FTTC Engineer install

If as stated it may take up to 3 hours to complete an install, taking in to account travelling time and meal breaks, how many installs can an engineer complete in a working day?
In a smallish town/city how many FTTC able engineers would there likely to be employed?
With this service being new and in demand there would likely be hundreds of orders waiting attention if the many, many cabinets which have been in place for months were all switched on.
Is this the real reason why there is a long wait for cabinets in place to be enabled?

No. Exchange to cabinet fibre installers are different from cabinet to premises installers.

Sorry, I don't see your point. I am talking about the engineer who comes to your home to install . As far as I am aware the cabinet which serves my house has already had the fibre ran to the new cabinet and the new cab is already linked to the old cab. It has not been switched on. Many other cabs seem to be likewise I am wondering if the shortage of man power and man hours to visit homes is the reason. I thought my original post was clear. Perhaps not.

Openreach has its own installers and those from contractors such as Kelly Communications that it does move about the country to meet demand in a area.

Its possible Openreach could dealy cabinets going live in a area to manage the install list wait time, does your cabinet and others have their power connections installed?

Edited by deleted (Mon 19-Aug-13 17:00:31)

Impossible to tell from looking externally. There is a warning sticker on the cab saying 230V.
Whether they come with that sticker already attached or only put on when power is supplied I don't know.

His point was that the engineer staff who do the work to enable an FTTC cab, are not those that do the FTTC installs booked out by the CP's

The fastest install I have ever done was 42 minutes from knocking on the door, the slowest, 4 and a half hours. It ll depends on how easy/tricky the fit is inside the property.

Yes I am aware of the difference. But my point was if there are too few home installer engineers in an area could there be a deliberate delay in activating cabs even if everything is in place. Reasons given for non activation of cabinets in place vary, including collapsed ducts. I am offering a possible alternative suggestion for the delays. One which may not be businesslike to admit. I can't make it any clearer.

They just give out an extended appointment date. It makes commercial sense to have cabinets taking orders as soon as they are ready

Edited by deleted (Mon 19-Aug-13 19:13:48)

Roadworks.org it it covers your area will list power works for cabinets when they appear, if its already happened look at the path to see if their is a trench back to a street light or power duct.

Thanks form that. Doesn't seem to cover my area as there is ongoing roadworks a mile from me which is not shown. A track which crosses the road linking an old to newly installed cab. (not mine)
And yes there is a track back to a power duct on the cab which services my house.

Taking your basic question, assume that there are 1,000 installations, requiring 1 hour's work, to be done in 1 day, of 7 working hours, would need 143 (trained) installers.

This assumes no problems, no travelling time etc.

Assuming that there are about 20,000,000 domestic premises which could potentially have FTTC, On the above assumptions, it would require 20,000 days to cover the UK with that team.

On a 5 day working week, 4,000 weeks, about 77 years.

Obviously rather lengthy!!

To achieve it in a more realistic 7.7 years, we would need about 1,430 Installers, not allowing for holidays, sickness etc, which would take it up to about 1,800 Installers.

There seems to be general agreement that each installation takes more than 1 hour, so assuming that this is 2 hours, then we need 3,600 Installers.

20,000,000 domestic premises would accommodate about 60,000,000 population.



So 1 Installer over that period of 7.7 years,to almost 2021, would cover a population of around 17,000 persons - about a small town in size.

I had Fibre installed yesterday and didn't realise how fast it could be in terms of installing. I thought it needed to connect to the master socket and then data cable to where you wanted it. but the engineer just went to the faceplate in my study and replaced it with the new I guess master socket and 5 mins late tested and done.

I asked him how many installs he had that day and he said 7 more after that.

Now it lierally took him less than 10 mins from start to finish so I'm guessing either he finish early or the engineer's operate over a bigger range - not factoring a lot of installs might not be as simple as mine was (data cable extensions etc).

Sticker is on at delivery time.

If it has mains and hardware powered up you might here a slight hum from fans etc when its quiet

Although the engineer may have only spent only 10 minutes at your home he will also have first been to your cabinet & connect you to your fibre cable. This can take up to 30 minutes.

Re cabinets going "live", I was connected to fibre last October. The cabinets were in place for a good 6 months before the fibre cable was laid from the exchange to the village. This took a lot of work as much of the original ducting had collapsed & they had to dig up the road in about a dozen places.

Ah I see then seems fine.

He seemed to be in a rush but did his job testing connection/showing me it working and then testing phone line so A+ from me.

The data cable if ordered would show up on the job sheet, it is free, but time only budgeted for it the HWS was ordered by the ISP.

The engineer that did my fttc install in Northamptonshire was off to Scotland the following week to do some up there.

@ccxo

I was searching in the wrong place as I am in Scotland. The site I needed is www.roadworksscotland.org There is a jobsheet for tomorrow on my PCP. Yeay!!

Well, the cabinet which serves my line is now live, whirring away merrily, although the checker still gives an activation date of December. (As does the cabinet further along the road, closer to the exchange on the same loop which has been whirring away for 3 weeks now) There has been no roadworks or digging of any kind which to my mind means that the fibre and power have been in place for some time, just not powered on.
Which leads me back to my original contention, that the lack of engineers available to do home installs is the sole reason for delaying availability and not that everything wasn't in place yet.
BTW- Two emails to [email protected] went unanswered. I had thought that that particular email address was set up specifically to do just that. Answer enquiries. Mmnn....

Cabinet maybe installed, but is the exchange live? Does the exchange need an upgrade? is the fibre terminated at the exchange? Is there a fibre aggregation node required? Has it been fully tested and commissioned? And lost more possibles.

Same issue here. They're doing 18 cabinets, of which at least 15 appear completed (some are hard to hear, but the ones I found on quiet roads I could hear whirring) with the roadworks gone, and saw a man with a van running the fibre weeks ago (complaining that he can't do much without his spotter, health&safety gone mad etc). But the exchange itself still has RFS date of 31st December. I guess we may well be in for a long wait still while the exchange eventually gets upgraded, despite the extreme pace at which they put the cabinets in.

Edited by deleted (Fri 04-Oct-13 10:53:15)

Exchange has been live since June.
It would seem a bit pointless applying power to a line that hasn't been terminated at the exchange, likewise one that requires a node.
I've no idea how long it takes to test a line. Three weeks seems a little excessive though.
I could ask nga.enquiries but they don't seem to like answering enquiries. It's all very hush- hush you know.
I'm sure you're right. They have lost more possibilities.

For example: They could have connected it all, powered up and it failed on commissioning. Basic checks could not resolve it and it is waiting for a specialist or spare card. If the card in the exchange has failed - leave it running and powered to save two visits to the cabinet.

Exchange enabled on 30th June
All three cabinets in my street have been powered on, humming merrily away since 4th September. That is 10 weeks and still no one's number is "Available" for FTTC. What would take 10 weeks (and counting) to fix?

Edited by Rytenuff (Tue 12-Nov-13 05:35:22)

In reply to a post by Rytenuff:

If as stated it may take up to 3 hours to complete an install, taking in to account travelling time and meal breaks, how many installs can an engineer complete in a working day?
In a smallish town/city how many FTTC able engineers would there likely to be employed?
With this service being new and in demand there would likely be hundreds of orders waiting attention if the many, many cabinets which have been in place for months were all switched on.
Is this the real reason why there is a long wait for cabinets in place to be enabled?

Finally got my installation of FTTC. I asked the engineer if he was busy. He said there are 4 of us up from Glasgow and the 2 local boys ( TWO ! local boys) doing about 8 each a day.
So, I was right. There are too few of them to do the home installs and that is why even although the cabinet and eguipment is in place and ready to go ( in my case for over 10 weeks)the "Available " date is put back.