SLEAFORD FTTC

Well after a seemingly endless wait, BT Openreach finally decided to grace our town with FTTC scheduled by end the of this year, classed as a "Future Exchange". No specific date given. It was to my great surprise then, that work began at the start of February. AFAIK almost the whole town is now covered by FTTC Cabinets, which I'm pretty are all ECI Telecom produced 128 models. All the ones I've seen so far are, at the very least.

My question is, what has to be done now? The cabinet I'm connected to, which is about 70m away, has been standing for a while now and no further work is scheduled for that specific cabinet on Roadworks.org now or in the future. The only work still being carried out is the remarking of symbols further into the town that BT removed when they installed a cab there. My first thought was that my cabinet was awaiting power, but after looking at the well known "Diary of an FTTC Install" I found that the work on the 26th May 2011 the OP listed as a power connection looks as if it has already been done. The photo he supplied seems identical to when I walked past prior in which a black 'bulk' (For lack of a better word) was fitted over some tubing. OR Where and When still doesn't even list it as Coming Soon, still classed as a "Future Exchange" for completion December 31st 13 which I can only assume is a placeholder date? Any ideas?

If you contact openreach should give you an update on proceedings.

Our cabinet has just had power connected, and awaiting fibre work to be carried out, your cabinet may not follow a diary of a fttc install exactly depends of locality issues.

Edited by deleted (Sun 03-Mar-13 09:47:33)

I did email NGA enquires but have yet to receive a reply, its only been five working days since I sent it and they do say about ten so we will have to wait and see : /

Power, fibre, copper ties, commissioning. It will be waiting one or more. If any of the 1st three then could be anytime between now and infinity.

Quick update, have just checked the BT Wholesale checker and if I use my postcode, and only my postcode it now says:

WBC FTTC Up to 75.5 Up to 20 -- 31-Dec-13

Repeating the checker with either my telephone or with my house number does not present this option, which is weird. My postcode is only shared with my street, which is quite short.

Even better, the folks over at Openreach replied to my email and have said April, not long to go now!

The dates on the checker have recently been pushed back, giving them an extra 3 months of leeway, as a result of an ASA ruling. The upshot is that everyone has a much less clear idea of when fibre is due.

So what kind of wording are they using in the emails now? I wonder if they've beefed up their warnings in the email about the dates being tentative, or if they're adding similar additional leeway on top.

I was actually quite pleased with my response:

Dear Mr Gray

Thank you for your email

There are a couple of steps remaining with the work programme on Sleaford cabinet 26. The estimated date for completion is close April 2013. Your Communications Provider (CP) is responsible for all aspects of your service including advising on the services they can supply at your address. After the above date please contact your CP for them to check into and advise further.

Regards

BT Retail remain as useless as ever, with very unhelpful staff! See attached image.
image

The retail staff like all other isps get their information from Openreach, just have to wait for the cabinet to go live as indicated by the BT wholesale checker and then place a order then.

Crusiux

The BT Retail customer facing people will only be able to see the same dates as you for exactly the same 'ASA' reason. They will be told by Openreach at the same time as everybody else when the exchange goes live, They will then also get the same info for Cabinets as is available on the checker.

The only difference is that someone in BT Retail (and every other registered CP) will know which cabinets are planned to be enabled. This info is also not allowed to be passed because of the ASA ruling and a confidentiality clause in case there is a problem with an individual cabinet.

The ASA ruling has obscured accurate dates for the public completely in the interests of a few people who didn't like BT not hitting them all the time.

Well that's a shame, I'd much rather have up to date more accurate information rather than super conservative place holder dates. If OR were to disobey the ASA ruling, would they face any sort of sanction? To my mind, it doesn't seem like false advertising to me. They're not lying, they just don't always meet their targets,

Just checked the Wholesale checker again, its become almost habitual now, and its now showing results for my exact address as well as my postcode!

WBC FTTC Up to 67.6 Up to 20 -- 31-Dec-13

I'm very happy with that estimate which is a tenfold increase on what we currently get, though part of me hopes that estimate is conservative

On a side note my cabinet, 26, had a lone engineer working on it today. Not sure what exactly he was doing, but he seemed to be fiddling with the cabinets innards. My guess is that maybe he was splicing the new fibre in or connecting the PCP and Fibre Cab together. The PCP also has two perfectly shaped stars marked on in white, is this OR marking? These have been here for as long as I can remember, but I only actually thought of why they might be there today.

Have you a link to the checker?

This is probably the one you want.