Chipping Sodbury Cabinet 10

Hi All,

Just wondered if anyone had any information on Cabinet 10 on the Chipping Sodbury exchange? The exchange has been up and running for FTTC for quite a while, but the cabinet date just keeps moving out. Currently says Septemer this year, but I'm not confident. A new cabinet came and went - sited by the existing one - plus some excavations, but nothing for quite a few months now.

Cheers,
Neil

Edited by deleted (Fri 31-Jul-15 18:48:59)

FTTC is Planned for 30th September 2015

Knowing BT, they will find a blockage in the ducts, and then put a roadwork notification up. Then a day later, they will delay the roadworks for another 2 weeks! I would think fibre may come though this time as there dont seem to be any duct blockages on roadworks.org

Thanks Fred. I'm hoping that they will enable it this time, but every other time they've just slipped the date out. Time will tell!

Apart from roadworks.org is the any other ways to get a heads up on what they have planned?

Neil

Not sure on that one. Since your cab is being done under the BT commercial rollout, you cant really get much info from anywhere else. Emailing openreach will get you nowhere, all they do is send automated emails. Try contacting MrSaffron, he sometimes has good cabinet data.

Hi EffTee,

The problem with SSCSY Cabinet 10 is Power related , The Fibre Cabinet on the corner of Lawns road is all wired up and fibre has been blown in (this was done in the summer last year and I have photographs of the work involved).

The original siting of the cabinet was due to the put up against the wall running around the perimeter of the Heritage Centre (you can see the hole has been filled in by tracing the tarmac from Cabinet 10 back towards the Heritage Centre), however the council and heritage centre complained hence it being moved to the corner of Lawns road.

The cabinet has no power running to it and from my last engagement with Openreach this was the cause for delay. I suspect the Sep 15 date will get pushed back out again.

I have now moved SSCSY Cabinet 10 , to SSCSY Cabinet 16 and have FTTC services but have an impacted line so only get 25mb , 5mb - my Virgin Media 150meg connection is rock solid.

I hope this helps, please feel free to contact me if I can help further.

Thanks gavinlew - that's really interesting information. I had suspected that the Heritage Centre was part of the original issue with the box appearing and and then dis-appearing. It does seem like the resolution is taking a very long time. Oh well, guess I'll have to just be patient.

Thanks again for the info and sorry for not replying sooner - been away for a couple of days. If you do get any more info in the future feel free to PM me.

Neil

Hi ,

Good morning, unfortunately BT have pushed the cabinet activation date back again now to 31st Dec 2015.

I did walk past the cabinet this morning and it is still silent and just checked the availability data when I got into the office

In reply to a post by gavinlew:

Good morning, unfortunately BT have pushed the cabinet activation date back again now to 31st Dec 2015.

31 December is an end quarter date, which is just a best estimate that can be put back once it is close to being reached. Dates that are not end quarter are typically somewhat firmer.

Thanks for the info. The positive I took was that it didn't go back by a year or 9 months. Let's hope it doesn't just keep nudging out but settles on a firm date. I haven't seen any activity at the cabinet for a long while, though.

afaik from when I last saw inside the cabinet, it just needs its power connecting up, i have an email from Openreach confirming this somewhere as well.

After years of waiting for the power to be connected to the cabinet it's finally happening.

"Install 1m of 1 way power duct in Footway,Performing an 1excavation to expose existing power cable in Footway" - from roadworks.org.

The local power company are working there at the moment - small trench dug next to the new cabinet.

I saw the works were starting on Wednesday, lines were chalked onto the pavement with LV (Low Voltage?).

I have taken some pictures of the work this morning and will upload to the G+ group. I would imagine as long as no further issues found then the Cabinet will probably be RFS for June 2016 (as per the BT checker).

Finally some good news for you. It would be interesting to know what the delay was caused by. I know that there are often things in the local power distribution network about which we are unaware (things like local capacity issues), but this is a long time with no information. OR ought to be better at giving information about this stuff, even if it's down to circumstances beyond their control (as it is, presumably they have an asset from which they've earned no income which is hardly good).

All the work has been completed and the contractors have gone - have uploaded some more photos of the completed work.

Thanks for the replies, chaps.

That didn't take long - am amazed at what a small amount of work was involved in connecting the power. Given the multi-year wait I'd assumed that there was some pretty major infrastructure work involved. Clearly wrong about that.

Good news is that on the Cabinet Fibre Journey tracker it's now flagged at Activate.

There could have been major work in other areas. Local distribution networks all have capacity limits and it's very possible that this was the case here. It would have been some part of the cabling from the substation, or the substation itself or anything in the distribution chain to the actual cabinet. The local electricity distribution company will have capacity rules and it may be this is at the heart of the issue. Work to upgrade capacity in the distribution network could be at some distance from the cabinet. It's not that a cabinet is a particularly heavy drain, but eventually something will be the straw that breaks the capacity rules.

This is the Ofgem paper on their policy on the costs of upgrading distribution network uplifts.

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/ofgem-publications/87259/gu...

Thanks for that insight - let's hope it was that the 1m trench was the tip of a much bigger iceberg! It's unlikely I'll ever know and I'm very glad things are now moving on. Now just need some decent fibre offers to come up in June.

Thanks again.

There must surely have been some significant reason known only to the project managers involved.

It would have been nice to have had some sort of national reporting system showing the progress of every cabinet being upgraded (and any major hold-ups). The project managers must surely have to maintain this sort of stuff, and it would surely be on a common system as management will want all their progress reports, red flags and so on.

I nice little extract for public access would have been nice, but I guess there was no budget for such developments.

In reply to a post by TheEulerID:

This is the Ofgem paper on their policy on the costs of upgrading distribution network uplifts.

https://www.ofgem.gov.uk/ofgem-publications/87259/gu...

Really good find.

That document tells us that 95% of new connections happen without requiring any "network reinforcement" ... which means that 5% of new connections do! The costs they trigger end up at £30m per year ... and the customers of the new lines ends up paying roughly two-thirds of that - £20m per year.

Elsewhere, I could find that in the 2010-11 period, there were roughly 300,000 new electricity connection requests in the year.

That means some 15,000 electricity connections end up paying that £20m - an average of £1,333 extra, on top of the £1,000 - £2,000 that is the standard charge for a new supply.

Openreach have installed roughly 75,000 cabinets since starting in 2010 - about 12,000 cabinets per year. If 5% of intended cabinets turned out to need to pay extra supply charges, and were dropped by the project, there could be 600 cabs per year, 12 per week, being left out.

Just drove past Cabinet 10 and the pavement has been closed an engineer has a load of kit over the pavement and laptops connected into the DSLAM , I presume this is the "Activation" stage.

Unfortunately couldnt stop in traffic to grab a photo

Hi gavinlew

Just been over and had a look at the cabinet. No stickers, but it is now humming quietly. Looks like I might finally be able to order a fibre product some time soon

Ill next check the wholesale checker on Wednesday (Ive noticed availability data generally updates on a Monday/Tuesday).

Shock, horror - fibre now available on Chipping Sodbury cabinet 10.......

Services showing as available on my test number, that took a while! now to get filling up the line cards!