Roadworks for DSLAM installation?

I have noticed that BT are installing a new cabinet in the centre of my village, according to roadworks.org it is:

HERSTMONCEUX 2 285906BDUK01IBJFJ6LG10 DAY POWER AND DSLAM:STREET CABINET& POWER INSTALLATION. Excava...

Would this be simply extending existing ADSL2+ capacity or the start of the FTTC roll out, we are due to be upgraded at some point in 2015.

POWER AND DSLAM - gives it away. ADSL services do not use a cabinet based DSLAM whereas VDSL services do. So, yes, it is probably the start of FTTC

In short, yes. Quite how long it will be to becoming available varies according to all the other jobs that have to be done and it there are issues like blocked ducts. If all goes well, inside two months. Maybe better, but no guarantee.

Edited by deleted (Mon 02-Feb-15 20:31:02)

Thanks very much, I've just checked Roadworks.org looking forward for the next 12 months and there's work due 6-12th Feb which is described as

HERSTMONCEUX - PCP5 - 285804 - BDUK - STREET CABINET& POWER INSTALLATION. Excavate to lay approx 4m...

According to BT wholesale availability checker I am connected to cabinet 5, the roadworks referred to above seem to be scheduled for the location where I believe my cabinet to be and since it says PCP5 I am hoping that it means that my cabinet will be upgraded on that date. The reference to BDUK which is missing from the other notification perhaps implies that my cabinet is subsidised whereas the main one in the centre of the village is not?

Anyway, it looks like I should be able to get FTTC in the first half of 2015 rather than the last half, better than I hoped! According to google maps my cabinet is approx 0.3 miles following the pretty direct road route to the cabinet, which seems to be the way the phone lines run. Hopefully that indicates that I should get a speed hopefully in excess of 30MB, I get approx 14MB on my current ADSL2+ connection.

Happy Days!

In reply to a post by Herstmonceux:

... According to google maps my cabinet is approx 0.3 miles following the pretty direct road route to the cabinet, which seems to be the way the phone lines run. Hopefully that indicates that I should get a speed hopefully in excess of 30MB, I get approx 14MB on my current ADSL2+ connection.

Happy Days!

30MB - no chance. 30Mbps probably, and potentially 40Mbps if it is .3 mile.

Sorry I mixed up my bits and bytes, classic n00b error!

It's extremely unlikely one cabinet in Herstmonceux is BDUK supported and the other is commercial. The goesussex web site isn't much use on timescales, although it does say everything it running ahead of schedule.

As far as your like length is concerned, if it's really 5-600m and it's in good condition it might be good for 60mbps or so. Although the cable routing matters (and domestic wiring of course).

I am on the Herstmonceux Exchange as well which has just changed to 'Accepting Orders' on the Openreach checker.

However, my cabinet is located about 1.8km away... Cabinet 4 apparently. I have ordered the BT 'Faster Broadband' but it is unfortunate that another cabinet is not in my village to serve the 50/60 houses that are between 1.5 and 2.5km away from our cabinet enabling us to get Infinity.

Do Openreach ever install a new PCP/ Fibre cabinet to better reach new areas? who is the best person to contact to ask/ suggest about this being done?

Appreciate your help.

It can happen but costs rise and thus not likely to be part of the first phase project unless there is lots of spare cash. Time to chase council project

Ah, I suspected that might be the case.

Well. I guess going from a current 2Mbps to a BT sales person claimed 15-18Mbps for the 'faster broadband' is much much better than no upgrade at all!

Is it just due to the fact that the old PCP placements didn't really take account for distance to households? The new Fibre box next to cabinet 4 seems very close to the other cabinets?

I'll send a letter off to the council/ goesussex websites anyway. Thanks for your advice.

In reply to a post by adminkatana:

Is it just due to the fact that the old PCP placements didn't really take account for distance to households? The new Fibre box next to cabinet 4 seems very close to the other cabinets?

Openreach aim to place the fibre twin as close to the existing PCP as possible and require it to be no more than 100m away. As the cable length between the PCP and fibre twin is part of the FTTC line length, they want the twin to be as close as possible for performance reasons.


Most decisions about the number of PCPs to deploy and where to site them were taken with no inkling about FTTC or what it might mean. D side line length (line length from the PCP to the user) doesn't matter for telephony or relatively slow digital services like basic rate ISDN.

With ADSL from the exchange, what matter is having the shortest and highest quality line back to the exchange, not how much of that line length is before or after the cabinet. It's only once the decision was made to install DSLAMs at PCPs as part of the FTTC deployment that D side line length became important.

The anecdotal evidence suggests that BT's commercial funding worked on cabinets down to around 300 lines.

BDUK-subsidised cabinets have been seen down to around 100 lines, but not significantly lower.

Placing a new FTTC cabinet where no PCP currently exists would likely require re-arrangement of the copper - as is done for EO lines - which would add to the cost.

On balance, I'm not sure that the extra cost would be considered viable for 50/60 properties in the current phase 1 project.

In the SEP (phase 2) project, funding increases per home, and will make smaller cabinets more viable. You may still qualify for this phase with sub-15Mbps speed.

In reply to a post by WWWombat:

BDUK-subsidised cabinets have been seen down to around 100 lines, but not significantly lower.

really? I'd have though my cabinet is well under that figure.

On exchange SSPTN there are a couple of upgraded cabinets that have significantly fewer than 100 lines - cabinet 6 has 76 lines, cabinet 8 has 48. These were done as part of the Wiltshire BDUK project. I guess a lot of factors are at play here and this won't be the case in other, more difficult areas.

As a general range of figures would agree but there are ones outside those figures

Thank you all for your advice/ comments. Most appreciated and interesting.

I am happy to be shortly receiving much faster speeds than currently experienced (2 - ~15-18Mbps). But for what its worth I've emailed the council/ councillors just to see what they might say about a new cabinet being placed closer. I imagine it's pretty far down the line of importance, but worth a shot.

Hi there,

Bit of an update/ any help would be greatly appreciated.

I'm about 0.8 miles from the Cabinet, BT sales said that on the Faster than Broadband service we'd get 12-18Mbps. Used to get 3.5Mbps Up/ 0.5Mbps Down on ADSL2+.

We received the HH5 on Monday, installed it straight away as instructed and Wednesday were told no need to be at home while our new broadband was being enabled. Came home to a much faster ping (gone from 40 to about 10ish) but the highest speed I've achieved since Wednesday is 4.2Mbps! Highest upload has been 1.2Mbps. Fastest speeds I've ever seen so something's obviously changed, just not quite the level of change we were expecting!

HH5 I have power cycled twice on the first day, left it since then to no change.

BTW Speed tester reveals line profile to be 4.2Mbps

HH5 stats are as follows
BT Hub 5A
5. DSL uptime: 1 days, 11:31:46
6. Data rate: 1237 / 4093
7. Maximum data rate: 1233 / 4456
8. Noise margin: 6.2 / 6.6
9. Line attenuation: 16.7 / 32.2
10. Signal attenuation: 16.7 / 27.9

BT live chat have arranged an engineer for next week, but does anyone have any other tips? Seems crazy just how slow it is, at present its really not worth the extra cost over ADSL at all!

Thank you for all your help.

Edited by deleted (Sat 14-Mar-15 08:58:15)

Compare yourself to this thread:
http://forums.thinkbroadband.com/fibre/t/4395543-re-...

That is someone who reckons they are a mile from the cabinet, and have almost the same attenuation as you do at 33dB. They're getting speeds of nearer 12Mbps.

Of course, length of cable isn't the only thing; the thickness makes a difference, as does the quality of the joints. The material matters too (as aluminium is much worse than copper). All of these can make your experience different from the one you expect.

But it certainly could be the case of a wiring problem inside the house too, as FTTC can be more finicky about the way the copper wire is laid out. Ideally, you would have the modem/router at the master socket,with no other extensions in the way.

From your description, no engineer showed up to do anything inside the house. That means you are left to figure this part out for yourself...

Can you describe your wiring setup in the house?

The HomeHub 5 is plugged directly into the Master socket via the ADSL filter that comes in the box. It is an Openreach Master Socket which was installed by Openreach a few years ago.

Only other things plugged into extensions in the house are a Cordless phone with an ADSL filter and a Sky Box with an ADSL filter.

Yes, no engineer came to visit our house when our 'Fibre' (BT Unlimited Faster Broadband) was installed. I just received an email saying I didn't need to be at home, and the existing broadband would cut out for 30mins or so while the new service was activated/ installed.

On ADSL2+ we used to get 3.5Mbps at about 2.4miles (by road) from the exchange. Now getting 4Mbps at 0.8miles from Cabinet.

The DSLChecker says

FTTC Range A (Clean) 18.1 11.6 1.3 0.8 -- Available
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 15 6.4 1.2 0.6 -- Available

So is quite strange, thanks for your help!

Try the test socket with a different microfilter. This will reveal if the line is being held back by noise from elsewhere.

Erm, plugged into the Test socket the speed has now increased to 13Mbps!

Plugging back into the Master Socket with Cordless phone/ Sky box (everything in house) unplugged it goes back down to 4Mbps...

Whats the next step? Even though BT will have sent Openreach out next week will they charge us as it's an internal wiring issue??

If it was me, I'd temporarily run it with faceplate off and just one phone plugged into the microfilter.

The cost option for improving things is a VDSL2 faceplate easy to fit and should reduce the effect of the extension wiring.

The free version is to remove the ring wire see http://www.thinkbroadband.com/faq/sections/radsl.htm...

Very likely to get a charge if it is an internal wiring issue.

Thank you, I will order a new faceplate today and hopefully that will resolve the problem.

Really appreciate your help. Thank you again!

In reply to a post by adminkatana:

Erm, plugged into the Test socket the speed has now increased to 13Mbps!

That's rather better - and it will probably feel better when using computers too.

Plugging back into the Master Socket with Cordless phone/ Sky box (everything in house) unplugged it goes back down to 4Mbps...

If that happens, the usual suspect would be the ring wire (on connection number 3) that could be injecting extra noise. Pulling this out would probably help, or using a proper VDSL faceplate filter instead - which would keep the ring wire connection entirely separate from the VDSL socket and signal.

You can buy the VDSL2 faceplate, and install it yourself - it fits between the existing faceplate and the existing backplate, giving you an extra socket to plus the modem into.

Even though BT will have sent Openreach out next week will they charge us as it's an internal wiring issue??

The ordinary answer would be, yes, an appointment to fix something on the internal side would get charged.

However, you are caught in an interesting position here... BT Retail chose to sell you a self-install product, and it hasn't installed well enough. It is BT that chose to go with a cheap version of the installation, and in your case it hasn't paid off.

When the engineer comes, he will (almost certainly) only do what the engineer would have done for other types of installation - which is to test the line, put a VDSL faceplate on, and test again. It is what BT Retail would have asked Openreach to do if you had ordered Infinity 2 - but you were never given that option.

If you could have ordered a couple of years ago, you would certainly have had an engineer attend, and perform these steps, as self-install was not an option.

Morally, this ought to go down as a repair after a failed installation, but do Openreach really see it that way? Would they still charge you for that? I'm not entirely sure - and you probably have grounds to try to argue your case if they do.

Whats the next step?

Choose between
- cancel appointment, and fix it yourself
- leave Openreach to attend, and gamble as to whether they will charge you

It is entirely possible that there are other issues with the line, that could be fixed by the engineer's attendance. However, with the HH5, you don't really have access to the full set of line stats to be able to tell if that is a possibility.

Note: Don't do too many more unplugging & plugging-in of the modem in one day, as you don't want to trigger DLM. If you do want to make more attempts to try things out, the best practice is to first power down the modem while it is still plugged into the phone socket, and to then wait at least 30 mins before plugging the line back in and powering back up.

Thank you,

I will have a think about the engineer coming, the Faceplate doesn't actually have any orange/ white wires plugged into connection number 3!?

This confuses things further.

In which case, the most likely case remaining is that the VDSL2 signal bounces down to the extensions (through the two wires that are connected) and gets reflected back - interfering with the signal then arriving at the modem. This reflection is a form of noise too.

The VDSL faceplate should stop that too.

I think I will keep the engineer appointment, hopefully they will test and install a VDSL faceplate and resolve the problem.

Should I be honest and leave the HH5 plugged into the Test socket? Or switch it back to the Master socket before they arrive?

At least it sounds like a simple fix

The ISP should have got you to test with the test socket so if ypu get a bill for visit you could fight it because of that

Good point.

Thank you again to everyone for their input/ help. You've been great help!

The ADSL checker now states the following:

FTTC Range A (Clean) 77.6 57.9 20 18.9 -- Available
FTTC Range B (Impacted) 70 41.3 20 12.2 -- Available

I have placed my order and am due to be upgraded on the 9th of April, currently getting about 14mbit on ADSL2+ so this should be a tidy speed increase.