Petition for Superfast Broadband on EO Lines

Hi all,
This is my first post so I hope I have the correct forum.

I suspect that I am on an EO Line and whilst searching for info I discovered the following e-petition
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Superfast broadband should be made available to Exchange Only lines
http://epetitions.direct.gov.uk/petitions/46540

Text of the petition as follows
During the current Fibre "superfast" broadband rollout many properties are being excluded because they are not connected to a roadside cabinet. When these properties were originally connected to their local telephone exchange, cabinets were not in standard use. So while some properties are physically metres away from an exchange they cannot receive the superfast broadband of their neighbours properties connected to a later installed cabinet.

Current regulations say that the new superfast technology must be installed outside exchanges in cabinets. Therefore new cabinets should be installed outside existing exchanges (to comply with current regs.). Or the regulations changed.

Currently the public money being spent on these projects is done so without public consultation. Homeowners and businesses cannot interact with the organisers implementing the projects to ensure fair distribution.

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There are currently (3rd July 2013) only 16 names on the petition which is well short of the 100,000 target required for possible debate in the House of Commons.

Please sign/share the petition which closes in March 2014.

Thanks in advance.

Dave

North Yorkshire was starting to address some EO lines as part of the BDUK project, and Cornwall is doing so with their project.

As for other counties, depends on their coverage target as to whether they will need to or not address EO lines to meet the various targets.

ANFP rules for VDSL from exchange building to serve those close to exchange on EO are under review and for longer lines the ANFP is not an issue.

I agree with the sentiment of the petition - more work needs to be done for these lines - but more especially for the longer ones.

However, this bit...

In reply to a post by Davemhlv:

Currently the public money being spent on these projects is done so without public consultation.

... isn't true.

All the counties running BDUK projects (ie the public-funded parts) have a public consultation as part of their state-aid approval. And they want people to tell them about their coverage experience too, as it helps their negotiations.

Its the sodding public consultations that are wasting the time....and the EU requirements on state aid.
If you scrapped the whole lot and just got one with it, be half done by now.

Have you seen some of the replies to these public consultations local councils have to run?
Most sensible people have better/more important things to do in their lives/families
Hence most of the replies seem to come from the half wits and luny tunes who merely demonstrate why they are not in charge of anything much less managing broadband roll out.

Its the same with planning. I want to object to some proposal and go and read some of the other objections and I actually feel sorry for the planning officers being obliged to read the rubbish and give it due consideration.

I agree - and that perception of just who responds to consultations probably hurts the councils when all they really want is people to express a desire to get fibre broadband, and tell them what is happening locally.

There is of course the financial side to consider. You put an FTTC twin next to an existing cab, then you are going to be able to offer service to 300 + punters, often many more. Most EO cables are only 100 pair, so you do all the work, provide a copper cabinet, and then the FTTC twin, all at great cost, and the most return you are going to see is 100 punters, but most likely, way less. Not tempting really is it ?

Openreach will be very happy with a 100

Mine has been installed since September and currently there are only 31 connected with VDSL2 serving just under 250 houses.

Edited by deleted (Wed 03-Jul-13 20:23:32)

Exactly - 31 out of 250. That implies 12 out of 100?

Edited by deleted (Wed 03-Jul-13 20:29:25)

Just under 250 PCP and there are 31 connected to FTTC about 2 weeks ago.

Can't see a profit on 12.

In reply to a post by ryant704:

Mine has been installed since September and currently there are only 31 connected with VDSL2 serving just under 250 houses.

Our cabinet at work went live last October/November, when we connected last week we were the 27th customer connected.

In reply to a post by Zarjaz:

There is of course the financial side to consider. You put an FTTC twin next to an existing cab, then you are going to be able to offer service to 300 + punters, often many more. Most EO cables are only 100 pair, so you do all the work, provide a copper cabinet, and then the FTTC twin, all at great cost, and the most return you are going to see is 100 punters, but most likely, way less. Not tempting really is it ?

Surely addressing and resolving non-commercially viable upgrades is one of the reasons for the BDUK programme? Not that BDUK is going to help the significant number of Londoners stuck on EO lines.

A big problem with the e-petition is that it appears to assume that all EO lines are short lines and that simply sticking a cab outside the exchange will solve the problem.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

In reply to a post by ryant704:

Mine has been installed since September and currently there are only 31 connected with VDSL2 serving just under 250 houses.

Our cabinet at work went live last October/November, when we connected last week we were the 27th customer connected.

What took you so long?

The graph BT showed in the end-of-year results showed that take-up of SFBB within a phase runs at 0.5% per month.

If 27 subscriptions represents 4% (8 months * 0.5%) of the cabinet, it is roughly on track with the national average.

In reply to a post by MCM:

Surely addressing and resolving non-commercially viable upgrades is one of the reasons for the BDUK programme?

Strictly, BDUK only targets the best two-thirds of the non-viable lines.

We've seen that a 100-line cabinet can be viable within BDUK, we don't really know whether a 100-line EO bundle would be.

However, to reach a 90% target, BDUK must cover either the set of EO lines or the set of lines that are > 1km from the cabinet, or a mix of the two. Both are reputedly about 10% of the line stock in the UK.

The best we can say is that surely *some* of them must be included.

Not that BDUK is going to help the significant number of Londoners stuck on EO lines.

Perhaps they'll get more cash from BDUK 2. I doubt it though, but who knows...

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

We've seen that a 100-line cabinet can be viable within BDUK, we don't really know whether a 100-line EO bundle would be.

Out of curiosity do you know whether either Huawei or ECI manufacture small combined PCP & Fibre cabinets? I appreciate that there are probably none currently in the UK but such a device could I feel significantly reduce the cost of providing NGA access on larger EO bundles.

There is a small 48 line ECI device that was seen in Cornwall offices but cannot find the picture anymore

In reply to a post by MCM:

Out of curiosity do you know whether either Huawei or ECI manufacture small combined PCP & Fibre cabinets? I appreciate that there are probably none currently in the UK but such a device could I feel significantly reduce the cost of providing NGA access on larger EO bundles.

The diagrams that BT used to show the FTTC architecture 3-4 years ago showed 3 different variants - the current model, an FTTC "top box" and a combined "all in one" box - so someone certainly thought of the idea back then.

http://www.trefor.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/07/ftt...

Whether they are actually made is another matter - I haven't heard a peep that suggests they might be, except for the diagram above.

Out of curiosity do you know whether either Huawei or ECI manufacture small combined PCP & Fibre cabinets?

Not sure it's a valid notion, the end of an FTTC cab has connector blocks that are agnostic as to whether they're feeding lines directly or via a PCP - in both cases there's an "exchange" connection and a "user" connection per loop it's just that in the standard deployment both go back to the PCP via a short tie cable to be joined to the longer run cables.

Effectively the end of a fibre cab is a PCP albeit one with little space. I have a photo somewhere which shows the labelling of the connectors.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

What took you so long?

Our ISP (Orbital Net) didn't supply FTTC when the cab went live, neither did Plusnet have an official product. Orbital Net said it would be available in January but it kept slipping back, and they still can't provide it, so when PN launched their official business product we jumped ship.

We aren't desperate for the additional speed, so the wait didn't really matter, but for only a few quid more a month it will be worth it. Everthing is in place now to change the connections over tomorrow afternoon. Luckily we had another line which was suitable, so we could have both concurrently to make the changeover easier, and to make sure the new connection worked ok.

It'll be interesting to see if there is any difference on the stats when the other broadband is turned off.