simonswood exchange enabled - when will my cabinet go live

My local exchange simonswood knowsley is now live with FTTC, i'm on cabinet 65 (not sure where that is), any ideas on how long it will take before I can get fibre, not sure of there needs to be roadwords etc for the cabinet upgrade or whatever.

Any help. news, advice would be brill

Cabinet 65 is at https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@53.488986,-2.914026,3...

No idea on the chance of fibre but cabinet covers a fairly small foot print so in terms of lines it will be down the list to be enabled.

should planned roadwords for power be a good sign due this week?

If they are close to that cabinet and signs of a fibre twin appearing or its there already then yes. It is an urban area so make sure you check location of road works as other cabs may be close by.

thanks roadworks.org say its power to cab65 so I'm forever hopeful

well I never just walked past and there a big hole and a nice big sign saying fibre coming soon at the cabnet - fab!!!

Could be week, could be months, so don't get too excited. Some people on these forums have had the FTTC cabinet in place for over a year, but no joy.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Could be week, could be months, so don't get too excited. Some people on these forums have had the FTTC cabinet in place for over a year, but no joy.

I hate being one of those people.

Although ours has never had a sign/sticker, so maybe that's good news for you

So the work has finished and cleaned up, power to cabinet 65, according to roadworks.org, so my question - is this a good sign, there's nothing on the cabinet or anything, am I likely to be up and running soon, no further planned work on cab 65 due, so I'm hopeful.

Also I get 1mb now, what should I expect if I don't upgrade , assume faster yes? Any help would be great, can anyone provide info on cab 65

The upgrade of the cabinet to FTTC doesn't upgrade any existing ADSLx connections. Your speed won't alter automatically.

You have to upgrade to an FTTC product from your ISP, or any other ISP if you want to migrate at the same time.

And the blowing of the fibre is fairly low key, so it may you are waiting not on the people with the big black pipe on a drum but the small couple of people or person to blow the fibre down the tubing that is in the ground.

When OR installed the FTTC cab for the PCP I'm connected to my ADSL speed increased from 13 Mbps to 14.5 Mbps although that's could be because they also replaced about 40m of D-side cable from the PCP.

You mean 40m from the cab to you? They would only do that if it was duff, so nothing to do with FTTC.

In reply to a post by simon194:

When OR installed the FTTC cab for the PCP I'm connected to my ADSL speed increased from 13 Mbps to 14.5 Mbps

That's got nothing to do with FTTC cab will increasing your ADSL2+ speed. Could be DLM try to lower your SNR.

I have created this ID to post this message to advise that you check your line against one of the available ISP's in the area.

I have been watching the Openreach site Openreach Twitter News & Openreach When & Where for months and they are not correct, updated late if ever..

I have today placed an order on Cabinet 75 in Simonswood and it has been accepted and confirmed.

Yet, the new Beta version of the 'Openreach when and where' site is now stating that the status is EA (Enabled Area) from the previous OA (Orders accepted).

The cabinet does not have any sticker to state it is enabled and has not been touched for 6-8 weeks after the installation.

The EA status is consolidating a number of cabinets and giving the worse option, even though some of the cabinets may be up and running.

Bottomline, if the ISP accepts the order Openreach is advising them that it is there and ready to go !!!

Go for it !!!!!!! nothing to lose.

Edited by deleted (Fri 08-Aug-14 00:46:32)

It was indirectly because wasn't enough room to run the tie-ins to the FTTC cab through the duct under the main ring road without replacing seven old cables of various sizes that ran through it to a joint box 40m away.

Logistically it was the better option than digging up the road because the council only allow evening on the road as it's residential unless it's for emergency work. This is the second busiest road in town and any temporary traffic lights on this road can gridlock the entire north-east of the town.

That makes sense .

It will be that recabling that has helped your speed though. All sorts of things could have changed.

Hence why general advise is use BT Wholesale checker system

How long after your cabinet75 powered up did become accepting orders?

It was weeks.

The Cab was installed and left with a great hole barriered off.
I spoke to the enginner at the time and he said it was waiting for the fibre run.

Within a week the hole was filled in and the paving etc made good.

For 6-8 weeks after that it has been no action (sorry was not keeping count !!!) and no indication on anything I could access that the cab was live.

The cab went AO about 10 days ago and as I stated is now AE advising NOT able to order yet ?????

I checked with the ISP's via the 'check your number' options every day for those weeks until at 04:30am on 06/08/2014 I got a confirmation my number was able to get fibre. I signed up straight away !!!!!!

Edited by deleted (Fri 08-Aug-14 12:23:05)

I do know this but I am on SKY and the BT Wholesale checker system will NOT give any answer for my Telephone number.

The postcode and/or address checkers are useless guesswork !!!!!.

That is the reason I searched for other ways to check.

[I was Shanghaied by SKY when they took over O2/Be :-( ]

All things SKY are a pain, especially if you want to leave

Edited by deleted (Fri 08-Aug-14 12:19:42)

The address checker is good but postcode alone is flawed

The following post links to a very interesting blog post detailing how accurate or not the various checkers are.

Re: Where and when - updated

A very good read !!!!!!

It mirrors my experience trying to get GOOD information from BT/Openreach, and highlights the abysmal communication of information from BDUK projects to their customers.

All the various BDUK projects across the country and no sign of any standardised method of communicating the progress and status of the projects and most importantly timescales for the commissioning of the Cabinets. This is the most important issue for customers 'Where and When'.

I am not suprised as the Govt, of any flavour, in general seems to be very good at NOT getting value for money on very large/expensive projects. We repeatably agree large contracts on the back of vague promises/timescales with almost no oversight of the day to day spending/progress.

Why is that ?
Coincidence ?
Incompetence ?
or something else ?

(Don't get me started ........ )

Because they did at one stage put out statements on this sort of thing.
There proved inaccurate...probably due to unexpected problems found during installation which were no way the fault of BTOR.
But people complained to the likes of the ASA
So now they put out nothing - no info at all
Exactly what I would do if I was BTOR.

I don't understand why it is reasonable to give no information

It is not a capital offense to make a wrong estimate !!!

If the information is given out in the right way it will not cause problems.

It is the way the world works, you plan and estimate work and sometimes it misses the estimate.

If you explain the problems and revise the estimates in a timely way it is NOT a problem.

BTOR must be planning and estimating the work they do now, so what is the problem?

I have have yet to see a customer complain because you kept them up to date with the status of a job.

Apparently, it is a crime and BT got penalised by the ASA. Some people complained because the dates kept moving as another poster said.

Edited by deleted (Fri 08-Aug-14 20:11:38)

I would bet that the problem was caused by the Marketing Dept misrepresenting the information they were given.

It really is not difficult to give information out about a on-going project, without committing yourself to a penalty because you missed a date.

It happens everyday in thousands of projects and involves all parties agreeing reasonable methods of working and NOT putting unreasonable penalties in the contracts.

The ASA angle suggests the information was being mis-represented to advertise something which was not true.

Control your Marketing people and don't obstruct both the workers and their customers.
I am sure that is possible.

Sorry, that is not what happened.

OK, I was wrong.

Have you got a link to something that explains what happened as I am puzzled how they got fined for missing dates.

Unless they made wholesale promises that they did not keep ?

I assumed that ASA was involved because of something to do with advertising ?

Edited by deleted (Fri 08-Aug-14 20:52:09)

who did you register you interest with? i'm with EE they are shocking and make sky look good, due to come out of my 12 months in October.

i'm considering my next commitment based on fibre becoming available so don't wan to get stuck with someone who isn't offering it.

I think the exchange went live end of june / beg july so i'm hoping I got to enabled quite quickly.

I went with PlusNet.

I know it is not the best deal but I did not want to go with BT or TalkTalk.
And from my username SKY are a No-No!!!!!!

I have been with BT in the past and was not impressed.
SKY are sharks and WILL lie to you when it suits.
I don't need all the extras, Sport Channels etc.

So PlusNet it is.
I would pay a premium to leave SKY and probably have!!!!!

Edit: Before anyone jumps in, I NOW know that PlusNet is part of the BT Group.
but I still am happy. The application was very quick and I have had the date for the migration confirmed with no problems. I am just waiting for the Openreach Engineer appointment to be confirmed.

Edited by deleted (Fri 08-Aug-14 21:19:25)

Asa can rule over websites even if not an explicit advert.

Issue was dates kept shifting and people complained the dates should be fixed

Yes, I forgot about websites.

Thanks, so giving out false information basically.

In reply to a post by Ex_Sky_and_Happy:

Yes, I forgot about websites.

Thanks, so giving out false information basically.

No, they were keeping them up to date with the status of a job.

I am still puzzled then, but don't worry I will do some googling on the ASA site.

Thanks for the correction.

It makes the ASA decision sound strange but I will investigate.

BTW: Sorry for going so off-Topic.

You are right in all you say, but miss one vital point .

The vast majority do not understand how complex project management works, particularly given the many unforeseeable problems that arise with FTTC rollout.

The dates were (probably still are) set at an overall planning stage in quarters, so the quarter end was quoted. Once a particular exchange or cabinet got close then it would become a real date. If it got to the last eight days or so of a quarter you could almost guarantee it was going to slip at least one if not two quarters.

Punters got very upset at that. Not too surprisingly. A bit like kids told on 21 December that Father Christmas isn't going to com till the end of March.

I found the ASA Ajudication here: ASA Adjudication on British Telecommunications plc

I was not wrong as there was an instance of posting a date for availability of Infinity when it was not planned to be available.

Partial quote from Adjudication below:

... in at least one case, there were currently no plans for BT Infinity to be rolled out in an area while the availability checker listed a provisional date that was less than three months away, we considered that the inclusion of provisional dates was likely to mislead.

I will stop going off-topic now.

Agree with the general point, but you avoid this problem if you clearly state what you are telling the customer.

See my last post Re: ASA Adjudication on British Telecommunications plc here

BT clearly did not make clear what they were quoting to the customer and in at least one case lied about availability.

You are right customers do not understand project management so don't quote data automatically from your systems assuming they will understand where they have come from and what they mean.

Which comes back to the main point which is the lack of Communication to the Customer, including making sure it is in a form which makes sense to your customer.

For instance: As a Software Developer you do not tend to give the Customer Management Team Compilation logs to demonstrate where you are, you write meaningful reports.

Sorry, you've gone and confused yourself with the BT checker versus the Openreach data. Easily done.

Please explain ????

Infinity, which appears to be what you are talking about, is a BT Retail product, running over BT Wholesale WBC, with the exchange to customer link being over Openreach FTTC and FTTP.

How BT Retail go about training their staff in selling Infinity is nothing whatsoever to do with Openreach's exchange and cabinet forecasts for FTTC and FTTP that any ISP can sell under their own product name, not necessarily through BTW.

RobertoS / Batboy,

I was not asking for a definition of BT Retail vs Openreach.

I did not understand the point being made !!!

To clarify:

[Batboy stated]
Apparently, it is a crime and BT got penalised by the ASA. Some people complained because the dates kept moving as another poster said.

[ME]
[condensed] I made bet it was Marketing. Was Wrong.

[Mr Saffron stated]
Asa can rule over websites even if not an explicit advert.

Issue was dates kept shifting and people complained the dates should be fixed

[ME]
Yes, I forgot about websites.

Thanks, so giving out false information basically.

[Batboy stated]
No, they were keeping them up to date with the status of a job.

[ME]
I am still puzzled then, but don't worry I will do some googling on the ASA site.

Thanks for the correction.

It makes the ASA decision sound strange but I will investigate.

[RobertoS stated]
You are right in all you say, but miss one vital point smile.

The vast majority do not understand how complex project management works, particularly given the many unforeseeable problems that arise with FTTC rollout.

The dates were (probably still are) set at an overall planning stage in quarters, so the quarter end was quoted. Once a particular exchange or cabinet got close then it would become a real date. If it got to the last eight days or so of a quarter you could almost guarantee it was going to slip at least one if not two quarters.

Punters got very upset at that. Not too surprisingly. A bit like kids told on 21 December that Father Christmas isn't going to com till the end of March.

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I used the clues given (BT, ASA, Dates on internet site, Customers not happy etc) and found a Adjudication that fit after a quick search.

If you read the Adjudication in full it covers the points regarding dates changing and customers not happy , dates being updated, Openreach etc. It also does show giving out false information which was the highlighted partial quote from the Adjudication.

I don't understand the mention of BT Retail and Openreach and confusion or RobertoS' mention of staff training ???

I did not specifically mention staff I mentioned BT (the company) and in the venacular this covers BT Retail and Openreach as the man in the street does not differentiate and they are all part of BT Group anyway. Where is my confusion, unless the Adjudication is a different one ?

If this is the wrong Adjudication I would be grateful to find the right one.
I am just trying to understand why ASA would penalise BT for giving dates ?
And equally why anyone would feel that this justifies giving no information at all ?

Perhaps something is being read into what I have written that is not there?

Herein lies the problem

In reference to www.asa.org.uk/Rulings/Adjudications/2013/1/British-Telecommunicati...:

Action

The claim must not appear again in its current form. We told BT to ensure that the availability checker only included dates if they corresponded to scheduled plans for Openreach to engineer the BT Infinity service to the corresponding area.

Of course, Openreach aren't engineering the BT Infinity service. Which makes me wonder if the ASA completely grasp how the process works and if the adjudication makes any sense at all.