New FTTC cabinet ISP access

Openreach/BT (aka Carillion Telent) have installed new fibre to Stanton and built Ellastone Cabinet P2. Staffs Superfast (funding project) has announced it as "live".

1. What does "live" exactly mean?

2. Should those of us on a standard BT Broadband package immediately see any automatic speed increase (recent download 1.5mps max!)...or do we have to pay extra to BT?!

3. Although going thro BTOpenreach cabinet do the different ISPs have any control over speed provided to consumer.

4. I understand that the fibre to cabinet speed is 80mps, but what should you expect if only 50 ft from cabinet?

5. Slightly seperate but Ellastone P3 has now been installed for 3 months but we are told it is "awaiting electricity connection". Is that a typical delay....or just an excuse for something else?!

1. Live should mean available to order from a range of providers

2. As the faster products cost more the upgrades are NOT automatic and so you have to decide which package you want and which ISP, generally two variants up to 38 Mbps and up to 76 Mbps

3. Providers have a choice of three products 40/2 (down/up), 40/10 and 80/20. Once you allow for overheads due to comms protocols you arrive at the up to 38 Mbps and up to 76 Mbps of the adverts. The key controlling factor is physics, ie. distance to the cabinet

4. If 50 feet then you'd expect the full up to 76 Mbps connection, when ordering you should be given a speed estimate/range you are likely to get.

5. Yes getting power to the electronics can be a real reason for a delay

Edited by MrSaffron (Wed 10-Feb-16 10:09:23)

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

2. As the faster products cost more the upgrades are NOT automatic and so you have to decide which package you want and which ISP, generally two variants up to 38 Mbps and up to 76 Mbps

Amended it to say what I'm sure you intended

Edited by gt94sss2 (Wed 10-Feb-16 00:42:07)

Shouldn't number 2 be "upgrades are not automatic" as in they do not automatically get Fibre without ordering a fibre product.

Paul

Ah, you beat me to it

Paul

That is what I intended, was late is my only excuse

In reply to a post by Ellastonepaul:

2. Should those of us on a standard BT Broadband package immediately see any automatic speed increase (recent download 1.5mps max!)...or do we have to pay extra to BT?!

Others have answered this, but the important thing to remember is that the installation of the cabinet changes nothing about your broadband connection, it still uses the same copper wire back to the exchange as it did before and the same ADSL protocol. You need to upgrade in order for it to make use of the new fibre connection between the cabinet and the exchange and to use the new, faster, VDSL protocol.

Edited by kasg (Wed 10-Feb-16 11:19:17)

There is actually a 4th speed package which ISPs have been able to order from 16th January, and that's 55/10, although I haven't heard of any retail packages that use it as yet. I'm expecting an ISP to upgrade their 40/10 package to that speed, but we'll see.

BT Wholesale have said they plan to offer the 55/10 option to their ISPs from March/April..

Presumably operators with their own backhaul won't have to rely on BTW.

Correct, but never thought that the product would appeal to TalkTalk or Sky.

Zen maybe, but unlikely.

Thanks all for excellent response. I, and our community, needed the clarification as many believed (me included!) that ALL lines would automatically go thro the fibre cabinet!. Now appreciate that it runs in parallel with existing copper and is effectively an option.

The issue over "power" to Ellastone Cab3 seems to be typical of Openreach, It was installed three months ago.......next to a street light!

Openreach depend on the local power distribution companies to get power to the cabinet. Just how fast it takes depends on them, their priorities, workloads, contractors and so on. Getting power to cabinets is one of the more expensive aspects of the rollout.

The cabinet in my village in Staffordshire (which only supplies half of the houses and not mine!) was placed and powered 9 months ago but only went live 1 month ago.

Superfast Staffs, like many BDUK funded projects seem to have little input or leverage with BT despite the amount of Taxpayers money involved.

Last weeks Parliamentary group session was very revealing about just how little information they can get.

Incredible! And I thought our delay was unique.

Our MP, Andrew Griffiths, has taken an interest and has a Meeting with "Mr Binks" BT's Regional Partnership Director on Friday, tomorrow.....and is then coming to our Parish Council Meeting in the evening to update us. Should be interesting!

In reply to a post by Ellastonepaul:

The issue over "power" to Ellastone Cab3 seems to be typical of Openreach, It was installed three months ago.......next to a street light!

Power: not a simple subject.

My first cabinet took around 5 months longer than surrounding ones to have power activated. It ended up with 3 different roadworks, spread out at around 6-week intervals, resulting in new tarmac in 3 different directions, in the search for suitable power. This was a suburban street junction, next to a lit traffic sign, with street lights on both sides of the road in all 3 directions.

I've since been told, by a totally different council, that BT need a more dependable power supply than the one "just" for street lights. As I understand it, some lighting is fed directly off proper DNO mains supplies, while some lighting is fed off "private" cabling designed for just the lighting. I suspect that FTTC cabs cannot be tied into the latter.

We've also seen problems with some cabinets because of the cost of a new electricity supply. This generally costs around £1,000 ... but if the 100 Amps they allocate to your supply takes the local system out of spec, then you have to pay for all the upgrades. Upgrading a transformer can be a tad expensive.

In North Yorkshire, they had an example of 3 cabinets in Skipton that were going to be left out - because the cost of connecting power was £90,000.

In reply to a post by Ellastonepaul:

Incredible! And I thought our delay was unique.

Not even close. Plenty of cabinets hit a problem that triggers a delay, and delays are amplified - they are never "just a day or two".

Requirements to notify councils for roadworks means that every single underground problem that is encountered causes month-long+ delays. Duct blockages that need digging out seem to be common, and more common in rural areas.

Councils can put a veto on roadworks too - preventing road problems. For example, limiting roadworks during term-time, or requiring coordination with other works. There were even problems in various UK locations in 2012, because the Olympics caused a lot of roadworks to be stayed.

Problems that then need this kind of month-long delay cause the relevant cabinets/fibre/power work to have to be replanned - into teams that are permanently busy on a long list of tasks anyway.

BT's main concern isn't getting any one individual cabinet live as fast as possible. It is about keep those teams of people busy 100% of the time, in an environment where problems and delays are plentiful.

BT have to accept the delay at X, and move the people to Y instead. Work will return to X eventually - it leaves the cabinet at X looking lost and forgotten, but the people are busy working somewhere else, and the planners will get them back when they've brought in a different team to solve the problem.

Edit:
The reason is that the phenomenal cost of this project is mostly on labour. If you don't keep the people busy, your project costs spiral out of control.

The scale helps them do this. They are installing 200+ cabinets a week. If 10 of them have problems, it is better for them to move onto the 200 for next week than to spend hours waiting to fix 10 from this week.

Edited by deleted (Thu 11-Feb-16 12:08:09)

A month ... my local council tried to force BT to wait 3 months for what was less than 2 hours work that required a 1 hour closure!

And my local authority will not approve any works, unless an emergency, for December!

Some newly adopted roads can have blocks in place for a year or more

Maybe UKPN should attend the next PAC meeting to explain their variable costs.

Hopefully, BT and the others would have done their work before the road was finished and surfaced!

In reply to a post by MrSaffron:

Maybe UKPN should attend the next PAC meeting to explain their variable costs.

That would be an interesting discussion.

I thought the answer, though, was roughly the same as for the financial problems of rural broadband: Connecting to power used to have a similar cost for any line, with the company using the knowledge of long-term future income to offset any major incremental costs for one line.

However, the appearance of competition in the market meant reduced prices as "standard", but no more long-term offset: Any line that costs more than "standard" must pay more than standard, a lot more.

It seems that regulation of mature markets like this, imposing competitive tendencies, has a serious knock-on effect. A law of unintended consequences.

In reply to a post by MHC:

Hopefully, BT and the others would have done their work before the road was finished and surfaced!

If the developer wanted to allow a quasi-monopoly for someone like IFNL (maybe kickbacks are involved?) then they wouldn't allow BT to be involved early enough.

Roads and paths tend to be finished quite early in the development - I guess it allows the workers to get around the site easily - so you really need BT's full involvement right at the start. Once you've started selling some of the houses, and now have public access to the site, it is already too late.