Cabinet Not Commercially Viable + BDUK 2Mbps Minimum

Hi,

I've got a couple of questions I was hoping someone here may be able to answer.

I'm connected to cabinet 151 on the Cheltenham exchange, which isn't part of the 66% commercial roll out as Openreach deem it to be "not commercially viable". We're not in the intervention area for our county's BDUK (Fastershire) as they think we're in "an area likely to receive commercial investment."

I wrote a little app that hits the address checker to come up with the number of properties on a cabinet, and there are around 164 properties connected to our cabinet.

First question: Is this likely to be the reason why it's not commercially viable, or is this a reasonable number of properties for a cabinet? Does anyone know why the cabinet isn't viable?

Second question: I've confirmed with Fastershire that the 2mbps minimum for all applies to everyone and not just their intervention area, although the website implies it is just their intervention area. We currently get around 1.6Mbps, so although 2Mbps isn't amazing, it's still 25% increase. Does anyone know how they're likely to achieve this? I'm hoping Satellite isn't the answer as low latency is important to me too.

Thanks

Edited by deleted (Fri 11-Jul-14 16:56:59)

Openreach have just started upgrading a cab in my area that has around 110 properties connected to it. I wouldn't have thought it would have been classed as commercially viable but as the town's regeneration plans include 100% access to fibre broadband I wouldn't be surprised if there wasn't some council money involved.

East Sussex BDUK money isn't going to be available until next year to upgrade any cabs not part of the commercial rollout.

Have you any plans to make this app available?

Do you know how long the cable is between you and the cabinet?.

If it is 5km like mine, upgrading the cabinet to FTTC won't do you much good.

The BDUK projects are only allowed to spend money on the defined intervention areas. However, they should have two intervention areas; one for superfast broadband and one for basic broadband. Fastershire should be no different.

Generally, the work for the "basic broadband" fill-in will be the final phase, after all the superfast rollout has happened.

Here's an old plan with the two areas defined:
http://www.cotswolds.com/Portals/11/Broadband%20File...

In a case like yours, where an area falls between the two projects, we see different behaviour. Some councils are flexible, and can add them into the intervention area on the fly - and some even chase BT to get things changed (Warwickshire are good at this). Some councils, however, are very static and refuse to change the area on the fly.

As we are progressing towards the start of the extension project (SEP, or phase 2), councils are starting up the processes to re-define the intervention areas for phase 2. This is happening in even the most stick-in-the-mud councils.

Is this in one of the areas of Cheltenham that has Virgin Media available, if so, there is no way that BDUK funding will be available for it.

It's in St Leonards along The Ridge opposite Fletcher Avenue, .Link . The street cab was connected up three weeks ago and is showing in www.dslchecker.bt.com

Openreach are finishing the last few cab that were part of the commercial rollout and were delayed for various reasons. I've also discovered, contrary to what I previously thought, two cabs that are being upgraded in the next couple of weeks with BDUK funds

Thanks for the replies.

It's about 300m if the cables follow the course of the road from the cabinet to us. We're in the unfortunate position of not being rural enough for BDUK.

Some of the properties connected to the cabinet (about 60% maybe?) can get Virgin, the rest can't. One road wasn't done as the road wasn't adopted at the time virgin cabled the area, the rest are on a new build estate and the developer didn't have an arrangement with Virgin. I've tried the cablemystreet address, but they won't look at it until the new build area's roads are adopted.

Is the above likely to mean we're missed out by BDUK? If, in 3/4 years time, when the roads are adopted, Virgin won't cable it, and BDUK skipped us, does that leave us potentially screwed?

At least we've got the upgrade to at least 2Mbps to look forward to, assuming it's not satellite or data capped 4g (or 3g).

Happy to make my "number of properties on a cabinet" app public (in fact it's already public elsewhere), I'll start another post for that after making some tweaks.

Matt

The local BDUK (Fastershire) have done 1 cabinet in Cheltenham that was missed in the commercial rollout - but as many on your cabinet can get virgin media I would expect that BDUK funding won't be available as they don't use public money to compete with existing 'superfast' infrastructure.

According to their website "1,504 homes and businesses that are not part of the Openreach commercial programme can access fibre broadband in and around Cheltenham as part of the fastershire project." - so I'd bet that they are doing more cabinets than the 1 they have done so far.

If fastershire have confirmed to you that your cabinet isn't being done then, In the short term, I would say things don't look good

Edited by Spudgun (Sun 13-Jul-14 17:49:54)

Fastershire provided a very low res map of their intervention area and said:

...you may have heard the good news that Herefordshire Council and Gloucestershire County Council have been allocated an additional £10.98m to enable more people to connect to faster broadband. This will give the counties additional coverage on top of what is in the process of being rolled out as part of the Fastershire project. We are looking at our options for match funding and will have to investigate how best to spend the money to achieve maximum coverage. We are keeping track of any cabinets like yours in the Openreach commercial rollout area that are not being upgraded as not deemed commercially viable, and these cabinets may be considered as part of this additional coverage

According to http://fttc-check.alc.im/ we're not in Fastershire's plans yet.

It would be a shame if we miss out because others on the cabinet can get Virgin.

For Cheltenham, they have said

In reference to www.fastershire.com/where-when/the-rollout:

2Mbps is expected to be completed by December 2015.

Given this isn't that far away I'm surprised they won't talk about what they're planning on using.

Would bonded lines be an option? Does anyone know what other areas are looking at using / what kind of subsidies they're looking at providing?