now enabled 54 down 15 up

I have been doing a bit more investigating with regard to Cabinet 13 especially as I heard cabinet 27 in Tal y Bont (nearer to me ) is up and running although there are what looks like recently installed BT manholes by cabinet 13 there is no new cabinet and I am now wondering just how many premises it serves and whether it is going to be upgraded at all. I am presently trying to get virgin to sort my profile out as I realise I have been limited to 0.25 download but they are so slow and I am sick of repeating the same tests for different people I talk to my only hope was that FTTC would make it irrelevant but now I am not sure. Even more gutting is that I watched the fibre speed cable being installed at the bottom of my road. The websites are useless how can I find out if I am indeed going to be in the 4% that is not getting fibre I want to start a business from home but that is just not possible at the moment with the broadband connection I am getting. I need HELP!

Try emailing OpenReach, there are details on the forum somewhere.

On a walk around Bangor I found a brand new phone cabinet (suggesting some of the old green cabinets needed replacing) and separately one cabinet without any sign of fibre. I guess work is on-going, as I can't believe any cabinets inside Bangor itself would be excluded.

Fibre Speed - what a waste of time and money. I too saw that being buried in the street. The only advantage? My workplace is paying slightly less than for a BT leased line and getting less bandwidth than I now get at home.

Yes give it sometime, Bethesda from what I saw a large amount were connected straight to the exchange but now on the drive in you can see 3 new large FTTC installed ready for September.

I have had an email from superfast cymru and a chat with the BT man working at the box yesterday and the fibre is in the new manholes and the engineer thought it was probably going to be for FTTP and indeed the email confirmed that work on the FTTP for cabinet 13 will start spring 2014. OK this date will probably slip but I am really delighted with this. In the meantime virgin have sorted my broadband out and I am now getting 3.25 to 3.6 which is more than I have ever had so that will do me until FTTP arrives

Lucky you FTTP will be worth the wait, so much better.

Openreach have been installing cable this week on Lon Bach Awyr, leading up from the A4244 to Rhiwlas. I talked to one of the engineers, who said there were quite a few problems with collapsed and blocked channels, especially towards the Bangor end of the back road from Bangor to Pentir, via Caerhun. However, he was positive that FTTC cabinets were definitely going to be installed in Pentir and Rhiwlas, but could not give an indication of when.

Rhiwlas (and Tregarth) is now FTTC enabled, but no FTTC cabinets have been installed in either Pentir (cabinet 18) or Caerhun (14 I believe). I understand that Gwynedd Council refused permission to BT Openreach to close the Minffordd road to clear blockages, but I have no idea if this is true or not. Does anyone know what the plans and timelines are for either cabinet?