In reply to a post by MCM:

In reply to a post by sjdean:

Strawman. You called questionned my positioning, do you know better? You too have a position otherwise there would be no opposition. Seriously, if you know better, please tell me, otherwise your conjecture is no different to mine. Actually mines probably a bit more valid based on what I see in my area. Do you live in Birmingham?

You clearly don't have a clue as to what is involved, you also appear to have a comprehension problem either that or you cannot read.

What's involved? Well, probably not everything down to the nitty gritty. But I would hazard guess that they'll need to develop the backend infrastructure nationally and locally between exchanges to carry the traffic. Then there will be the local roll out of the fibre to the cabs, not to mention the cabs themselves which are subject to planning permission which can take months to sort out. These themselves can be restricted with power issues, conservation issues, wayleaves. The hardware could be faulty too. Trunking can be subject to wayleaves running over what is now private ground. Trunking can also be damaged from roots, other works, cracked plastic pipes or even cracked ceramic ducts that we have around here or even too full to cope with more cabling requiring long sections of road to be dug up to lay new trunking, junction boxes, quite often re-shell PCP cabinets. Each area of work will be carried out by different teams. Around here Carillion seem to be the digging, Cass do the fibre, and Im guessing BT OpenReach will also sometimes step in themselves to help with cabling as I've seen them do. Im guessing that the local network has to be planned to obtain resiliency, junctions and nodes will have to be planned appropriately and any deviations in the route due to damaged trunking, could cause major issues I would hazard a guess. I haven't figured out if a "fibre to the cabinet" is one fibre or multiple fibres, or indeed if one fibre, if that same fibre can feed the next cabinet down the line. Roadworks will be subject to council planning, Section 58 restrictions etc, other road works in the area, I would also think that they may want to time the work to cause least disruption. I would imagine once everythings in place they'll want to monitor the stability before sending anybody live on it. That's quite simplified but seems to be the basic gist of it. Of course what happens behind the doors at BT as to which cabinet gets upgraded first I don't know, but I would also think that service problems take greater priority than installations. That's not to mention problems with weather, man power, scheduling, etc. Teams have to talk to each other, planning, survey, approval, waiting on each team to complete their bit before moving on with the next. Though by and large it seems the ground work once actually confirmed runs quite smoothly and quickly.

But lets go back to the original point. I understand that BT have pencilled a date for May 2014 for their FTTC Commercial Deployment. Hence why many posters say dates have been put to that end point for many cabs.

My point was with the amount of problems and delays I see in my area (the general greater Birmingham suburb), and the fact that there's still many cabinets even to be scheduled for installation and planning permission required, I am skeptical of them achieving everything they wanted to achieve by that point. Even if they installed them all there can still be other issues as detailed above.

I've also pointed out that there are two cabinets in particular, who have had their dates pushed back and pushed back with no noticable activity. Fair enough they both have problems routing the cable from the Exchange (which is odd as Cab 22 which is about 500ft further on from Cab 14) has been activated (though it could be fed from a neighboring Exchange), and if Cab 13 is such a major issue and still in line for December 2013 activation, why have I not seen anything yet? My point there, is that it's either a really simple problem but they can't get anybody to the area - which given the other work scheduled for the exchange area just seems a bit of a flaky excuse, or it's a complicated problem and the dates are going to be pushed back again - not through any problems, but just simply because they haven't done anything. In comparison, there is another cab, 27, went on roadworks.org last month requiring 500m of fibre, disappeared off the checker, but back on a month later with roadworks scheduled for three weeks time with traffic lights in two areas as far as I can see to fix ducts and install a load of new trunking and do the fibre. The roadworks in surrounding areas are drying up and OpenReach pushing wider out, and yet there's still nothing going on with 13 and 14.

To counteract your opening argument, it's not one cab in 10,000... it's well, so far, 4 cabs in 30 that OpenReach seem to have a problem with in my Exchange area alone, the fact that it's taking them four months and counting to sort out - if that is indicative of the what's happening nationally as other posters talk about themselves, well, your argument is flawed. It may be once the cabs are installed they can then come back and sort out the ones with the problems. But it seems a bit flimsy on behalf of OpenReach to give their arbitrary date, do nothing, then push it back another three months - especially when they can work religiously on these ten cabinets or those ten cabinets or come back and fix two others, all the while, still doing nothing to yours. Im not even talking roadworks yet, Im talking chalk lines on the road about where to dig, or even roadworks.org notices, notices from the council, even some disturbed manhole covers or seeing an OpenReach van in the area.

Of course you seem to disagree with me, but you claim you don't have a position. To disagree with me, means that your position is the opposite of mine, in that you think they will succeed and meet their deadline and that OpenReach can do whatever they like - they're a big company with a big network after all.

Your attitude does sound very positive. But unless you work for OpenReach and know some inside information that I don't, then all of your positive conjecture is no more accurate than mine. But what I did say was that my conjecture, my anecdotal evidence, my knowledge and understanding of my area, Birmingham, is a lot more valid than your conjecture about Birmingham.

There's no need to tell me that because I know my area and can see what is happening that, sarcastically, I should be some kind of project planner for BT.

But at the end of the day, I don't know, I can't be sure. Im quite confident in my assesment, but I don't work for BT. But also, you don't know. You don't work for BT. Do you?

I do feel I've been quite clear on this and amazed you have to call into question my literacy skills and call me ignorant which is quite frankly a little rude. Ignorant maybe, but Im no more ignorant than you - unless you have work for OpenReach?

David thinks it could be commercially sensitive to give out the kind of information NGA is giving out (plus a little bit more) about estimates and problems. I'd like to see a little more details. If there were some facts, there would be no hypothesising. If BT said "there are major problems with tree roots requiring X metres of trunking and because it is a narrow road this needs a site survey due to underground water gas and electricity. This will take us X months to collect plans and survey..." I'd believe them. If however say for Cab 14 where I think Ribble said "should be live soon" (back in October) and the indication is that it is a small one metre trunking issue but it takes them four months to solve, I'd be a little less convinced.

I'm not even going to bother reading that post.

Why should your cabinet have priority? And yes of course BT have their own internal schedule.

They work in strange ways, and there is very little, if anything we can do about it.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

I'm not even going to bother reading that post.

Hehe. Don't blame you. Im getting tired of getting misquoted and misinterpreted myself.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

Why should your cabinet have priority? And yes of course BT have their own internal schedule.

But I never said it should be, just that it isn't for BT, or at least, it's a low priority. I just want my cabinet, to be dealt with, in order in line with other cabinets, and not pushed back to the queue while they work on everything else. It's just very frustrating to see things being pushed back and no work being undertaken. It's bewildering to see the disparity in cabinet activations where they can work their socks off on those few and others left out.

In reply to a post by R0NSKI:

They work in strange ways, and there is very little, if anything we can do about it.

Yes, and that is the message I fully agree with. BT have their own ways and schedules, but that's a fairer thing to say to someone who is asking why their cabinet has been delayed rather than churning out the old "it's a trunking issue". It will be enabled when it's enabled.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

the cabs themselves which are subject to planning permission which can take months to sort out

A substantial proportion of cabinets never needed planning permission. The proportion that need planning permission was further reduced by a change in the law that came into force from 27 June 2013, as recently discussed in this forum.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

re-shell PCP cabinets

Various factors determine the need to re-shell. Many cabinets have no need of being reshelled.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

I haven't figured out if a "fibre to the cabinet" is one fibre or multiple fibres, or indeed if one fibre, if that same fibre can feed the next cabinet down the line.

Multiple fibres are brought into the cabinet, as can be seen in MrSaffron's internal picture of one of the Cornish cabinets. The fibres enter through the leftmost black tube in the right hand bay, before going into the trays under the transparent cover with the black felt tip writing on. The fibres are fused to the yellow pigtails, with the splice in its heatshrink sleeve being clipped into the trays and some of the spare fibre length being wound into the tray to strain relieve the splice and leave enough length for future resplicing if a repair is needed.

The yellow pigtails make their way through the black grommet into the right hand side of the cabinet, where you see them again in translucent spiral wrap hanging down the left hand side of the DSLAM. It appears that only a single fibre is plugged in to the DSLAM, with the remainder of the simplex LC connectors (the blue parts on the end) hanging down. Indeed, there's only one optical transceiver fitted in the DSLAM - the remaining SFP ports are all blanked off.

MrSaffron may know more about that cabinet, but I presume that these fibres are a mixture of spares and future diverse routes. You can't say anything about the fibre network topology from the number of tubes, as you don't know what is fused to what in the aggregation node.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

But lets go back to the original point. I understand that BT have pencilled a date for May 2014 for their FTTC Commercial Deployment. Hence why many posters say dates have been put to that end point for many cabs.

As you have been told several times, the May 2014 date is because of complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority from people who treated a 'best estimate' date as a promise of service availability. The only response possible was to obscure much of the previous detail with very pessimistic dates that people couldn't complain about.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

4 cabs in 30 that OpenReach seem to have a problem with in my Exchange area alone

Yet again, you engage in lengthy pontification based on your understanding of the local situation. 4 cabinets are a tiny proportion of the number of cabinets that Openreach enable every quarter, and the issues local to those cabinets are not necessarily representative of those faced over a wider area. This is a massive project being played out on a national scale, in which the installation issues facing these four cabinets are a very minor part.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

David thinks it could be commercially sensitive to give out the kind of information NGA is giving out (plus a little bit more) about estimates and problems. I'd like to see a little more details. If there were some facts, there would be no hypothesising.

You can keep hypothesising here as long as you like - it's not going to get you any more information.

The potential commercial sensitivity is obvious. If niche providers such as fixed wireless operators can discover where Openreach are facing roll-out challenges, they could target their efforts toward those areas. There may also be sensitivities around the BDUK process - though it's pretty much guaranteed now that Openreach will win every BDUK contract, it's not in Openreach's interests to reveal any more than they have to.


The bigger issue is that no company is in the habit of giving out internal operational information, especially when people might try to use that information against them. The workload for Openreach in answering all the questions from the public about the issues being faced in particular areas and the proposals to resolve them would be immense. Would you rather operational staff were getting on with rolling out the network or answering questions from the public?

What good would it do having this information anyway, beyond satisfying your curiosity whilst you wait? As live operational information, the future timeline to deploy delayed cabinets will change from week to week as other work overruns or finishes early. You want to keep resources utilised, not keep moving them around to finish off odd jobs. Inevitably, this means things finish up out of order from the original sequence.


You've posted elsewhere about waiting your turn and wondering whether you've been shoved to the back of the queue. Like it or not, the work does not necessarily remain in the original order - cabinets are slipped down the programme when they hit problems that can't be resolved in the available contingency time.

You were given an estimate, and now you feel aggrieved that Openreach missed it. This is precisely the reason why the most common answer to the target date for any commercial cabinet now is the projected end of the commercial roll-out.

I can't see anywhere in this thread, on a quick scan, where [email protected] has been mentioned. That is where you may get a reasonably detailed answer about your cabinet.

Though the response time from it now seems to be rather longer than the original 2-3 weeks. Too many queries I expect.

Edited by RobertoS (Wed 06-Nov-13 22:56:02)

In reply to a post by David_W:

In reply to a post by sjdean:

the cabs themselves which are subject to planning permission which can take months to sort out

A substantial proportion of cabinets never needed planning permission. The proportion that need planning permission was further reduced by a change in the law that came into force from 27 June 2013, as recently discussed in this forum.

In reply to a post by sjdean:

re-shell PCP cabinets

Various factors determine the need to re-shell. Many cabinets have no need of being reshelled.

I don't know why you're being difficult for in countering these points. The fact of the matter is, these things can and do happen, sometimes planning permission is required, and sometimes cabs need to be reshelled, many of the cabs in my area have been reshelled. What's your point? That some don't need this? Well that's good, but it doesn't invalidate what I said apart from adding useless chatter.

snip

In reply to a post by David_W:

In reply to a post by sjdean:

But lets go back to the original point. I understand that BT have pencilled a date for May 2014 for their FTTC Commercial Deployment. Hence why many posters say dates have been put to that end point for many cabs.

As you have been told several times, the May 2014 date

Why are you being so aggressive for? I know that several cabs have had their date set to May 2014 as part of the commercial roll out, I've not complained about that aspect, I merely stated a fact... But you seem to be telling me that I've been told what I've said.... You're not making any sense.

Your attitude is insufferable.

In reply to a post by David_W:

In reply to a post by sjdean:

4 cabs in 30 that OpenReach seem to have a problem with in my Exchange area alone

Yet again, you engage in lengthy pontification based on your understanding of the local situation. 4 cabinets are a tiny proportion of the number of cabinets that Openreach enable every quarter, and the issues local to those cabinets are not necessarily representative of those faced over a wider area. This is a massive project being played out on a national scale, in which the installation issues facing these four cabinets are a very minor part.

I love the defence of a crabby service - it's a massive project. Just because it's massive doesn't mean it couldn't be managed better, and just because people can see flaws in the management, doesn't mean you should volunteer them to do the job! It's time for providers to provide a better service.

I happen to be a genealogist, as well as work in tech support. And Im a programmer. My brain is programmed to see patterns. I cannot believe you can truly sit there with a straight face and think you cannot extrapolate a wider picture of issues based on a smaller subset of data and actually sit there and criticise me for doing so. If the internet wasn't littered with people with similar problems of delays and pontification by BT, you'd have a point.

The original point, which you've snipped to win the argument, is that the PP claimed that I found the 1 cabinet in 10,000 with a problem. No Im sorry, you can extrapolate 4 cabinets in 30 on CMSPR exchange to a larger area. We can open that to the wider Birmingham area and see similar issues and read about other peoples problems all across the internet and see delays and issues everywhere.

You talk rubbish.

No doubt you'll snip and twist and argue against the one point I never made to try and win the argument.

In reply to a post by David_W:

In reply to a post by sjdean:

David thinks it could be commercially sensitive to give out the kind of information NGA is giving out (plus a little bit more) about estimates and problems. I'd like to see a little more details. If there were some facts, there would be no hypothesising.

You can keep hypothesising here as long as you like - it's not going to get you any more information.

The potential commercial sensitivity is obvious. If niche providers such as fixed wireless operators can discover where Openreach are facing roll-out challenges, they could target their efforts toward those areas.

Surely that would be anti-competitive - what about the OpenReach SuperFast checker, DSL Checker and even NGA themselves - ok may not be strictly public, but it still gives out information.

The bigger issue is that no company is in the habit of giving out internal operational information, especially when people might try to use that information against them. The workload for Openreach in answering all the questions from the public about the issues being faced in particular areas and the proposals to resolve them would be immense. Would you rather operational staff were getting on with rolling out the network or answering questions from the public?


False argument. NGA already answer questions from the public from their email address. If a subset of that information was put on the DSL Checker it would cut those queries and save time.

In reply to a post by David_W:

What good would it do having this information anyway, beyond satisfying your curiosity whilst you wait? As live operational information, the future timeline to deploy delayed cabinets will change from week to week as other work overruns or finishes early. You want to keep resources utilised, not keep moving them around to finish off odd jobs.

Well that's what they seem be doing at the moment in returning to finish off the jobs they missed. Except for the cab Im connected to.

In reply to a post by David_W:

You've posted elsewhere about waiting your turn and wondering whether you've been shoved to the back of the queue. Like it or not, the work does not necessarily remain in the original order - cabinets are slipped down the programme when they hit problems that can't be resolved in the available contingency time.

But they could still deal with issues in order couldn't they...

In reply to a post by David_W:

You were given an estimate, and now you feel aggrieved that Openreach missed it. This is precisely the reason why the most common answer to the target date for any commercial cabinet now is the projected end of the commercial roll-out.

That's a false statement too, I don't feel aggrieved OpenReach missed it - if there are problems, there are problems - but Im annoyed that they don't seem to be working on this one but seem to be doing every other job in the area. And not all cabinets have had their dates set to May 2014 - you've come out with that rubbish before. Yes, several cabs do say May 2014, but there's a good number that don't including 5 of 30 in my area.

Your gratitude for the answer to your question about the number of fibres entering the cabinet is noted.

Whilst I was answering that question, it took few extra words to add some further information about reshells and planning permission. You added rather more words to this thread via your threadcopping.


If you are so aggrieved by Openreach's scheduling practices and progress in your area, I suggest you follow Bob's advice and e-mail them to tell them. Several people have told you why sticking to the proposed order isn't always possible, so I expect your views will change nothing, but unless you address them directly to Openreach, how can anything change?

People are not defending BT from what I see but are explaining there could be many things in the background that are affecting certain areas more than others. Thinking problems should be dealt with in order is naive for a programmer - often you have to deal with the quick wins whilst waiting for other things to happen to deal with the harder stuff - that is life.

Also, extrapolating upwards is fine for stats but has to be done very carefully. If you were to take 10 square miles in tornado alley and count the number of tornados in a year you might then try to extrapolate that to the whole of the planet - and clearly that would be wildly wrong - but if the only information you have is that area then you would think you are dead right (and error that seems to be made over and over again by climate theorists - but then the good ones know the error exists and should caveat it).

Will BT complete by May 2014? Probably not. Will they change the goal posts or carefully craft their press release so that it seems they completed? Probably. Will their be people that were on the list for FTTC and don't get it because of issues and BT changing priorities? Almost certainly. Will BT be close enough to their target to consider it a win and a good news story? I would say yes.

Thanks for the effort in gathering/ reporting the figures.