Fate of my cabinet

Hi all. My wanderings online searching for information has brought me to this forum. Does anyone have any info about cabinets that have been left behind in the roll out plans?

I live in Portishead on a new-ish estate (2007). Fibre broadband rolled in to town a few years ago and breezed through my area updating cabinets but mine was missed out. As the years have gone by I have seen my cabinet go from estimated date to the next estimated date and finally to "Under Review".

I eventually contacted my MP to chase this up as I was getting nowhere with OpenReach/BT. In the end I got a fairly generic response about my cabinet not meeting the standards of the economic modelling.

I'd like to know if anyone knows what these reason could be? There certainly are enough houses in the area for this to be viable. It must be an engineering problem?

Is there any hope? I've been waiting years now whilst the majority of my neighbours have great internet. Is there anything I or my fellow residents can do to expedite this process?

I am connected to cabinet 32 on the Portishead exchange. I'd appreciate any advice or insider knowledge!

Cheers,
Case

Yes around 24,000 are left out at this time.

Cabinet 32 & 33 are waiting on a survey and may be live by Mar 2017
Cabinet 19 & 20 are on the Devon and Somerset BDUK project plans

Cabinet 23 features in no plans at this time.

Your local BDUK project are the custodians of the upgrade work for cabinets that are uneconomic - CDS, aka Connecting Devon and Somerset.

The Portishead exchange appears to have been mostly upgraded 5 years ago, but CDS have 5 cabinets down for an upgrade, of which 3 have gone live. Cab 32 isn't amongst these ... and is instead amongst the 3 cabinets not down for an upgrade at all. Possibly the largest of those three too.

CDS would be the best people to contact to find out if your postcode has been included in their "white" list (ie you qualify for a BDUK-subsidised upgrade) or not. That is the first step.

Then you would want to ask them if your cabinet is in their plans for phase 1 ... but it probably isn't.

Unfortunately, that is where your easy options currently end.

Ordinarily, we'd next advise that you ask about the likelihood of being included in phase 2.

However, the atmosphere between CDS and the county councils is not good, and CDS recently failed to reach an agreement with BT for phase 2. The plans for future progress are not clear ... and you're not likely to get a clear answer right now.

Evening Andrew

Does ADSL Uptake have any bearing on the FTTC decisions?

That is if very few on Cab 32 have ADSL, it is considered very unlikely that many would upgrade to VDSL, bearing in mind also that on average at presnt, only 20% of subscribers in VDSL enabled cabinets have actually upgraded to VDSL.

Cab 32 is down on the list, just needs the survey doing, which means power, location and other factors, so if power company come back with a silly price tag might not happen.

ADSL take-up seems to not be a big factor, for the BDUK projects it is more about value for money, i.e. for the gap funding cost will it deliver a decent number of superfast and/or USC connections. There are some cabs I've seen upgraded that give very few superfast but they've lifted almost everyone from 1 Mbps or slower to the 10 to 20 region so no hard and fast rules.

For the county projects with their targets, a lot is down to how the original lists of cabinets got sorted, so it may seem a bit random with some that are left out, and it constantly confuses people why say 1 out of 19 cabs on an exchange is missed out, but every work done on another down the road to fix EO lines.

In short unless a project is working to 100% at a high speed there is going to be those left behind.

What list are you looking at?

it could also be challenging to site there are a number of cabs removed due to iinability to site

Thank-you for the information posted.

All very frustrating. Seems it would be easier to move house...

Again, thanks for the info

Case

I've noticed on the OpenReach website that they've updated their "Where and When" section. My cabinet used to be listed as under review but now states "In scope".

I'm assuming that this essentially means the same thing - part of a plan but still no dates of any note.


Does anyone know you know when this survey that was mentioned in earlier posts is due to be performed?

If the estimation of possibly live by Mar '17 is accurate I suppose I've only got a year left to wait!


Thanks for all the info - justing having some details makes a world of difference

It all depends, mine went from exploring solutions, to design to field survey all in the space of about 10 days.

The "We are exploring solutions" is the new "Under Review" that page is tailored around FTTC so for FTTP areas its completely useless.

Paul

I'm not sure about that, my exchange has been saying "exploring options" since the update to the checker, however it's been confirmed many times over the past 4-5 years that theres no plans to enable the exchange or cabinet with fibre due to lack of demand and the area having a 99% superfast coverage form another provider.

Well I know its true for our FTTP which is almost complete, the page says "Exploring Solutions" where in the data returned it says "Under review".

Paul

Well for starters were talking about a cabinet (fttc) but also obviously Openreach's website is reporting incorrect information, now unless your saying Openreach are that inept that they are reporting inaccurate information for the whole natiion I think your experiance may be an isolated one.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Well for starters were talking about a cabinet (fttc) but also obviously Openreach's website is reporting incorrect information, now unless your saying Openreach are that inept that they are reporting inaccurate information for the whole natiion I think your experiance may be an isolated one.

Well I say its isolated across 12K to 18K lines, granted they are also on my exchange and also down to be completed as FTTP.

But saying that, FTTP jump from stage 1 (We are Exploring Solutions) to stage 8 (Accepting Orders), and nothing in between gets used.

So yeah, maybe its different for FTTC and FTTP etc.

Paul

well I think Openreach's checker may be designed based on FTTC... I say this based on the small number of FTTP area's with a rollout happening.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

well I think Openreach's checker may be designed based on FTTC... I say this based on the small number of FTTP area's with a rollout happening.

Agreed, that's why loads of people that are down for FTTP get frustrated like myself when we get told by our ISP and also BTOR to check that page, where we see nothing changing even though there could be loads of work going on.

But yeah, it seems to be based around FTTC which does make sense, but if they made it more generic I know some stuff has changed depending if down for FTTC or FTTP and that is the message that gets displayed when its live, for FTTC it basically says you can order fibre broadband or something on those lines, and with FTTP it mentions Superfast Fibre broadband or on those lines.

Paul

Probably just better off having a yes or no system rather than the rubbish on there now.

In reply to a post by mlmclaren:

Probably just better off having a yes or no system rather than the rubbish on there now.

Well for FTTP yes I agree, but for FTTC then the site does work ok.

However considering BTOR say "It�s where we publish the very latest fibre coverage information and we update it daily" and this is their exact words, so how comes an area could go live and it still says its at stage 6 (Connect) I think its a load of waffle LOL.

But its better than nothing in most cases.

As for being given a Yes or No, that's worse LOL.

I already know I am going to get FTTP BT and BTOR have said this loads of times now, its just that I have no clue how much needs to be done and how long it will take, and for their end of the month response, I have had an estimated dates and also predicted dates that all come and go and has done for the last 2 to 4 years.

And to see an area that is several times longer route than ours that is covered by the BDUK get FTTP before me yet ours was started 3 years before theirs even started.

So one thing I have to say is DAMN you BDUK LOL.

Jokes aside, I am sure that page will get better over time, sadly the UK will of already been upgraded way before that page becomes more usable, maybe ready for the 10Gbps by 2030 maybe LOL

Paul

I think Openreach/BT Group/Creative Edge are trying to make a FTTP deployment journey tracker as well , as I get the following (interesting part is in bold) :

Your area is in scope for the roll out of Fibre to the Premise (FTTP), although it's possible that the technology may change. Work is ongoing to deploy the fibre network locally [...trimming text a bit...]
As part of our work to improve the information on this website more detailed information about the roll-out of Fibre to the Premises will be available here soon.

Where is that stated?

All I get is the following:

"We're working with government and industry to explore ways to bring Superfast fibre to as many people as possible but don't have a plan for your area yet. You might consider co-funding fibre access in your community."

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Sat 05-Mar-16 14:00:51)

It's from the SFC version of the where and when checker, but it also imports the same journey tracker used on the superfast-openrech site with some additional information.

Also hidden in the FAQ's of the superfast-openreach site it has

In reference to superfast-openreach.co.uk/faq/#accordion27:

Why are FTTP developments not visible on the map?

For FTTP we follow a different design and build process compared to FTTC. The existing where and when journey provides detailed information on the journey to FTTC however we are looking to provide more detailed information later in the year. For now please register your details and we can then tell you when FTTP will be available at your location.

Ah, well I get the following on their site:

Under review

You are connected to cabinet number 24 on the Ilford Central exchange.

Based on the information you've provided, we are unable to give you an accurate result. If you've searched using your postcode please use your phone number for the most accurate information.

If you've searched with your phone number, it may be that your cabinet isn't currently in plan to be upgraded as part of the Superfast Cymru rollout. We understand that this is disappointing news. If this is the case, you may wish to investigate the Welsh Government Access Broadband Cymru Scheme which could be an option for you.

We have all the hardware and BT and BTOR all say we are still down for FTTP.

This is the last email from BTOR:

I have had another look this morning and you are connected to Ilford 24.

The area is in the progress of being upgraded at the moment. We use the cabinet number to refer to the area but as the upgrade will be FTTP, the cabinet will not be involved at all.

I have checked to see which work is still to do to complete the upgrade and allow you to place the order and we are being given an estimated completion date of the end of February at the moment.

There will then be a couple of weeks for the records to be updated and the service to be activated and then we are hoping you should be able to place your order.

And I can almost bet ya, mid end of March it will still be the same but with next months estimation.

Paul

I started this post about 18 months ago and finally, and gratefully, got some useful information.

Someone said at the time that my cabinet may be live by March 2017. Is this still the case? The openreach website fibre journey changed to "Build" about 9 months ago but I've seen no evidence of any building! I got all excited when it changed to build but as with the original estimated dates this has proved to be a bit of a misnomer...

I'm on cabinet 32 of the Portishead exchange. Anyone have any information about this?

Case

There's some work on Battery Lane due on 3rd Aprile for a new cabinet. Could be that, but I'm not sure if it's for a fibre cab, or if it is, if it's a twin for cab 32.

Thanks for the response. Battery lane is the other side of town so probably nothing to do with my cabinet.

I see so many openreach vans and contractors around but never working on my cabinet. Makes me miserable!...