Fibre is coming... hopefully!

So over the Easter weekend I saw a massive reel of thick cable (I think it was black with the yellow stripe) sitting outside the LCORT telephone exchange. Then on Tuesday - 3 BT openreach vans and a small lorry appear, and they start opening up the manholes on the side of the road from the exchange to Tebay village! As I went past in the car I noticed them feeding in the main black cable (which I presume is the fibre), but also they had about 4 or 5 small reels of thin blue cable. Does anyone have any idea what this could be??

The black stuff is tubing that the fibre is then blown through
The blue may have been pull rope that is fed through to help pull the heavy tubing later.

Same here i saw the black cable on a roll and man holes being opened, i thought it was the fibre but just seen the post by MrS We've had a lot of action past couple of days too

I do find the lack of info from openreach a bit frustrating, the local exchange as already been fibre enabled, but when i check when we will get it in our village on FTTC checkers they all say not part of a phase or under evaluation we have already been told under connecting cheshire that we are due from end of March 2014 and most of the work as been done.

From what ive seen, individual cabs dont get an enabled date but just seem to go live overnight

Individual cabs under the commercial scheme got a date on the BT Wholesale checker

For the BDUK projects, it varies some councils seem not to release dates for checkers until a cabinet is actually live.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Individual cabs under the commercial scheme got a date on the BT Wholesale checker

For the BDUK projects, it varies some councils seem not to release dates for checkers until a cabinet is actually live.

Thanks for that, i've already asked connecting cheshire and they say they don't know anything until openreach tell them it's live. Because they don't want to give dates that are likely to slip due to any blocked ducts

In reply to a post by Kimi:

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Individual cabs under the commercial scheme got a date on the BT Wholesale checker

For the BDUK projects, it varies some councils seem not to release dates for checkers until a cabinet is actually live.

Thanks for that, i've already asked connecting cheshire and they say they don't know anything until openreach tell them it's live. Because they don't want to give dates that are likely to slip due to any blocked ducts

That's good to know, it seems Connecting Cumbria also do not provide information down to cabinet level (apart from a list of already enabled cabs), it would definately be nice to have some more information apart from "Exchange [x] is due to be enabled by the end of [month/year]" as many exchanges serve various villages and hamlets so it's unclear which areas will benefit and which will miss out - and also there's no detailed phase info - i.e. whether they plan to return to an area or not. Last year they did mention something about giving information down to postcode level but there's no sign of that yet :/

And unfortunately roadworks.org does not cover Cumbria, although I'm told they are trialling it on their internal systems.

Edited by deleted (Wed 23-Apr-14 16:33:36)

http://www.thinkbroadband.com/news/6419-poll-results...

Has a wider view from a poll, 63% said they'd rather wait until such time as the estimated date was a 100% certainty.

I suspect a lot depends on what complaints a council has had in the past and during the project, i.e. all it takes is one or two people moaning constantly to make a council decide to stop posting more information. I've seen it often enough where I've heard presentations on broadband roll-outs that months down the line are interpreted as some official promising coverage by a certain date, when they had used words like estimate, i.e. people see estimate and ASSUME it is 100%.

I can tell you from experience that Connecting Cheshire are useless and they couldn't give out useful information if their lives depended on it. The only way to know if your cabinet is live is to keep checking the DSL checker, and if you really want to setup one of the free webpage monitoring services to check on your behalf regularly.

Connecting Cheshire told me to wait until a sticker was on the outside of the new cab to tell me when FTTC was available, I've had it for a month now and there is still no sticker, that's how useful they are

In reply to a post by fig:

Connecting Cheshire told me to wait until a sticker was on the outside of the new cab to tell me when FTTC was available, I've had it for a month now and there is still no sticker, that's how useful they are

Yep thats what they told me as well, they said i would probably know before them

I understand what your saying and what the poll suggests.

But i would like some info no dates or estimates are needed, but maybe a check list of what as been done and what is left to be done on a cab

I agree - and if a cab is definitely planned to be upgraded / in the process of being upgraded or even if cable is being laid somewhere, it would be good to know. This kind of information is already publicly available on roadworks.org for most counties (and you can search for up to 12 months in advance), it's just unfortunate that Cumbria isn't covered. It could always be worth checking on there as Cheshire is covered, although I guess it's possible that BT may not need to do any roadworks to activate the cab (?)

Edited by deleted (Wed 23-Apr-14 18:38:09)

roadworks.org is bit sporadic here one minutes its saying work to be done then its gone and they turn up at some other time, all the work that has been done last few days wasn't even on there and temp lights were used for one bit on Tuesday.

A check list would at least let us know what has and hasnt been done, rather than all checkers saying its not available, under evaluation and not part of a phase when it obviously is

They maybe useless with info but at least they are bringing fibre to the villages so i have to give a bit of credit to them

All comes down to time and money, a check list is a nice idea but how helpfull would it be to the general public as dates will slip and most will preffer to know its live.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The black stuff is tubing that the fibre is then blown through

How far can they blow?

Potentially a kilometre I think, for further they splice the fibre together

Depends how much they had to drink the night before. And how hard it is raining.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Potentially a kilometre I think, for further they splice the fibre together

Interesting, they were about kilometer from the cab at a manhole when i saw them on tuesday, would they lay the tube and blow fibre at same time or would it be two separate jobs

Often two different jobs, but could be done the same day if they wanted too

They're well over a kilometre here to connnect to the next village. Rain was hammering down too so can't have been making their job easy. Didn't manage to see if anyone was there today and how progress is going but will try to take a photo tomorrow. Hopefully they'll still be there and closer to the village too!

I recall that B4RN blowing near 2km, but I'm not sure whether that was a single blow, or broken down into shorter segments

There are You-Tube videos of them blowing a long run segment-by-segment, with them forming figures-of-eight of the excess fibre at the chambers in-between segments.

Went to have a listen last night and it's turned on now i can hear the fans going. Got some funny looks from dog walkers with my head up against a green box lol

In reply to a post by Kimi:

Went to have a listen last night and it's turned on now i can hear the fans going.

My cab has had power going to it for the last 2 month. Still isn't live

In reply to a post by lentini:

My cab has had power going to it for the last 2 month. Still isn't live

Thanks

Kimi, out of interest did they build the cab before laying the cable, or put the cab in when the cable reached the village?

In reply to a post by indigobanana:

Kimi, out of interest did they build the cab before laying the cable, or put the cab in when the cable reached the village?

Yes they did the cab was fitted in late January, then the trench to the old cab was done about a week later and since then various things have been done, cable duct was done over easter not sure if the fibres been blown yet but cab has power

In reply to a post by Kimi:

Yes they did the cab was fitted in late January, then the trench to the old cab was done about a week later and since then various things have been done, cable duct was done over easter not sure if the fibres been blown yet but cab has power

Ahh nice, you should be live in no time!
I find it strange that there's no sign of a new cab here or anywhere else but they're already laying the tubing. Could be for backhaul to the exchange I guess but no idea where the cabling will go...

Openreach fitted 160 cabs as part of phase 1 of connecting cheshire that was the first job to be done, others have said that they do things in different order so your cab might not be first job . We should be done between end of March 2014 and Summer 2014 which is when phase 2 starts.