Fibre coming soon what speed can I expect ?

Hi

I live in a rural village and fibre looked like a dream but thankfully it appears funding has been sourced and my exhange has a date set for 30.9.2014.
Currently I recieve between 3-4.5 meg depending on what modem I use and was just wondering what kind of speed might the new Fibre service deliver ?

Thanks

Your current speed is completely irrelevant, pretty much all that matters is how far you are away from the fibre cabinet, once it is installed. Does it give you a cabinet number if you enter your telephone number here?

Hi

Yes I get the cabinet number if I enter my tel number into the link you provided. Does every street cabinet have a fibre cabinet or can a new fibre cabinet provide coverage for several regualr cabs? I ask this because the cabinet I am connected to does not have a fibre cab next to it, however approx one mile away a new fibre cab has been installed next to the regular one.

Each cabinet needs a fibre partner for FTTC.

FTTP is done by cabinet but doesn't have a fibre partner cabinet.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

Each cabinet needs a fibre partner for FTTC.

FTTP is done by cabinet but doesn't have a fibre partner cabinet.

The exchange has a date of 30 sept for the service to go live but I think this might get delayed because the cabinet I am connected to does not have a new fibre cab next to it yet. We live in a village and are quite a distance from the cab but 4 weeks ago some contractors dug a channel close to the underground manhole covers and within a couple of days it was filled in and since then no more work has been done close to us. Shame you cannot get more details from bt other than its due in sept 2014

Can you estimate the cable length to the cabinet you are connected to that hopefully will get a fibre twin? That is the best indication of the speed you should get.

Using google maps it says I am 1.53 km to the cab, this is obviously using a direct line and not the probable path of the line.

So likely to be 2km or more of cable so might be no faster than now, or if lucky may hit 9Meg down, 1.5Meg up

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

So likely to be 2km or more of cable so might be no faster than now, or if lucky may hit 9Meg down, 1.5Meg up

Yes think its looking that way im afraid unless BT have got something planned. I was speaking to a BT engineer a couple of weeks back when he was repairing a couple of lines in my village and he said that you can usually expect approx 3-4 times what you recieve on adsl. 9ish meg is obviously better than 3 but you cant help feel a little dissapointed after waiting to get fibre and it is nowhere near the upto 80meg that some can recieve.

Fingers crossed we might squeeze into the 10meg + bracket !!

In reply to a post by drphibes:

I was speaking to a BT engineer a couple of weeks back when he was repairing a couple of lines in my village and he said that you can usually expect approx 3-4 times what you recieve on adsl

As a generality that is nonsense, unless he was referring to the specific situation you are in. Unfortunately there is no way of knowing exactly what speed you will get with a cabinet at that distance, but once it is enabled you will at least get an estimate from the BT Wholesale checker.

length of E side can affect the power cutback applied which does have an impact on expected FTTC speeds.

a 2km or so D side doesnt look promising for FTTC in my opinion, my guess is most your attainable signal will be wiped out by power cutback and you will be left disappointed.

I know it will be a blow to the people in my village who have been active in getting BT to bring a fibre to us. It will indeed dissapointing if we end up possibly doubling our speeds from 2.5/3 to 5 or 6 meg. Is there any figure that BT set for a minimum speed ? Im sure I read in the past that they had a 15meg for minimum service but I guess these things can change when it comes to location.

There was a minimum for BT Infinity, I don't know whether that still applies. However, many other ISPs did/do not apply that minimum to FTTC connections.

GIven the name of the village I can give you some more specific estimates for the area

In reply to a post by drphibes:

I know it will be a blow to the people in my village who have been active in getting BT to bring a fibre to us. It will indeed dissapointing if we end up possibly doubling our speeds from 2.5/3 to 5 or 6 meg.

But presumably some people in your village will be much closer to the new fibre cabinet and will be getting the full fat speeds.

In reply to a post by Garlic:

In reply to a post by drphibes:

I know it will be a blow to the people in my village who have been active in getting BT to bring a fibre to us. It will indeed dissapointing if we end up possibly doubling our speeds from 2.5/3 to 5 or 6 meg.

But presumably some people in your village will be much closer to the new fibre cabinet and will be getting the full fat speeds.

Not necessarily. Some cabinets sit in the middle of nowhere (probably equidistant between several communities). There might well be people closer to the cab than the OP but not all cabinets are situated close to property.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

GIven the name of the village I can give you some more specific estimates for the area

My village is called Antrobus in cheshire, we live in the middle of the village but we are connected to cab 3. Like I said in a previous post we are 1.5km directline to the cab. The exchange we are connected to is Comberbach and after having a quick drive around I have spotted one Fibre cab in the budworth area that I imagine is connected to the Comberbach exchange. The date for Fibre to be available is late sept 2014 but I guess this can always be extended for various reasons.

In reply to a post by Garlic:

In reply to a post by drphibes:

I know it will be a blow to the people in my village who have been active in getting BT to bring a fibre to us. It will indeed dissapointing if we end up possibly doubling our speeds from 2.5/3 to 5 or 6 meg.

But presumably some people in your village will be much closer to the new fibre cabinet and will be getting the full fat speeds.

We live in the main populated part of the village and are 1.5km directline from our cab. There will be people who will be closer but the vast majority will be in the same boar as myself im afraid.

In reply to a post by drphibes:

The exchange has a date of 30 sept for the service to go live but I think this might get delayed because the cabinet I am connected to does not have a new fibre cab next to it yet.

That is no reason to delay the exchange. Cabs are activated individually after the exchange. It just means that your cab area is not fibred yet.

Some can be close to each other. I've never understood the placement of Cab 4 and 3 in our village.

When you're talking 1.5km directline you're never going to see great boosts - well perhaps you might get Fttdp in time (depends on # of properties and the eventual level at which the cost of the product falls)

"@Andrue: Not necessarily. Some cabinets sit in the middle of nowhere (probably equidistant between several communities). There might well be people closer to the cab than the OP but not all cabinets are situated close to property. "

I realise this - i'm the nearest property to my cabinet (@~200yrds) which is in a hedge!

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

GIven the name of the village I can give you some more specific estimates for the area

Hi Andrew, the village is Antrobus in Cheshire, we are on cab 3 of the Comberbach exchange. I am told by connecting Cheshire that this cab is included in the Fibre rollout. No idea what kind of speed we are going to be getting though due to the distance.

If FTTC were deployed from cabinet 3, it would only make sense for 3 or 4 postcodes, Codes like WA4 4PN would probably see no improvement.

BUT

There are indications that the work on this exchange will involve FTTP for cabinet 3, so distance becomes a non-issue. Also some EO work delivering FTTP may be on the way.

So I believe the cab is included, but its FTTP and from looking at a map of the postcodes that would make sense.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

If FTTC were deployed from cabinet 3, it would only make sense for 3 or 4 postcodes, Codes like WA4 4PN would probably see no improvement.

BUT

There are indications that the work on this exchange will involve FTTP for cabinet 3, so distance becomes a non-issue. Also some EO work delivering FTTP may be on the way.

So I believe the cab is included, but its FTTP and from looking at a map of the postcodes that would make sense.

Thanks for the reply Andrew.

If the cab doesFTTP instead of FTTC how would this be installed into a domestic home ? I was always under the impression that FTTP was more a business thing for companies needing full speed broadband.
The problem with cab 3 is it servers properties that are spread over quite a wide area, we live in the centre of the village where most of the houses are situated but then it is a case of 2-3 house then fields etc.

When the cab is enabled is it just a simple case of ordering a fibre upgrade from any isp you choose or would it be bt only ?

Cheers

Fibre is run to the last manhole or telegraph pole and when you order the final few metres is installed to the outside of the home and then a short run into the property.

In terms of ISP BT Consumer is the main big name at present. Monthly cost the same as FTTC but faster options at higher price is available.

Hi

Just an update on my wait for Fibre Broadband. The exchange was set to be activated in sept 2014 but this slipped to December 2014. Last week contractors arrived at the end of my close and started to dig a trench that crossed the road and ended at a manhole. After speaking to one of the workers he confirmed that it was work for the Fibre broadband and he seemed to think it might go active within a couple of weeks. A quick check on the BT Fibre checker shows that the Comberbach exchange has a date of 14th of December to go live but it stated that sometimes it can be upto Two weeks before any orders can be placed. Im crossing my fingers that things are almost in place for things to get activated this month.

A question for Mr Saffron, any chance you can check to see if this is FTTH like you thought it could be ? If this is the case it kind of narrows down potential options for Isp's . At the moment it looks like BT is possibly the way to go although I read the other day that Plusnet have got the FTTH trial back .

Cheers

If you have a "BT" line as opposed to full LLU, put your phone number into this checker and see what that says.

If it doesn't recognise the number (full LLU) use the address checker. Do not use the pure postcode option.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

If you have a "BT" line as opposed to full LLU, put your phone number into this checker and see what that says.

If it doesn't recognise the number (full LLU) use the address checker. Do not use the pure postcode option.

Hi

Yes its a BT line and doing a check on the link you provided just shows what services are available at the moment which is the ADSL Max upto 8 meg service.

Using this site Openreach checker it states my exchange is due to live on December 14th ( the pdf file at the bottom of the page " Exchanges coming soon" )

That would be December 2014 not December 14th.

I too am waiting for FTTP in my village in Suffolk. The trenches and ducts in the village were dug months ago and fibre cables pop out at the foot of poles in tied up loops. The date given to go live was originally December 2014 but more ducting is being placed elsewhere in the area supplied by my cabinet up to the end of January 2015 according to roadworks.org along with blocked ducts being cleared and new poles being put in. There is now no date given in the availability checkers. My conclusion is that it will happen - eventually.

So be glad you look like you will probably get it but it could be some considerable time off yet!

In reply to a post by WelshWArrior:

That would be December 2014 not December 14th.

Yes your right its December 2014

In reply to a post by Jax2:

I too am waiting for FTTP in my village in Suffolk. The trenches and ducts in the village were dug months ago and fibre cables pop out at the foot of poles in tied up loops. The date given to go live was originally December 2014 but more ducting is being placed elsewhere in the area supplied by my cabinet up to the end of January 2015 according to roadworks.org along with blocked ducts being cleared and new poles being put in. There is now no date given in the availability checkers. My conclusion is that it will happen - eventually.

So be glad you look like you will probably get it but it could be some considerable time off yet!

Yes your right mate things do take awhile to arrive and to be honest I didnt think we would be getting fibre for a long time. It appears it was only the rural funding scheme that got things moving along with a local village group who campaigned to get fibre here. I just looked at the roadworks.org site that I didnt know existed and between the 1st-3rd Dec BT where digging at the site very close to the Cabinet that supplies our village so who knows this might have something to do with the fibre supply ?

One point that was interesting was a email exchange with the connecting cheshire group who are helping the highspeed rollout. I asked if our village would be a fttp supply due to people in this thread saying the fttc way would probably provide poor results due to the distance of the cab. I was told they could not confirm this and the main rollout was fttc and any fttp would have be confirmed my my chosen isp ? I would have thought that they would know if fttp was going to be supplied here by now ?

The infrastructure installed to any given cabinet area is either FTTC or FTTP. Nothing at all to do with ISPs. It is possible for an exchange to have both FTTC and FTTP, but only one of those to each cabinet area.

In reply to a post by RobertoS:

The infrastructure installed to any given cabinet area is either FTTC or FTTP. Nothing at all to do with ISPs. It is possible for an exchange to have both FTTC and FTTP, but only one of those to each cabinet area.

This is a piece of the email explaining the fttc/fttp question I asked

"The majority of the Connecting Cheshire build is fibre to the cabinet (FTTC) and so it's unlikely that we'll be installing fibre to the premise (FTTP) in the area. Once an area has been upgraded to FTTC, it is technically possible for FTTP services to be provided by Internet Services Providers (ISPs) however all enquiries about FTTP should be directed to your ISP. Please note that orders for FTTP will be subject to a detailed local survey and additional connection charges."

Once an area has been upgraded to FTTC, it is technically possible for FTTP services to be provided by Internet Services Providers (ISPs) however all enquiries about FTTP should be directed to your ISP. Please note that orders for FTTP will be subject to a detailed local survey and additional connection charges."

That would be FTTPoD then.

My exchange has one cabinet enabled for FTTC but my cabinet will be native FTTP when it is finally up and running, other cabinets are not yet down to get fibre. All funded by the BDUK roll-out.
If they are putting ducts in all over the place in the area covered by your cabinet and not just to where an FTTC cabinet would go then it sounds as if you are down for native FTTP. The only real down sides are a limited range of ISPS provide for FTTP and a long wait.

And it has a three year contract £200/month fees and maybe a few thousand to install

To say much more a village name and a cabinet number is needed. Have scanned thread but all I can see is that we are talking Cheshire and if its Cheshire West and Chester BDUK project then believe they've already deployed some native FTTP - available to 0.9% of households in the County.

Post deleted by Ribble

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

To say much more a village name and a cabinet number is needed. Have scanned thread but all I can see is that we are talking Cheshire and if its Cheshire West and Chester BDUK project then believe they've already deployed some native FTTP - available to 0.9% of households in the County.

Hi Andrew
Village name is Antrobus and the cabinet is number 3.
You stated earlier in the thread that you thought fttp seemed to be possibly in the plans due to the distance between cab 3 and the centre of the village where most of the homes are.

Only a theory earlier and would not plan anything around that earlier comment.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Only a theory earlier and would not plan anything around that earlier comment.

Ah right , looks like its just a case of wait and see then.

Can you confirm the exchange name please? Sorry, got it - Comberbach

Looks like they're currently planning FTTP but who knows? According to that email you received, they don't.

Edited by deleted (Thu 04-Dec-14 13:01:35)

Unfortunately the council project teams are often the worst people to ask, even though they should be the best.

Andrew

It seems odd to push forward with a fttc link to our village when all the clued up people on here say cab 3 is to far away to really provide what you could class as high speed fibre. Most people in the centre of Antrobus where the majority live get around 2 meg while I manage to squeeze out 4 with the use of a Billion router that allows you to tweak the snr. The good thing is work is being done with the first sign back in the summer and then last week two contracting teams where in the village digging up the road, with one of these trenches ended directly at a manhole cover ? I agree with Andrew when he says its hard getting any concrete info from the connecting cheshire group when you would expect they would know exactly what the plan of attack is.

The answer from Ribble is possibly more than an educated guess based on looking at the layout in the area.

It's gorn.

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

The answer from Ribble is possibly more than an educated guess based on looking at the layout in the area.

Missed what Ribble said, im presuming it was more positive than negative ?

It was more positive but the problem is that until everything is built plans and priorities can change.

Especially as there are political goals involved

Well sadly BT have now decided to change the status of my Cab to under review !
It does not surprise me that people get miffed with the way the status's of the checker are given. In my case my Cab had sept for going live, then dec and now under review with no date.
It appears the exchange is live because I believe Cab 4 is ok for orders to be placed but got to say I feel let down that there seems to be no concrete plan for the Cab that I am connected to. Surely they must have known right at the start of the upgrade programme if this particular Cab was going to prove problems and put a more realistic timescale.

The only light at the end of the tunnel is they have carried out work in my village so I am just hoping that we will get the Fibre at some stage.

I have sent MrSaffron a pm , could you look into this for me Andrew if possible.

Thanks

Well managed to get some positive news yesterday regarding the Fibre broadband rollout in the village where I live. The BT checker still states that we are under review for the service even though it did have us down for coming soon. However I spotted a couple of openreach vans down the road from us so pulled over and had a word to see if they knew anything about our situation. Thankfully the guy was very helpful and told me that BT are all set to start the work to deliver us FTTP but he did say it could possibly be about 6 months before all the work gets done due to a few blocked pipes etc that would need digging up etc. To be honest the news that we are getting it is the main thing and 6 months is fine by me if are going to get the service.

Looks like Ribble and Mr Saffron where right when they suggested FTTP could well be the way forward for us

Hi all

Well four months have passed since my last post and things have been slowly progressing . I have spotted the openreach vehicles on several occasions and a couple of those looked to involve laying the fibre cables. At the moment we have two telegraph poles in the centre of the village and at the bottom of the pole is blue coloured rope. Do we think that the fibre cable is there and just needs pulling through using these ropes ? I know that two weeks ago we had temp traffic lights while they cleared a blockage in the road that was approx 10 yards from one of these poles.

The Blue Rope is to pull in the tubing which will eventually contain and protect the fibre "cable".

That tubing seems to be black with a yellow strip running straight along it.

Then the fibre cable is blown by pressurised air through that tubing, rather like the pneumatic carrier systems of yesteryear. You may have to visit an active museum to see one working, although generally they suck the air out of the tube, at the receiviing end, rather than blowing from the input end.

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There is a fair amount of other work to be done at the FTTC itself; and also the linking cable to the existing PCP.

This work can be done independently of whether the fibre cable has been connected, so the actual sequence is quite variable.

After the FTTC has been activated and you have placed an order for FTTC/VDSL, the technician normally only has to visit the PCP, to make the final changes required there.

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So although the various steps are indications of progress, there is not a definite time-scale regarding over-all progress until it is actually finished!

Thanks for the info.
I believe we are going to have FTTP in the village due to there not being any decent advantage with FTTC. Either way it does indeed look like a sit and wait situation, it is odd to see the bt checker still saying our area is under review even though the work is being carried out. I would have thought we should have a approx date on the checker now ?

Dr Phibes, I too live in a rural area and have recently benefitted from the rural broadband initiative here in NI.
I had a well documented issue with my new FTTC cab which is just 50 mrs up the road, but that aside I was connected initially about 4 years ago to fibre and the cabinet I was connected to was also 3kms away. I was able to get a respectable 15mb download constantly at that distance. I know there are many factors affecting your final speed, but if your lines are in decent shape at 1.5km you may get a decent enough speed via FTTC. If its FTTP then the above is likely irrelevant.

In reply to a post by Pauli1:

Dr Phibes, I too live in a rural area and have recently benefitted from the rural broadband initiative here in NI.
I had a well documented issue with my new FTTC cab which is just 50 mrs up the road, but that aside I was connected initially about 4 years ago to fibre and the cabinet I was connected to was also 3kms away. I was able to get a respectable 15mb download constantly at that distance. I know there are many factors affecting your final speed, but if your lines are in decent shape at 1.5km you may get a decent enough speed via FTTC. If its FTTP then the above is likely irrelevant.

Hi Paul

Yes think its going to be FTTP after speaking to the workmen on a couple occasions. Our exchange is being upgraded through the grant system and at the moment I believe a couple of cabinets are up and running providing FTTC to parts of neighbouring villages. Due to the distance to our cabinet it appears FTTC is not a good idea so that is probably why FTTP was practical for us and obviously this also means we are going to be last on the list to get connected to a fibre service. Saying that it will be worth waiting for and a few of my friends are connected to another small rural exchange where no plans are on the table to upgrade from the standard upto 8 meg service.