How often is codelook updated

What looks like an all in one cabinet has just been put in our village. This is to cope with long lines not an EO cabinet. There is no reference in Codelook to a cabinet at the postcode so does anyone know how long it is likely to be until Codelook picks this up?

When you start codelook you will see the dates of the various BT datasets and lists used in constructing the database. The current database was created on 24 March and used the BT broadband datasets dated 17 March. Codelook is updated quite frequently however the BT broadband datasets used tend to be updated less frequently ranging from two weekly to monthly.

Thanks for that.

So at the worse case it should not be more 5 or 6 weeks out of date so before the end of April we should see the cabinet being identified by postcode and shown as being built .

The postcodes given by codelook as the location of a cab are often seriously in error, or at least that is the case in central London where the area covered by each postcode is quite small. Is the new cab in use yet, or as in our case, a new all in one to serve a cluster of 75+ longish EO lines, is it listed but with a projected live date? For ours, WRVAUX54, it states "FTTC being Connected, live due by May 2016" Codelook also still lists the exchange bundle, Exchange 71, through which our lines are currently connected. How long it will be until we go live is anyone's guess as Lambeth are preventing BT from carrying out the last piece of required work.

Does the BR Wholesale Broadband Availability Checker still list the old cab as being the one through which your phone is connected? Use your phone number not your post code when checking or if the number isn't recognised, use your full address. You want to see this change to the new cab before you will be able to order an FTTC based connection - assuming you cannot on the old cab.

The cabinet we are connected to at the moment is shown to be in the middle of nowhere, about a mile and a half further away than it actually is.

The availability checker gives the same cabinet number as codelook.

The availability checker seems for no apparent reason to have doubled the already optimistic speed estimate that it used to show and is now more than 3 times the actual 2.2Mpbs line speed, and infinitely more times the speed any other line in the post code can get, as no one else has managed to get a working FTTC service.

Out of curiosity does Mouselike give a truer location for your current cab or does it give the same location as Codelook?

Mouselike is exactly right

Edited by deleted (Thu 24-Mar-16 23:13:06)

Thanks.. I wondered if it might be as I've found it to be pretty good other than in the case of the cab serving a friend's property in south London where it suggests the cab is located in Manchester. In some cases, rather than "guessing" it says it doesn't know or something to that effect.

Codelook recently seems to be very conservative where new cabinets are being added for EO lines. The cab gets a name to match the EO bundle, but don't get any postcodes, so it is hard to figure coverage in advance ... questions spring to mind about how the cab will be ultimately numbered, and whether EO bundles will share one cab.

The old behaviour, during the build, was that postcodes would appear to be covered by both an EO bundle as well as a new cabinet.

Figuring long-line upgrades, like an AIO, in advance seems similar, or maybe harder if you can't remember the highest cab number a few weeks ago. Some things can be seen, (iirc your exchange name, it looks like a lot can be seen) as far as cab names are concerned, but with missing postcodes, nothing looks certain.

In reply to a post by MCM:

Out of curiosity does Mouselike give a truer location for your current cab or does it give the same location as Codelook?

Mouselike is only good for postcodes that are only used by a single cabinet, for post codes that are covered by more than one cabinet will only return a single result, like our postcode is covered by 2 cabinets and that site only shows the result for the other cabinet and not ours.

I sent them an email stating this and as I had expected, there was no change and no reply either.

But I can say that the location for the other cabinet was correct though. so I cannot fault that

Paul

what is codebook?

Magenta Systems CodeLook

It can be a great resource, but not reliable as far as postcodes and locations of cabinets are concerned.

For example, it has information about which EO bundles are going to be rearranged for FTTC by next year, but you would have to know, and not just suspect, what EO bundle you are on to trust it. Also, the dates might just be placeholders, which isn't really anyone's fault, they usually just get pushed back 3 months until it's actually done. A bit like the weather forecast only being accurate on the day.

You also have to take into account that BDUK and any local schemes for which BT has won the contract for, will probably take priority over their commercial rollout (i.e., the original plans) because they must meet targets as a result of getting the contract. There is one cabinet in my town which was due to be FTTC'd by 2012 because of the commercial rollout, but because of flooding at the site, they couldn't do it. They still haven't quite completed it, even though they're meeting their 2015/1016 BDUK and Superfast Extension Programme targets.

So in summary, I would ignore Codelook's postcodes and Google Maps locations, BUT if you know which cabinet you're on or which EO bundle you're unfortunately connected to, you can take the information if it says "Doing design" or whatever and take a bit of an optimistic view of things from that.

I believe that if your particular cabinet or EO bundle is "not available", then the route to pursue is pestering local MPs and/or Openreach directly. Probably getting an MP to personally pester Openreach is the strongest way. Tell him/her you and your extended friends and family, your whole street, will all vote for them next time if they manage to make an impact. If they don't respond to a "surgery" visit then Google their address and turn up at their house, I bet they'd put in a few phone calls to stop you turning up again.

In short: If you really want it, go nuclear.

Edited by deleted (Sat 26-Mar-16 03:41:58)

Why are you replying to my post? I have already stated that codelook often gives and incorrect post code for the location of a cab.

As for EO bundles and the cab to which a bundle may be being connected, I know exactly to which bundle our development of 75 properties is connected and the proposed number and precise location of the AIO cab that has been erected to "replace" the bundle. I also know the current state of the installation, that it is currently "stalled" and the reason. All this without the help of codelook. How? The new cab is community funded, I signed the contract on behalf of the development and am the development's contact with BTOR.

I probably have a different layout to you with regards to the forum, sorry if it seemed like I was replying specifically to you. My reply was basically "general", and to the original post, if anything.

I have the forum laid out verticaly, I think it's impossible to reply properly to someone without specifically quoting them. So again, sorry if it seemed like I was replying specifically to you. I probably should have pressed "reply" to the OP. No offence intended, i.e. I didn't even mean to reply to your post.

Edited by deleted (Sat 26-Mar-16 04:31:30)

Thanks gazzyk1ns and understood. I shouldn't have posted as it was late and I was tired. My apologies.

In reply to a post by gerarda:

Thanks for that.

So at the worse case it should not be more 5 or 6 weeks out of date so before the end of April we should see the cabinet being identified by postcode and shown as being built .

The BT database is now up to 14 April but the cabinet is still not showing. I am beginning to think the cabinet installation is just a spoiling tactic because there is an OMR being held and we have a wireless altnet in the area and that BT have no immediate plans to do other than leave it as a shell.

No need to deploy anything under an OMR it is just a declaration of plan to go to an area commercially in a three year period and carries no obligation to do so.

In theory a firm could declare an aim to FTTH a whole county in a three year period and if the plans look sensible rather than on back on a beer mat a county would not be able to do any public intervention.

For FTTH this might be the case, but in the real world things work differently - especially for fixed wireless networks. BDUK programs - Digital Scotland in our case - will casually ignore the presence of existing and planned wireless networks. This is based on the provision which requires plans to install fixed line networks before they can be counted as qualifying as superfast networks. So BT gets money to overbuild existing networks and the knowledge that this will happen means that WISPs have little incentive to provide either basic or superfast broadband service now in villages which are at the end of the BT queue.

I doubt whether the process would survive a challenge based on EU law but no-one can afford the time and money to go down that route. This is a dispute that is going to resurface again in trying to write rules for the USO. There are many operators who would prefer to delay or stymie the introduction of a USO if the alternative is that BTOR becomes the monopoly universal service provider, so a legal challenge is much more likely.

However the presence of a cabinet shell would be enough to deter any altnet from investing in an upgraded service in competition with that cabinet and so not declare any plans to do so.

BT installed fibre and a node in the village three years ago and then did not activate it, so this may be a repetition.

In reply to a post by gerarda:

However the presence of a cabinet shell would be enough to deter any altnet from investing in an upgraded service in competition with that cabinet and so not declare any plans to do so.

BT installed fibre and a node in the village three years ago and then did not activate it, so this may be a repetition.

What makes your village so special that BT would go to all this effort over everywhere else in the country? Surely it'd be easier for them, if fibre that's doing nothing and an empty cabinet shell are there as you claim to have just deployed?

I can't see the sense in spending money to deter competition, competition that they are apparently so scared of that they are building fibre spines and putting empty cabinets in place, when they could've spent an almost identical amount to make some back.

There also appears to be different rules for what constitutes a "credible plan" for OMR purposes. For BT a vague assertion that it is in their commercial rollout seems to have sufficed, regardless of the technical challenges involved. Whereas altnets are required to provide business plans, proof of funding, detailed deployment plans etc

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by gerarda:

However the presence of a cabinet shell would be enough to deter any altnet from investing in an upgraded service in competition with that cabinet and so not declare any plans to do so.

BT installed fibre and a node in the village three years ago and then did not activate it, so this may be a repetition.

What makes your village so special that BT would go to all this effort over everywhere else in the country? Surely it'd be easier for them, if fibre that's doing nothing and an empty cabinet shell are there as you claim to have just deployed?

I can't see the sense in spending money to deter competition, competition that they are apparently so scared of that they are building fibre spines and putting empty cabinets in place, when they could've spent an almost identical amount to make some back.

Why spend all that effort laying fibre and a node and then not activate it? Only BT can answer that.

In reply to a post by gerarda:

Why spend all that effort laying fibre and a node and then not activate it? Only BT can answer that.

'Activate' it?

How do you know there's nothing connected to it? They feed more than just GEA FTTC/P.

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by gerarda:

Why spend all that effort laying fibre and a node and then not activate it? Only BT can answer that.

'Activate' it?

How do you know there's nothing connected to it? They feed more than just GEA FTTC/P.

I know because the node is in a manhole in front of our house.

In reply to a post by gerarda:

I know because the node is in a manhole in front of our house.

I see. So the built it, didn't splice anything, and that was that?

Have you considered reporting this anti-competitive behaviour to the DCMS or your local authority?

In reply to a post by Ignitionnet:

In reply to a post by gerarda:

I know because the node is in a manhole in front of our house.

I see. So the built it, didn't splice anything, and that was that?

Have you considered reporting this anti-competitive behaviour to the DCMS or your local authority?

An engineer Just spent a day in 2013 wiring up the node to the incoming fibre and that was that.

The local authority do know about this but I cannot see what legal or contractual grounds they have to force BT to activate equipment.

In reply to a post by MCM:

Mouselike is only good for postcodes that are only used by a single cabinet, for post codes that are covered by more than one cabinet will only return a single result, like our postcode is covered by 2 cabinets and that site only shows the result for the other cabinet and not ours.

The page has been updated to work with the latest BT API so the results might now be more accurate (depends what BT returns for your address).

In reply to a post by drsox:

In reply to a post by PaulKirby:

Mouselike is only good for postcodes that are only used by a single cabinet, for post codes that are covered by more than one cabinet will only return a single result, like our postcode is covered by 2 cabinets and that site only shows the result for the other cabinet and not ours.

The page has been updated to work with the latest BT API so the results might now be more accurate (depends what BT returns for your address).

Mouselike seems to be hooking into the API that is on the Where and when page like for example: api.superfastmaps.co.uk my own app does the same.

But yes it now seems to be displaying the correct information.

Paul

A strange entry has now appeared. Cabinet P47 is described as being connected , live due by September 2016 but still has no postcode.

Post deleted by drsox

Think you need to include a valid referer in the html header.

Just tried their ajax check method using a soap/rest client and seems to work here.

If you go to https://api.superfastmaps.co.uk/openreach/1.2/ however you will notice that the response is a html comment stating:
<!-- There was an error trying to load the page. -->
<!-- Non-referer traffic is not permitted. Please try again on another computer/device. -->

Edited by cymru123 (Mon 12-Dec-16 22:09:18)

Thanks for the information. What are you using your scraping for?
I've worked out what is going on anyway. I will send you a private message.

Its not just the referrer, the Where and when page uses tokens.

My Application that I wrote ages ago still works fine.

Paul

Edited by PaulKirby (Tue 13-Dec-16 00:49:09)

In reply to a post by drsox:

Thanks for the information. What are you using your scraping for?
I've worked out what is going on anyway. I will send you a private message.

The PM you sent me with the postcode, that postcode is invalid acroding to BT / Openreach as well as Google Maps.

Paul