Superfast West Yorkshire

Thank you for your enquiry and apologies it has taken some time to respond.

The Superfast West Yorkshire programme aims to bring fibre broadband to at least 97% of the area�s homes and businesses by the end of 2015, and alternative technology solutions for those hard to reach areas, the �final 3%�. Superfast West Yorkshire will ensure that everyone within the programme will have access to minimum broadband speeds of 2Mbps by the end of 2015.

As your post code is not currently part of the programme we referred your enquiry on to our colleagues in Openreach to get the most up to date information.

As you already know you are on an exchange only line. The type of solution planned is for Openreach where possible to what they call �re-parent� the exchange only lines. This means that the Distribution Point which currently serves your premises would be re-parented to an existing Cabinet which has already upgraded to fibre broadband under the commercial programme. Openreach are currently planning solutions to serve a number of exchange only lines. However, at the moment they cannot give any guarantees that your line will be included until the planning and survey work has been completed.

In addition the Government has recently announced its intention to make further funds available so that superfast broadband can be extended to more premises in West Yorkshire. Superfast West Yorkshire is already in discussions with Government to try and secure these funds as soon as possible.

Not sure I get what this post is about? I assume this is a response to some question you raised to West Yorkshire but with no context or any text other than the response you received it is difficult to understand what this is about - are you asking a question, making some sort of statement, venting or something else?

Sorry, I misplaced the quotation marks.

It is a response I received from an online query form to Superfast W.Yorks.

I actually represent 35 other premises same postcode, EO lines.

I think I understand. I assume you are highlighting what they are proposing as the solution to EO lines - I wonder if they are looking at the same solution elsewhere or if this is a specific option for W.Yorks...

The "solution" sounds very expensive, a lot of cables to be dug up, re-routed and re-connected.

Indeed. In some areas they just put a box outside the exchange but that only works if the other end is relatively close. If they are very long EO lines then the way they are proposing here may be the most cost effective solution if FTTC is the goal.

I reckon it is a case of BT being pragmatic, and working out the lowest cost vs the impact ie how many people end up within SF range of the FTTC cabinet, compared with the number that don't.

As you say, adding a cabinet outside the exchange is a solution that works for EO lines within range of the exchange buildings, but doesn't work if the lines are long.

Re-parenting is possible when EO lines happen to route close to an existing PCP cabinet that has capacity to terminate the lines (or can be increased in size cheaply), but obviously only works well if the EO premises are then close enough to the cabinet. I have heard of this technique before, fairly recently, but I don't think we've seen any concrete examples of it taking places yet.

A third option is to add a new cabinet for the long EO lines, sited a long way from the exchange building, but close to the cluster of buildings. That of course requires a reasonable cluster to exist, sized to work well with one of the cabinet sizes used by Openreach.

We know North Yorkshire is due to trial a new form of cabinet that BT term "remote node" (hence FTTRN); we don't know any details about how they intend to deploy this, but my suspicion is that it will be used in this 3rd way.