FTTP/H in Witham Friary,Frome

I am a parish councillor for Witham Friary, a small village south-west of Frome, Somerset. Our house is some 3.6 miles (as the wires run) from the Upton Noble exchange cabinet 1 and we can only just get 'broadband' at some 736kbps. Most of the vilage is either in a <1mbps or totally non-connectable state. Over the past couple of months BT/OpenReach have installed fibre cable along the road from the cabinet to our village and have marked up the nearby roads and now have a road closure notice from 15th October to carry out manhole work to install fibre cable. Talking to the OpenReach 'on-the-ground' surveyors/engineers they confirm that they are laying in fibre and the system will be FTTP/H by Christmas (2015).
My concern is that, as a parish council, we would like to be able to advise our parishioners about what they might be able to get as a broadband service in the near future. Some have already got satellite and have to commit to an 18 month contract. A new start-up company is promising wireless broadband by Christmas to Witham Friary and nearby villages, with a 12 month contract but only if there are sufficient potential subscribers.
I can find out nothing from Connecting Devon & Somerset regarding BT's fibre intentions and can find no contacts that can tell me when or if fibre services may be available. Can anyone give me any advice on this...do BT/OpenReach have some targets/incentives to just install fibre without making it a fully connected system. There is currently no sign at cabinet 1 of any adjacent cabinet works.

Believe the roadworks you are referring to is and is marked as a stretch of road to the SE of Witham Friary

PCP 1 - Holt Lane, Witham Friary, Frome, Somerset, BA11 5HL
Description: This job is to lay approx. 1700 meters of subduct
Works ref: BC005KN1W0BDUK-5984-6005

The PCP 1 part suggests it may be a fibre feed passing through for cabinet 1, so the big unknown is whether the engineers are overstating what is happening and its just FTTC for cabinet 1 or FTTP for a wider area.

Can attempt to ask Openreach if you email us with your details and a full address for a property.

The reason I urge some caution over what the engineers said is that for those doing the ducting and fibre blowing unless you see them installing fibre manifolds the work is identical for getting the fibre to a cabinet as it is for FTTP.

A fibre manifold looks like the black lozenge (around 12 inches long) in the picture at http://www.coolwebhome.co.uk/fibre-cornwall/images/f... and they are placed on poles or in pavement chambers within 20 to 30m of premises that are destined to get FTTP.

you should be speaking to Connecting Devon and Somerset and the programme team

Thank you Andrew. I will send you as much information as I can. I'll also have another look at the poles to see what's mounted on them but, from memory, all I can recall is a coil of fiblre cable at the bottom of some poles.

Fastman2, I've been in email and phone contact with CDS but they can't find any information to give me. They don't seem to have any knowledge of anything going on in this area and their map still shows 'under evaluation'!

FTTP is planned, so be prepared for a wait!

Hi Ribble, what exactly does that mean?

It means that FTTP provision is as a rule extremely slow and you will have to wait for a long time.

In my case, and every case will differ, the time period from roll of cable at the bottom of the poles to fibre being available to order was about a year. Once I could order that took a further 2.5 months to actually get it. A guy down the road is still fighting the Openreach system to actually get it. After 3 months he has, after much fighting and complaining, got as far as a survey being done after five engineer visits who all said the same thing that a survey needed doing! Took him an email to the BT CEO to get as far as the survey. Goodness knows when he will actually get it!
So a long wait is likely - good luck but it is great once up and running.

Thanks Jax2...that sounds like what I'd expect somehow from BTOR - spend money on getting the infrastructure in then not capitalise on it to get the income from it - what a way to run a business!!

It is a mess, but hopefully getting better.

The pressures of meeting repair metrics and contracted roll-out targets for BDUK projects is a big reason why anything that is not bog standard is so slow.

Its one of those funny things, I am very jealous of people that can get FTTP but then the massive delay and possible issues compared to people getting FTTC makes me think I am glad I only have FTTC.

Your comment can be extended to FTTC.

Back in June 2015, BT reported that only 19% overall in FTTC enabled areas, had actually taken it up, bearing in mind that the report covers from when FTTC first started to be installed, so 2009 or there-about to probably about April 2015, with around 80% to 90% given as the coverage.


With "my" FTTC directly visible from my lounge window, about 10 Metres away, operational from March 2014, I upgraded in June 2014; connected to the PCP covering about 300 very local subscribers; but in May 2015, only 17% at MAXIMUM had actually upgraded, 48 out of a FTTC capacity of 288.

In May 2015, the second tranche of Filter/Links was installed in the FTTC, as I spoke to the technician doing it.

He had about 25 FTTCs to similarly increase the F/L capacity in that day.

There was a flurry of visits to the PCP, to do actual ordered upgrades, in the next four weeks; but since then the visits have dropped back to the level observed in the first year.

If it carries on at the same rate, it will take to about 2020 to fully use that FTTC with particularly the DSLAM, Power Supplies, Batteries etc working away at less than peak.

It is almost as though conventional commercial criteria for return on investment are being completely ignored.

And not to be confused with the 80% to 90% AVAILABILITY/COVERAGE figure, all too often quoted.

In this localised case, there is 100% Availability/Coverage in PCP/Subscriber; but only about 17% UPGRADES/TAKE-UP in May 2015.

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Although not absolute confirmation, the TBB Broadband Map Speed Results do not contradict the situation described above, my own results being very clearly higher/faster than most in the surrounding area, even when I notionally take account of the several that have come and gone in the 15 months since I upgraded, ie tested 1 to 5 times immediately after upgrading; but not continued.

Now you've confused me. Are you saying that people have been unable to order FTTC services because the capacity hasn't been installed in the cabinet, or are you saying that people aren't ordering the service? If it's the former, then it's astonishingly bad if it's taken almost a year to install required capacity. If, however, it's the latter, people can't be forced to take the service. All that can be done is that it be marketed to them via direct sales calls (usually from their existing supplier) or more general advertising.

It may be that some people are happy enough with their existing speeds, or that they are locked into contracts. Sometimes LLU operators delay putting in the links to the GEA services so the full range of operators is not available.

The basis on which the BDUK bids were apparently made was on a 20% take-up, which does seem unambitious, and the gap funding was based on that (so around 60 premises in your area). Since then, BT have revised the target to 30% (so around 90 homes in your area) and this has accelerated what's called the "clawback" process by which excess subsidy is repaid so this can be reinvested.

You are right that the ROI on FTTC is highly sensitive to takeup rates as the initial capital investment is quite high whilst the marginal cost of enabling a line is low. Just what BT really expect in the way of takeup is maybe a bit higher than what has been publicly announced.

It's a rather different issue to the delays in delivering FTTP (where available) as that is labour intensive on a per-property basis.

One of the reasons that people seem to overlook with the FTTP vs FTTC debate is the massively higher resources that are required for the former. FTTC rolls out a lot faster as the most time consuming bit (running new fibre and local manifolds plus the links to each property) are not required. It means that most of the network can be upgraded much faster and (of course), revenue starts flowing in faster.

However, people shouldn't think that fibre penetration will necessarily stop at the FTTC cabinet. Now fibre is deeper into the network it can be pushed further, either using full FTTP or more local varieties of hybrid techologies using FttrN.

So yes, if the roll-out had been full FTTP you could be waiting for many more years short of the UK training a vast army of people. I did a back-of-the-envelope calculation and it looked like it would require an additional 100k people to do a national FTTP rollout in anything less than a decade.

The B4RN social media accounts are also a good indicator of the time taken to dig in the final drop to a property that does not existing ducting, 4 to 5 people for 3 to 4 hours seems common, and this is ignoring the long runs they have between premises due to the rural nature.

Premises on BT network with pre-existing duct work should be faster.

It's the second of your thoughts- that although the initial capacity available for ordering, was 48, it took a year for the orders to reach about that figure, leading to the second tranche of 48 Filter/Links being installed.

Judging by what I saw at the PCP, there were probably about 6 "delayed orders" and 4 "normal orders" connected in the 4 weeks following the second set.

It then settled to apparently around 2 to 4 a month; but now seems likely to have dropped a bit on that, as I have not seen any technicians at the PCP for about 4 weeks, keeping in mind that for an individual upgrade, the immediate outside work is at the PCP, as the FTTC will have been prepared on this batch basis.

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And all the other evidence that I have seen, appears to support my observations.

For example, in about November 2014, BT gave a figure of 13% for such upgrades.

In June 2015, it had risen to 19%.

So my local PCP/FTTC combination at about 16% maximum in May 2015 after 14 months availability, sits neatly in between.

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Obviously, I don't know the full story; but from the technician having about 25 FTTC existing cabinets to fit batches of Filter/Links to that day, it seems likely to be the normal practice.

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The right-side of "my" FTTC has a back-plane of sockets, capable superficially of taking 300 F/Ls; organised in two columns, each having groups of 25 F/L sockets, 5 rows by 5 columns; the fifth/bottom row being brown; and its last socket, the 25th in each of the groups is left empty, hence 288 instead of 300.

I have not found out why that 25th socket is left empty - possibly for testing relative to the DSLAM capacities.

So initially in March 2014, the first two groups in the left column, amounting to 48/50 sockets, was fitted with 48 F/Ls, followed by the next two groups below in the left column, May 2015.

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The Filter-Links are about about 1 cubic inch roughly, mainly white, with suitable pins projecting at the back, to enter the back-plane sockets.

Could be mistaken for fancy Fuses or small Circuit Breakers

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Agreed that in part, some may be locked-in to contracts and/or don't see any benefit from upgrading.

But with clearly more than a year having passed, I would expect that the first group would have started to upgrade, if they thought it of use to them.

For all of them, they might not know that FTTC is available.

There has been no specific advertising in this area; and the FTTC cabinet has nothing to identify it as such.

it is about 45 Metres from the PCP, across a road junction, so nothing really to directly associate it with the phone system or with broadband.

I did not really need the extra speed; but I upgraded simply to ensure I had an FTTC-routed connection; and it only cost £1 per month more.

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Every month I meet with about 15 to 20 colleagues, covering a wider area. We are all from the Electronics Industry, so have an ongoing interest.

Only one has positively upgraded. On Monday he was demonstrating his remote control of his central heating system, in the pub where we meet.

He also like myself, has upgraded to Windows 10, few of the others have done so; and one has reverted to Windows 7, after trying W10.

Another one has talked with me over the past year, about possibly upgrading to Broadband; but there are genuine technical problems for him, particularly distance.

A third one on Monday said that he had looked in to it; but had come to the conclusion that it was not worth-while for him.

The remainder on Monday were not interested, being satisfied with their present ADSLx facilities; or in one case, no Web access at all.


About 7 times a year, I meet with similar groups, mainly at the HQ of a major Aerospace/Electronics company; and they seem to be similarly minded.

One of those absolutely refuses to have Web access of any sort; and thus all minutes and other documentation has to be by Royal Mail.

In reply to a post by TheEulerID:

Now you've confused me. Are you saying that people have been unable to order FTTC services because the capacity hasn't been installed in the cabinet, or are you saying that people aren't ordering the service? If it's the former, then it's astonishingly bad if it's taken almost a year to install required capacity. If, however, it's the latter, people can't be forced to take the service. All that can be done is that it be marketed to them via direct sales calls (usually from their existing supplier) or more general advertising.

The former appears to be the case in my area (STANSTED cabinet 13) where I have now determined that some folk DO have FTTC (judging by the quoted speed tests), the cabinet appears therefore to be fully connected and running but I am unable to order due to 'high demand' which has been the case now for about 14 months. Estimates for when capacity will be restored have persistently been for later the current month or the following month. The latest update was on the 6th October 2015 when the date moved from the 7th October 2015 to the 4th November 2015.

I couldn't care less about FTTP, I just want something faster than the 1-2mbps which I get on ADSL.

Have you read my post Here