Cabinet Not Commercially Viable

I'm connected to cabinet P30 (EH4 2GJ) on the Dean exchange in Edinburgh and after 4 years of waiting for my cabinet to be upgraded I decided to email Openreach on the address that's floating about on here.

Unfortunately I was told that cabinet P30 was not considered commercially viable for Openreach. Given that at the time of the FTTC upgrade to the Dean Exchange (2009) there was only a handful of homes served by the cabinet I could understand it being not commercially viable.

However, fast forward 4 years and now the housing development is nearing completion with many hundreds of properties it would surely be a much more attractive prospect for upgrade.

Given that the cabinet is actually located on the same road (and same side of the road!) as the exchange it would seem like a no-brainer to me!

Do I have any chance of getting Openreach to evaluate their decision? Or do I just have to continue waiting until BDUK funding helps fill in the gaps?

I've been waiting patiently for a long time now!

I susspect BT have already decided which cabinets will be included in their commercial program. I doubt they will include any further cabinets at this stage.

I'm not so sure about that going by what I've read on here recently. Someone said that if a cabinet is now commercially viable then BDUK are not likely to want to fund it, but will put pressure on BT to do it.

Have you checked the estate is connected to that cabinet? Use the address checker, enter various post codes for the estate and then select a full addess, and it should tell which cabinet it's connected to.

If it is, then it would be worth firing off a couple of emails as below.

I would email BT back explaining that there is now a large housing estate nearing completion and this may make the cabinet viable.

It would also be worth contacting your council or local BDUK project.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

Someone said that if a cabinet is now commercially viable then BDUK are not likely to want to fund it, but will put pressure on BT to do it.

It has been seen in the Warwickshire SFBB project, where around 45,000 properties were added to the commercial rollout:

In reference to www.cswbroadband.org.uk/newsletter-december-2012/:

As a result of our pre-procurement discussions with the broadband providers we have received updated Open Market Review data that shows an extra 44,690 properties now being brought into the commercial roll-out, meaning that the money within the CSW Broadband project will go that much further. This is a real achievement by our superfast broadband team, and the work is continuing.

and

In reference to www.cswbroadband.org.uk/newsletter-december-2012/:

CSW Broadband has been gathering information from communities about the broadband challenges that they face and where the local infrastructure, such as communications cabinets, are located. As a result of the information received the project has been able to convince BT to upgrade cabinets at Warwick Gates and at Coton Park in Rugby, giving local residents and businesses superfast speeds far earlier than they would otherwise have achieved this.

Thanks to the information provided by our local communities through their Local Broadband Champions and the surveys on our website, our team has been in discussions with BT about areas that have been omitted from their commercial roll-out plans. At both Warwick Gates and Coton Park we were able to show that there were sufficient potential subscribers for superfast broadband services to make a clear business case for BT to invest in these areas. Could your area be eligible for an early upgrade? Are there factors (such as new development) that may not have been taken into account? We have a narrow window to influence this so please contact the CSW broadband team without delay.

and a recent one on top:

In reference to www.cswbroadband.org.uk/newsletter-june-2013/:

Because of the wealth of data that was provided by the Local Broadband Champions and members of the public the project team was able to negotiate an additional £750,000 funding, which will help to extend the superfast broadband reach still further.

I think the project team have worked well on those aspects, perhaps highlighting the effect of decent public engagement.

They're one of the smaller projects, but those 2 items have perhaps been worth £14m alone - doubling the value of the BDUK project.

So far, all the postcodes from the development I've checked have said that they're connected to one cabinet (P30). There's also a few postcodes that aren't recognised by the checker - although they are from the recently built homes & flats, so presumably too new to be included in the data.

Information on BDUK in Scotland and Edinburgh is thin on the ground and any information is pretty vague.

Might have to email Openreach back and see what they say.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

I'm not so sure about that going by what I've read on here recently. Someone said that if a cabinet is now commercially viable then BDUK are not likely to want to fund it, but will put pressure on BT to do it.

Indeed but that was in 2012. The commercial deployment is to complete in spring of 2014, it's probably too late now for new cabinets to be planned and built in time.

BDUK will fund cabinets that end up being commercially viable, that's why there are clawback provisions in the contracts for just those instances. The fact is there is no way for anyone apart from Openreach to know that a cabinet is viable.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

Indeed but that was in 2012. The commercial deployment is to complete in spring of 2014, it's probably too late now for new cabinets to be planned and built in time.

Warwickshire reported this last December (2012), so it can't be totally impossible - but you do make a good point. There certainly will be a cutoff.

BDUK will fund cabinets that end up being commercially viable, that's why there are clawback provisions in the contracts for just those instances. The fact is there is no way for anyone apart from Openreach to know that a cabinet is viable.

Also true. I guess the downside is that the monitoring for clawbacks happens over a 7 year period, so the re-investment of the recovered money might be happening rather late in the day.

Exactly the same issue here. Cabinet 11, Goscote Exchange , Leicestershire, The difference here is that the Exchange was only added as the last of the last exchanges to the commercial roll out last month. New build estate seeing rapid growth. Several hundred connections on the cabinet but still no beans. I can only guess they are using old data when assessing? We are trying to get BT to reconsider. Interestingly around the area cabinets are already springing up less than a month after the announcement. Will let you know of any success.....

Edited by Resonate (Tue 05-Nov-13 20:22:22)