Best way to find out when a cabinet will be switched on?

Hi everyone

A new cabinet was installed across the road a couple of weeks a go, and I wondered if there is a good way to find out when it will be switched on and accepting orders? On the BT Fibre checker it just gives a date range of October 2013 - March 2014. The exchange is Plymstock and the cabinet is 18.

Thanks to anyone that help with anymore info

That is the best estimate for now, range allows for events that delay it. Openreach got into trouble over keep moving dates back, so solution was to be more vague and give a wider range.

Thanks MrSaffron

So is there a chance that it could be before October as well?

its just a case of wait and see. Once they start digging for the new cabinet, you know its going to be in the next 2 mths ish.

Yes and also a chance it could be 2015

OK. Well there has been working going on around the estate with different parts being dug up the past week and a half, but i'm not sure if that is for Fibre or something else. Guess I will just have to wait and see.

Thanks for the answers though

you should see a new green cabinet and a link between your existing PCP green cabinet. If they are there then you are sorted.

So the cabinet arrives, it is kitted out, interlinking cables to the existing cabinet installed, power connected and fibre blown through to it. Yet I still can't place an order for FTTC. What else needs to be done to open for business? How do ISPs get to know that a cabinet is well and truly RFS?

Cabinet is usually in place before fibre is blown and a blocked duct can delay the blowing amongst other reasons

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Cabinet is usually in place before fibre is blown and a blocked duct can delay the blowing amongst other reasons

I did say that the fibre had arrived, I was there at the time to see it pop out of the tubing. I can't think what else needs to be done at the cabinet end and can only assume that further work needs to be done at the exchange or administration tasks are outstanding. So what time scale are we looking at for RFS?

Apologies most people assume the fibre is the black tubing rather than the blown fibre

As for time scale could be tomorrow could be six months.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Apologies most people assume the fibre is the black tubing rather than the blown fibre

As for time scale could be tomorrow could be six months.

That's OK. The installing engineer stripped what was already a tiny diameter to reveal four fibre cables that were hard to see and explained that only one was being used to feed the cabinet with the others for future use, if ever. I have stopped by my local cabinet whenever an engineer has been present and found them all only too pleased to talk about their work. FTTC work makes you more observant to how much plant and ductwork that has been installed over the years for telecommunication purposes by BT and its predecessors. At some time most, if not all, will have to be renewed. Now that WILL be expensive!

One thing which can sometimes give an indication of how soon a cab might go live is how many of the other planned PCPs in the same exchange have been installed and are live. I suppose a more accurate way of phrasing that would be to say that if there are/were 15 planned PCPs in your exchange area for a fibre twin, and yours is one of the very first to see building works, then it's more lkely that it'll be a while yet. For example, three exchanges near me had ~8 cabs switched on and humming around 8 months before anyone in the exchange area could order FTTC or get a tick on the FTTC checker, but in the (again, roughly speaking) month before about 90% of the echange area then got the go-ahead for FTTC orders, 2 or 3 more fibre cabs were installed and rapidly cross-connected. So that meant that some people saw and heard a fibre cabinet humming and connected to their PCP the best part of a year before they could order, but others knew nothing about it until a few weeks beforehand, when they suddenly saw OR arrive and install a cabinet.

There isn't even a way to work out how far your cabinet is along the "queue" unless you ask personally and OR want to give out the information - one cabinet here is live and serving an estate which didn't exist a year and a half ago, and in the (now very old) leaked spreadsheed that was not even listed, because it served nearly zero domestic properties before the new estate was built. Likewise, another PCP on the same exchange which has served loads of domestic properties for about 40 years is down on the spreadsheet as part of phase 8b, but has seen zero work even planned for it as far as I know. I can't remember when phase 8b was long gone, probably about a year ago now.

As others have told you, there is no way to know unless Open Reach tell you. I've mapped all our local cabinets, and there is still one which was installed over a year ago which is not active, it's not in an out lying area, there are other cabinets around it live, so who knows why it isn't live.

What I suggest you do is email nga.enquiries at openreach.co.uk , they will most likely email you back an estimated date, but can take some time to reply.

Telemetry line (usually done early in the process) and the power meter, then acceptance testing. If that passes it should show RFS in a few days, otherwise could be a further indefinite delay.