Frustrated fibre enabled but not me!

Please could someone help with my problem, I live in small rural town in wales Builth wells exchange that has been fibre enabled. I'm am currently connected via llu provided by talktalk. Knowing that nearby properties now have fibre I checked my line via superfastcymru only to find that my cabinet no. 9 post code ld2 3bp has no plans to be fibre enabled.
The cabinet is a mere 250 metres from my home and 250 metres from the exchange I'm unable to contact openreach to query how I got left out of rollout!

Not just you ...

Cabinet 10 which serves that postcode is enabled, cabinet 9 has not been so anyone connected to cab 9 is unfortunate. As to why? Many reasons. Who has funded the other cabinets locally? BT or a partnership?

If the cabinets are being enabled via the Superfast Cymru project (which is probably likely if you are in a rural occasion), then they ought to be the first port of call for progress in your area.

Try

http://www.superfast-cymru.com/where-and-when

I just checked their postcode on that site and it stats the following:

In reference to www.superfast-cymru.com/where-and-when:

Under review

You are connected to cabinet number 9 on the Builth Wells 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.

So maybe they should try their phone number on there and see what it says.

Their exchange has already got 7 of 11 (approx. 64%) cabinets already upgraded to fibre, so its not in a bad state for 1.5 years.

Paul

I tried my phone number but as stated I'm llu so not recognised i thought it would be included in the superfastcymru rollout,I contacted the welsh broadband access site its not very useful. Being such a short distance from the cabinet and exchange it beggars belief I can see it from my window!!

Distance is irrelevant if the cabinet isn't fibre enabled.

Kinda ironic that you must have loves having 20meg for years while others further afield struggled with 2 or 3meg.

In reply to a post by johnlilley:

I tried my phone number but as stated I'm llu so not recognised i thought it would be included in the superfastcymru rollout,I contacted the welsh broadband access site its not very useful. Being such a short distance from the cabinet and exchange it beggars belief I can see it from my window!!

Ah, I don't really know much about LLU, so I cannot comment about that.

As far as I can see cabinet 11 has just gone live, so that taking it to about 82% of your exchange cabinets upgraded to fibre and gone live, leaving a couple of blocks of EO Lines still being done.

So as far as I can see only cabinets 2 and 4 which are still listed as FTTP Planned, but these "may" get dropped back to FTTC at a later date.

Leaving cabinet 9 (your cabinet) which is still listed as Fibre Not Available at the moment.
When and if that cabinet gets upgraded I don't really know, but having your distance only being 250m from the exchange etc, you must be getting very good ADSL2+ speeds of around 18 Mbps, so that will have to do until you finally get upgraded to fibre.

Have you tried contacting your ISP or your local MP?

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Wed 20-Jan-16 20:09:01)

In reply to a post by lee111s:

Distance is irrelevant if the cabinet isn't fibre enabled.

Well as far as I can tell there is no fibre cabinet installed for cabinet 9, neither is there any roadworks for it for the next 12 Months at the moment.

In reply to a post by lee111s:

Kinda ironic that you must have loves having 20meg for years while others further afield struggled with 2 or 3meg.

Agreed, we range from 3.5 to 5.5 (if we are lucky) and that isn't stable, end of last year (29th December) we dropped down to 0.7 Mbps and we are located in London, with absolutely no chance in hell in being funded by BDUK due to being in Greater London.

Paul

The problem with cabinets 2, 4 and 9 is that they each serve an extremity of the town but mainly properties on the arterial roads and villages out of town, west to Cilmery, north to Builth Road and Caerwnon Park, and in your case east to Aberedw. The majority of lines on each are some distance from the cabinet, where FTTC will not provide any benefit. One of my aunt's lives at the very end of the line from PCP2, on a farm outside Cilmery, 4.4 miles by road from the cabinet. She can get barely any internet at all. Whilst her cabinet is down to get FTTP, and either that or an FTTrN solution or an extra cabinet would be the only way to provide any benefit to the majority of households on the PCP, I'll be surprised if anything vaguely superfast reaches her for many years!

The one advantage the other two cabinets have over yours is the number of connected properties; yours looks to only serve around 50 properties as far as I can tell - including only around 10 in your postcode - but the rest appear to be spread over about 3km.

I'm guessing this is the cabinet: https://www.google.co.uk/maps/@52.150509,-3.3962617,... ?

I'd guess it therefore comes very far down the viability scale even for Wales. As others have said, if you get ~20Mb already it's a lot better than most on ADSL. How far are you from your nearest friendly neighbour on PCP10 (this link: http://dslchecker.bt.com/pls/adsl/ADSLChecker.Addres... shows you all the properties in your postcode), pay for a second line into their house and create a point to point wireless link to yours?

I assume your post was directed to the OP and not myself.

Paul

Yes, to the OP, I just clicked reply on the last post in the flat view of the thread, sorry!

Cabinet 9 only has around 30 to 40 active phone numbers on it so is small, and the postcodes it serves are spread over a 3km x 2km area so the number that would benefit is actually very small, making the cost per premises helped very high, and thus probably fails any Value For Money tests the SuperfastCymru project is using.

A network rearrangement might help the premises close to the cabinet in the actual Builth Wells for the rest its wait for the Welsh project to push the 96% fibre target even further (expecting around 90% superfast).

NOTE: Not based on anything BT or Superfast Cymru have said but experience in seeing what has happened elsewhere.

Thanks for all the replies. A house move further from the exchange may help lol

Not so much that, just need to ensure that the property you move to actually HAS the service you want available to it, i.e. some areas these can be close to the exchange and in some areas it will be a house 500m from any other that magically has FTTP

The rule - never buy/rent a property where the existing owner does not have the speed of service you want already running.

In reply to a post by johnlilley:

Being such a short distance from the cabinet and exchange it beggars belief I can see it from my window!!

The decision about whether to upgrade a cabinet is usually based on a combination of the ease with which fibre and power can get to the cabinet (and fibre itself doesn't sound onerous in your case) and physically locating the new cabinet *and* how many properties will benefit from the upgrade.

In the case of cab 9, it looks like a lot of the properties served are more than 1.5km from the cabinet, so won't be able to benefit from superfast speeds.

The calculation of "value for money" is done based on the cost per property-benefitting. It sounds like BT and/or SC have determined that the money is better spent elsewhere - and have chosen not to include your cabinet in the programme. Yet...