Exchange Enabled, Cabinet upgraded but not enabled

I've been patiently waiting for my exchange to be activated which was done about 3 weeks ago. My street cabinet has been installed (i.e. I've seen the street furniture at least!) but it's not activated.

Has anyone experienced anything like this? I'm curious to know if it's temporary; I guess Openreach wouldn't have bothered installing the thing if they weren't going to activate it? Very annoying as every other cabinet near me has been activated! Grrr.

If it's not activated by the end of this month I'll contact Openreach again.

Edited by deleted (Tue 18-Mar-14 16:53:34)

Which cabinet on which exchange, someone may know something.

There are numerous possible delays for an individual cabinet, the most extreme being a planning object needing it to be moved.

Hi there,

Knew there was something I'd forgotten.

It's Prestwick, Scotland; cabinet 12.

The estimated date was 31st March 2014 for the cabinet, so it may be some others have managed to go early as part of the commercial roll-out.

Is this the cabinet?
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@55.488841,-4.604134,3...

Nothing obvious I can find about delays.

In reply to a post by yogger:

If it's not activated by the end of this month I'll contact Openreach again.

I am afraid you cannot deal with openreach. Your ISP have to deal with Openreach on your behalf.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The estimated date was 31st March 2014 for the cabinet, so it may be some others have managed to go early as part of the commercial roll-out.

Is this the cabinet?
https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@55.488841,-4.604134,3...

Nothing obvious I can find about delays.

Cheers guys,

Yup, and the new fiber cabinet is on the corner across the road from the old cabinet beside the BT manhole covers you maybe able to make out.

@adslmax When I say contact openreach I mean the email on the superfast website which I've used before my exchange went live. It's why I won't contact them again until April.

Edited by deleted (Tue 18-Mar-14 19:01:21)

In reply to a post by yogger:

@adslmax When I say contact openreach I mean the email on the superfast website which I've used before my exchange went live. It's why I won't contact them again until April.

As I understand it recent reports suggest they've stopped e-mail enquiries.

Yes that is correct the email has now stopped.

Ah right, I hadn't noticed that.

Well I guess there's nothing I can do about it then apart from keep waiting. I suspect when it gets to the end of this month the various sites will just up date the expected availability to the end of June and so the cycle continues!

Bit annoying when the cabinet is sitting there.

This is what it says on the bt wholesale site:

"FTTC is currently not available on this cabinet due to following reasons:- Sorry it's taking us longer than planned to get your cabinet ready for service. Please bear with us."

Edited by deleted (Wed 19-Mar-14 13:07:49)

At least you have an estimated go live date.

My cab, and all the others around here just say 2014. My cabs been in since the end of Jan.

I still see BT/Contractors about now and then so work is being done.

I'm expecting a go live date of the end of this month. We shall see!

I suspect the go-live date is entirely meaningless as they just keep updating it when the quarter has elapsed.

Does seem that way

You think your situation is bad. I've had to wait longer and still waiting.

Manchester Blackfriars (MRBLA) went live March 2012. My cab - PCP132 was installed April 2012 and has sat there ever since (cold), vast number of slippages resulting in a March 31st 2014 RFS date. Fibre link got completed in August 2013 (multiple duct blockages needed resolving) It's now been waiting for power since Aug 2013 and still no sign of any work. Roadworks.org shows no scheduled power work for at least next 6 months.

So fed-up with the lack of progress, I got in touch with Liv Garfield (CEO of OpenReach) before she departed to Seven Trent Water and she involved a Richard Hall (Project Director for FTTx), both gave me the yarn about the complexity of rolling out and serving a cab, fair enough..... but then went on to say they'd find out what's holding up my cab going live.... all went quiet, so contacted Richard Hall again, said that he "hadn't seen any notifications for power work yet!", then I replied asking him "has the job pack been raised with the power company to service the cab?" no reply, complete silence after that email exchange.....mailed him again (over 2 weeks ago) and more silence. In other words no response = "no, they haven't raised the job yet!"

Don't expect my cab to go live by 31st March... Hopefully June 2014, then again maybe Sept 2014? or maybe Dec 2014... or 2015?

OpenReach are too interested in chasing free (BDUK) money at the present, until that dries up they de-prioritise "other" or perhaps more challenging commercial work such as my cab which means having to dip into their own pockets!

In reply to a post by yogger:

Has anyone experienced anything like this? I'm curious to know if it's temporary; I guess Openreach wouldn't have bothered installing the thing if they weren't going to activate it? Very annoying as every other cabinet near me has been activated! Grrr.

There's a whole raft of dead cabinets around here been siting unused for almost two years now. I'd assumed it was some chronic problem with blocked ducts and the council being awkward with roadworks permissions, but apparently BT just have a great big backlog of work (at least around here, dunno if it's nationwide).

Take their activation dates with a giant handful of salt - they were saying mine would be ready about a year before they ever even applied for planning permission (and this was 3 years ago, they still haven't even installed the cabinet). Currently it's showing as 31/march, but that's total fiction also as there's no roadworks booked.

Edited by arfster (Wed 19-Mar-14 18:21:16)

Hi,

Cabs 8, 10 and 12 are still on the "to do" list at that exchange, I don't unfortunately have any information as to why but when you look through the exchange lists it happens all the time where some cabs will be ready straight away and others come on over the next couple of months. There's been 4 batches of cabs enabled at that exchange so far, I wouldn't think it'd be too long.

When did they stop replying to emails?

In reply to a post by DaveTomlinson:

Hi,

Cabs 8, 10 and 12 are still on the "to do" list at that exchange, I don't unfortunately have any information as to why but when you look through the exchange lists it happens all the time where some cabs will be ready straight away and others come on over the next couple of months. There's been 4 batches of cabs enabled at that exchange so far, I wouldn't think it'd be too long.

Hi Dave,

Thanks for this extra information. I'll just keep on waiting and checking!

@CiscoKid: That is quite a saga you've got there. Hope it doesn't last too much longer.

Edited by deleted (Thu 20-Mar-14 11:47:37)

In reply to a post by arfster:

There's a whole raft of dead cabinets around here been siting unused for almost two years now. I'd assumed it was some chronic problem with blocked ducts and the council being awkward with roadworks permissions, but apparently BT just have a great big backlog of work (at least around here, dunno if it's nationwide).

Take their activation dates with a giant handful of salt - they were saying mine would be ready about a year before they ever even applied for planning permission (and this was 3 years ago, they still haven't even installed the cabinet). Currently it's showing as 31/march, but that's total fiction also as there's no roadworks booked.

Indeed, there is a lot of truth in this. I do believe there is a huge backlog of work and it's intentional.

I have access to the weekly FTTC Deployment Report on the OpenReach portal. I regularly see steady increases of cabinets going live in the BDUK areas (every week) which would suggest that BTOR are focussing on chasing "free money". Once that dries up I suspect that they will resume concentrating on their commercial areas.

Or it could be they are focussing on meeting their contractual obligations with BDUK in preference to their own commercial deployment, which isn't subject to penalties for late delivery?

Compounded by this too, of course...

Around the time when every man, woman and their dog started to email them and the commercial roll-out was coming to an end, so in theory most issues should be handled via the local authorities.

Was just asking because I received a reply from them only last month, just wondering if it was definitely the case or if some just hadn't gotten replies and assumed.

Does anyone have any inside imformation regarding the upgrading of Walney exchange (LCWAL) cabinet 6?

Thankyou

Andy

Believe most cabinets at the exchange are already live and looks like something just delaying some of the cabinets

cheers for that, will have to go and try to identify cabinet 6, there is one about 150yrds away from my house (not twin cabinet) and another about 300yrds (new green cabinet installed 5 months ago following road route). My current speed is 18mb adsl2+ so hopefully could get decent speeds on fiber, is there no specific info regarding duct blockages etc or to why the general hold ups?


cheers



Andy

In reply to a post by rd350ypvs:

cheers for that, will have to go and try to identify cabinet 6, there is one about 150yrds away from my house (not twin cabinet) and another about 300yrds (new green cabinet installed 5 months ago following road route). My current speed is 18mb adsl2+ so hopefully could get decent speeds on fiber, is there no specific info regarding duct blockages etc or to why the general hold ups?


cheers



Andy

Crikey, the only reason I'm getting impatient about the activation is my advertised ADSL2+ speed currently is 5.5 Meg but I'm lucky if I get 4.5 Meg. If I had your 18 Meg (which I had at my previous address) I doubt I'd be upgrading to fiber.

Yes, always been the same way, the main bug bear is with kids always constantly using the low upload bandwidth and I need the most upload bandwidth for streaming etc, not bothered really about faster downlod, just the upto 20mb upload is important to me

In reply to a post by panda:

Or it could be they are focussing on meeting their contractual obligations with BDUK in preference to their own commercial deployment, which isn't subject to penalties for late delivery?

Dunno. It's a large project after all, and like pretty much any large British organisation incompetence and bureaucracy are probably to be expected.

On the plus side for BT, their basic network seems to be of rather high quality. Given that we're relying on them far more with fttc than one with llu adsl2, that's probably more important.


Anyway, for perspective .........

----------------------
Thank you for your Fibre Broadband enquiry.

During our deployment we sometimes encounter problems with our roll out plan which can unfortunately result in a delay to our initial plans, delays vary from 3 months to 12 months depending on the scale of the problem. The sort of issues that we encounter are things like blocked underground cable routes, disputed land ownership and the existence of unrecorded underground lines for utility companies to name a few.
If our forecasted lead time improves this will be reflected on the micro site for your exchange and on the line checker of your chosen service provider, as things stand the target date is 15/11/2011.
--------------------


Still no sign. Roadworks booked more times than I can count. Amount of work done: zero.

Edited by arfster (Fri 21-Mar-14 21:04:21)

Well, as I suspected, BT Wholesale has just updated the expected date to the end of June. Does anyone know if there is anyone I can contact now that the the openreach email has gone? Is it worth contacting BT as a potential customer?

Curious to know what the delay is for as another cabinet on the same road further away from the exchange is active.

Perhaps they do no need to do something with the road as the old grubby cabinet is on the opposite side. However, there must be ducting underneath the road already as there is a big housing estate already served by the same grubby cab.

Edited by deleted (Sun 30-Mar-14 17:55:31)

Can anyone help me my exchange is enabled and taking orders but my cabinet is not enabled can anyone find out what the plans are or when it will be enabled? Thanks.
Exchange : chiltion polden
Cabinet : 2
Thanks someone please help!!!!

I suspect the cabinet is due to go live soon pending any last minute delays

The lack of NGA Enquiries is very frustrating ..lol .. we are in same boat .. NEHAL95 .. nice shiny new cabinet (despite being told it wouldn't be coming at one point) but no clue as to when it will actually be switched on !!

With a LOT of houses on it, it would be useful to even have a month target beyond "31st Dec" Standard.

Just come through similar experience, exchange updated start of June, cabs went live by end of June. I couldn't order until 18th July. No idea why, very little information out there to help.

But unless there is some physical issue stopping it going live, should be enabled soon - just keep trying the BT Checker.

Our exchange went live for fibre three years ago and for over two years we have not only had a fibre cabinet but also a sticker on it saying BT infinity is here. Finally at the end of June we had ducting work done and last Wednesday Openreach were at the cabinet pulling fibre through. Hopefully on the last stretch now, at 0.8mb for ten years I feel like I'm deserving of fibre now

If the sticker says BT INFINITY IS HERE then that is unfair marketing, since Openreach should NOT promote one retailer over and above any other - got a picture of it.

This is true, it would be nice for them to send out letters saying we are installing fibre to your area and have a number so that we could phone to show interest that way these people that show interest will get it done first especially FTTP etc.

We have been waiting for openreach to finish our FTTP that was started way back in 2011 our ISP have even signed us up to beta the 100Mbit back then, and yet we are still waiting for it to be completed, we even have the manifold and the bottle on the pole our end which was done a couple of years ago, and its just murder keep seeing it there and still not have it yet, I did have a friend who works at openreach tell me that they was told our FTTP install would either start or be completed mid Autumn, tbh I cannot see this ever happening or it would of been done already, but I guess we will just have to wait and see.

As for even knowing when we will get fibre would be impossible due to like I said are down for FTTP i.e. no Cabinet to install, so we will have no clue of it until we see the fibre being blown down the tube/pipe into the manifold etc, at least people on FTTC will see the fibre cabinets being installed first.

Also I think there is due another rollout very soon for my exchange due to looking at when the last ones were completed on the BT Wholesale site, which also tally's up with the "Capacity expected 31 August 2014" for WBC ADSL2+ and WBC ADSL2+ Annex M so I am gathering openreach are hoping that loads of people will move over to the next Fibre rollout releasing the ports for ADSL on my exchange, so in a way we may not even be able to get broadband on my parents line due to our exchange has run out of ports and all the first come first server kind of thing.

In reply to a post by dewmass:

Our exchange went live for fibre three years ago and for over two years we have not only had a fibre cabinet but also a sticker on it saying BT infinity is here. Finally at the end of June we had ducting work done and last Wednesday Openreach were at the cabinet pulling fibre through. Hopefully on the last stretch now, at 0.8mb for ten years I feel like I'm deserving of fibre now

Wow, my situation is IDENTICAL, except I couldn't confirm the ducting was fibre related, it was done by BT but thats all I know.

I've been burned so many times though I am very doubtful it will actually come through soon for me.

I also feel the 0.8mb pain.

Mine is:

September 2013 - Openreach layed out fibre cable (lasted two days)
December 2013 - Contractors start work on 5 cabinets
January 2014 - Openreach connected up on new cabinets
February/March 2014 - My cabinet went LIVE first, other cabinets went LIVE later (one cabinet is delayed until Dec 2014)

Edited by adslmax (Tue 29-Jul-14 12:09:19)

As this is FTTP can you email me with details and will pester to see how things stand.

It maybe the tubing is in, but the fibre blowing is not complete as those teams are busy doing FTTC stuff all the time.

Thanks for your reply and any help you provide would be great.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

As this is FTTP can you email me with details and will pester to see how things stand.

Email sent, sorry for the life story LOL, you can if you want just scroll down to the bottom of the email for all our info, just let me know if you require any other info.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

It maybe the tubing is in, but the fibre blowing is not complete as those teams are busy doing FTTC stuff all the time.

This would make sense, but sadly I have only seen them install the Fibre Manifold in the pit and the tubing up the pole to the bottle enclosure didn't see them pushing through no tubing and I don't recall seeing any large drum of tubing either, maybe that was done when I was out.

One thing that I have noticed is that all the poles with lines going to the other phone cabinet which the BT Wholesale site says it has FTTP all have the sign about fibre above etc, yet all poles connected to the other phone cabinet like mine has no sign yet.

The thing that got me was all openreach engineers when asked about fibre install dates they all point to the fibre manifold and the bottle enclosure and say its already installed, one engineer that I asked for them to check the manifold told me that he was running behind schedule and didn't have the time to open it up to check.

In reply to a post by jj02:

In reply to a post by dewmass:

Our exchange went live for fibre three years ago and for over two years we have not only had a fibre cabinet but also a sticker on it saying BT infinity is here. Finally at the end of June we had ducting work done and last Wednesday Openreach were at the cabinet pulling fibre through. Hopefully on the last stretch now, at 0.8mb for ten years I feel like I'm deserving of fibre now

Wow, my situation is IDENTICAL, except I couldn't confirm the ducting was fibre related, it was done by BT but thats all I know.

I've been burned so many times though I am very doubtful it will actually come through soon for me.

I also feel the 0.8mb pain.

Our cabinet finally went live at 1am. Order placed at 4am with a date of installation of the 14th August. 13 more days of slow internet to go. Feels like Xmas Eve!

In reply to a post by dewmass:

In reply to a post by jj02:

In reply to a post by dewmass:

Our exchange went live for fibre three years ago and for over two years we have not only had a fibre cabinet but also a sticker on it saying BT infinity is here. Finally at the end of June we had ducting work done and last Wednesday Openreach were at the cabinet pulling fibre through. Hopefully on the last stretch now, at 0.8mb for ten years I feel like I'm deserving of fibre now

Wow, my situation is IDENTICAL, except I couldn't confirm the ducting was fibre related, it was done by BT but thats all I know.

I've been burned so many times though I am very doubtful it will actually come through soon for me.

I also feel the 0.8mb pain.

Our cabinet finally went live at 1am. Order placed at 4am with a date of installation of the 14th August. 13 more days of slow internet to go. Feels like Xmas Eve!

Did any of the checkers update with new availability dates as it approached becoming live? or did they remain the generic 'Sep 2014' ect

We've never had a sticker on ours and still not one as today so I am back to pessimistic mode

In reply to a post by jj02:

In reply to a post by dewmass:

In reply to a post by jj02:

... nested quotes trimmed ...

Wow, my situation is IDENTICAL, except I couldn't confirm the ducting was fibre related, it was done by BT but thats all I know.

I've been burned so many times though I am very doubtful it will actually come through soon for me.

I also feel the 0.8mb pain.

Our cabinet finally went live at 1am. Order placed at 4am with a date of installation of the 14th August. 13 more days of slow internet to go. Feels like Xmas Eve!

Did any of the checkers update with new availability dates as it approached becoming live? or did they remain the generic 'Sep 2014' ect

We've never had a sticker on ours and still not one as today so I am back to pessimistic mode

No, ours was upgraded as part of BDUK and apparently they just go live and the date never changes on the availability checker.

If you go to http://fttc-check.alc.im you'll get info about you cabinet there

fttc check is down, i.e. data removed

The variations are down to the level of information councils want to provide. Best to use https://www.btwholesale.com/includes/adsl/main.html which will show a cabinet once it is live and taking orders no matter whether commercial, community or BDUK funded.

Openreach are to do postcode level checking soon apparently.